A new study has found that black students experience more online racial discrimination and generally have a more negative view of campus racial diversity than their white counterparts.

Brendesha M. Tynes of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Suzanne L. Markoe of the University of California at Los Angeles will present their study at the American Educational Research Association conference on Monday. They used an online survey of 217 African-American and European-American college students to gauge factors such as online victimization, social networking, and campus racial climate.

The study found that the black students spent more time online than their white peers and had more diverse contact online. But black students reported higher rates of online victimization and more negative racial climate on their campuses.

Ms. Tynes, an education professor who was recently...

If iPads and other new mobile computers catch on, libraries might not need to offer rooms full of computers for students to do their research, writing, and Facebooking. But if that happens, will students have any reason left to visit the library?

That's the provocative question posed by Brian Mathews, assistant university librarian at the University of California at Santa Barbara, on his blog this week.

The trend in the last few years was to add more computers to the library, creating spaces often called "information commons." And during that time, visits to the library have increased greatly. "I think the key to our current success has been the computers," Mr. Mathews says on his blog.

But now Mr. Mathews says he hears colleagues planning to remove desktops and trying programs to loan out iPads or netbooks to students who want to use a computer while in the library. "So the real...

A new study from the University of Maryland finds that students are hooked on social media and cellphones, describing withdrawals in terms similar to those used by drug and alcohol addicts.

The study from the International Center for Media and the Public Agenda, "24 Hours: Unplugged," asked 200 students on the campus to give up all media for a full day and blog on private Web sites about their experience. Student reaction showed addictionlike withdrawal symptoms such as anxiety, misery, and being jittery, the authors wrote.

One student wrote that texting and sending instant messages gives him or her "a constant feeling of comfort," without which he or she felt "quite alone and secluded from my life." Another said that he or she feels "like most people these days are in a similar situation; for between having a Blackberry, a laptop, a television, and an iPod, people have become unable...

Students at Northern Arizona University who hope to skip large lecture courses may have more trouble doing so this fall: The university is installing an electronic system that measures student attendance.

The university is using $75,000 in federal stimulus money to install the system, which will detect the ID cards students are carrying as they enter large classrooms, The Arizona Republic reported on Tuesday. (The cards can be read by an electronic sensor.) Faculty members can choose to receive electronic attendance reports.

Karen Pugliesi, vice provost for academic affairs, says the project will help improve attendance, which is key to higher academic performance.

Research, she says, shows a real link between good attendance and student achievement. She says the system will improve student engagement and participation, putting more students on track to graduate.

"We want every one...

Our technology podcast is getting a new co-host and a new format. Starting in May, Jeffrey R. Young, a technology reporter for The Chronicle, will join Warren Arbogast, a technology consultant who works with colleges, on Tech Therapy.

The goal of the podcast, now entering its fourth year, is to help make sense of the latest developments in technology, with analyses of how new gadgets and buzzwords could change education. In each episode, we interview college leaders about the challenges they have faced and their efforts to overcome them.

More than ever, we want to hear from you. Call in to our new Tech Therapy hotline and ask a question, or tell us a quick story of a technology challenge on your campus, and we'll put it on the podcast and respond. The number is 805-CHE-TECH (805-243-8324).

Check out this week's episode for parting thoughts from Scott Carlson, the show's founding...

Washington—At the finals for Microsoft's U.S. Imagine Cup competition, which took place here today, 20 student teams displayed video-game and software projects that attempt to solve the world's greatest problems with technology. James Cameron, the Academy Award winner who most recently directed Avatar, spoke at the awards ceremony.

Some projects had a very practical use, such as software that would make medical data more available to researchers around the world. Other projects, however, were designed more for entertainment, such as a video game that lets players fight disease in the human body using tiny robots. Of the teams, which were mostly made up of college students, two were selected to represent the United States in Warsaw at the Worldwide Finals in July.

In the software-design category, three students from the University of California at Davis took the prize. The students'...

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Isaac Newton are an unlikely pair for a face-off on Twitter. But a class at Muskegon Community College has brought the pair's struggle for credit as the inventor of calculus to the social-networking site.

Maria H. Andersen, a math instructor at the Michigan institution, came up with the idea together with the three students in her honors section of Calculus II. She typically has students work on a project based on The Calculus Wars, by Jason Socrates Bardi. Newton had written a manuscript describing calculus as early as 1665, the book relates, but Leibniz later discovered calculus independently and published first.

Ms. Andersen and her students thought re-enacting the battle on Twitter might be an interesting way to show the year-by-year progression of the row. "It really is more about people than the math," she says. "So it's a story about when...

One college wants off of a Web site ranking the most dangerous colleges in the country, although representatives for the site say they have no plans to remove it.

Hobart and William Smith Colleges, in Geneva, N.Y., is ranked 44th on the list of 100 most dangerous American colleges at American School Search. The institution sent the Web site a letter demanding that it be removed and filed for a subpoena in New York State Supreme Court to get the identity of the site's owner.

Robert Flowers, the college's vice president for student affairs, said in an e-mail message to The Chronicle that they've obtained that subpoena and "if we are unsuccessful in achieving a resolution through conversation with the owner(s), we will move to refile the complaint in the appropriate jurisdiction."

American School Search posts a breakdown of crimes that occurred on institutions' campuses in recent years, ...

The owner of a new Web site wants his search engine to become an easy way to comb through the open courseware of many colleges.

About 1,800 courses, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are indexed on OCW Search for starters, says the operator, Pierre Far. Polling on the Web site, which went online this week, will determine what courses to add next; those at Stanford University are in the lead, and Mr. Far plans to add them in the next few days.

Mr. Far, who is not affiliated with a college, said he created OCW Search after looking for  online material for statistics. He browsed open-courseware Web sites and downloaded some courses, finding some that were useful and others that weren't.

 "This combination of having to browse each university's course collection separately and then having to read through the contents of each course before finding those directly relevant is...

The fragmented world of open courseware should be transformed into "a worldwide resource that's very clear who should use what," Bill Gates said in a speech on Wednesday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Microsoft founder praised MIT as being "at the forefront" in open courseware, adding that he has taken many of the institution's OpenCourseWare classes. But he said some problems have yet to be solved in open courseware, such as how to make courses across campuses easier to find and how to best use interactive features.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is looking at how to help support innovation in open courseware, he said. "What's been done so far has had very modest funding. This is an area we need more resources, more bright minds, and certainly one that I want to see how the foundation could make a contribution to this."

The foundation announced $12.9-million...