Before they choose to enroll in continuing-education courses, adult learners spend plenty of time perusing college Web sites, looking for the right fit. But those prospective students don’t always like what they see, says a report from Eduventures.

The college consulting firm surveyed more than 500 adults who were considering taking classes. Most said the sites they visited were at least somewhat helpful, but many said the college sites were difficult to search or skimpy on useful content.

For example, more than nine out of 10 prospective students visited continuing-education Web sites to figure out how much courses will cost, the study found. But only 59 percent said the sites spelled out pricing plans clearly and comprehensively. Colleges that do make that information easily accessible, it would seem, are getting a leg up on their competition. —Brock Read

Over at ACRLog, Steven Bell flags “Sharing, Privacy and Trust in Our Networked World,” a new report released by the OCLC Online Computer Library Center. The report — drawn from surveys of American librarians and library patrons in six nations — should provide plenty of grist for librarians as they debate how their institutions should make use of Web 2.0 tools and other new social media.

“Becoming engaged in the social Web is not about learning new services or mastering new technologies,” according to the center. Instead, the group argues, modern libraries should be “dismantling the current structures and inviting users in to create their content and establish new rules.”

That’s heady stuff, and it’s unlikely that too many libraries will embrace radical change, Mr. Bell writes. But the report makes another point that should strike a chord: Libraries’ forays into Web 2.0 are only as useful a...

Campus computing officials and movie-industry executives will be paying close attention tomorrow when the House of Representatives education committee considers a 747-page bill that would set federal higher-education policy for the next five years.

The bill takes aim at Internet piracy on college campuses, directing institutions to “develop a plan” for offering alternatives to illegal downloading as well as a plan to “explore technology-based deterrents.” The measure would also authorize grants to colleges to develop programs aimed at reducing or eliminating the illegal distribution of intellectual property. (The Senate passed its version of the legislation, which included softer language on file sharing, this summer.)

The Motion Picture Association of America, which has lobbied Congress to take action against campus piracy, praised the bill, but an official of Educause, the...

Instructors are usually trying to get students to leave their cellphones alone during class. But now some professors have the bright idea of bringing those devices into the educational process.

Lucianne Sweder, an education lecturer at Governors State University, in Illinois, gave a presentation on that topic at the League for Innovation in the Community College’s technology conference this week. She didn’t recommend that anyone teach an entire online course via a hand-held device. But cellphones and other mobile devices work great for some educational purposes, she said.

Instead of using flashcards, students can use their cellphones to access computer programs that quiz them on various subjects. The wireless programs can even adjust to how well a student is doing by asking fewer questions on what he or she seems to have down cold and more on topics that aren’t going so well.

Before practicing medicine on real patients, nursing students at Tacoma Community College, in Washington, get to practice on virtual ones in the computer-generated world of Second Life. John Miller, a nursing instructor at Tacoma, put on a live demonstration here at the League for Innovation in the Community College’s technology conference for an eager crowd.

It wasn’t quite as sexy as Grey’s Anatomy, but it worked. Mr. Miller played the role of the patient, directing his avatar to lie on a hospital bed in the virtual emergency room. The avatars of two of his students, both of whom were participating remotely, entered the room to treat the patient. Their voices were transmitted over the Internet for the audience to hear.

Mr. Miller told the two students he was suffering from chest pains. The students asked typical medical questions, inquiring how bad the pain was and whether he had ...

Collegiate computer-science and technology programs still face a dearth of female students. But by the time those students reach college, it’s too late to persuade them to enroll. In fact, high school may be too late as well.

The key to getting young women interested in technology is to capture their attention in middle school, said officials from Anne Arundel Community College, in Maryland, during a presentation at the League for Innovation in the Community College conference on Monday. The college runs a weeklong summer camp every year designed to attract girls to technology.

By high school, many students have decided their likely career path, said Brandi Shepard, an instructor for architecture, interior design, and construction management at Anne Arundel. In elementary school, students are too young to understand key concepts. The magic moment is ages 10 through 13, she said, so ...

Students who enroll in community colleges don’t always have the extensive backgrounds in technology that college officials expect from younger generations. In fact, some students come in having never used a computer in their lives.

At the League for Innovation in the Community College conference here in Nashville, community-college officials are sharing information about the unique challenges with technology that they face, and the solutions to those problems. Unlike students who enroll in major universities, students who go to community college do not always get much computer experience in high school.

“That’s our job, to get them up to speed,” said Foster Stewart, project leader of business and tourism at SAIT Polytechnic, in Calgary, Alberta.

Mr. Stewart said during a presentation Sunday that his institution has handled the technology-knowledge gap by requiring that all...

Computer-security analysts have long since learned to hate “botnets”: clusters of computers, infected with worms or Trojan-horse programs, that are taken over by outside users. After all, botnets can do plenty of awful things: They trawl for passwords and credit-card numbers, fire off spam, and propagate automatically.

But now Paul Barford, a computer scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, says he may soon be able to stop botnets in their tracks. Mr. Barford’s company, Nemean Networks, is developing software that can identify 99.9 percent of “malicious signatures” associated with botnet attacks, according to Roland Piquepaille of ZDNet.

That success rate isn’t revolutionary, in and of itself: Other botnet-detection tools can root out well over 99 percent of the attacks. What separates Mr. Barford’s tool is a lack of “false positives.” Since many botnet attacks are...

November can’t end soon enough for computer-security officials at Montana State University. In the past week, they’ve discovered three separate data breaches, according to the Billings Gazette.

The first incident took place last Friday, when officials determined that a stolen data-storage device included the Social Security numbers of 216 students and employees who had lived on campus recently. That same day, the university also discovered that a spreadsheet with 42 other Social Security numbers was accessible from Montana State’s Web site.

As data-security officials looked into the spreadsheet snafu, they found another document, containing sensitive data for 13 people in the university’s computer-science department, also sitting online.

The steady succession of security breaches may have left campus officials a bit red-faced, but it’s worth noting that the university will have to send...

Like many of his colleagues, Ali Nazemi tells his students that they’d better turn their cellphones off before they come to class. But Mr. Nazemi, a professor of business administration and economics at Roanoke College, has gone to unusual lengths to drive home that message. When a student’s phone rang during a recent lecture, the professor confiscated it and proceeded to demolish with a hammer.

The incident was staged—Mr. Nazemi had arranged it with the student before class—but it had plenty of shock value. And that was precisely the point: As Samuel G. Freedman notes in The New York Times, plenty of professors are considering drastic measures to keep students from spending lecture-hall time fiddling with cellphones, iPods, and laptops.

One such tactic seems particularly interesting. A Canadian company called Smart Technologies has developed a program, called SynchronEyes, which lets...