Improving college retention and graduation rates are tops in the nation’s higher-ed “to do” list. At the Higher Ed Tech summit in January, high-school and college transcripts were touted as unexpected keys to these goals. Matthew Pittinsky, chief executive of Parchment, a digital transcript company, and a founder of Blackboard, points out that transcripts capture the strengths of relationships between particular high schools and colleges because, taken together, they record the numbers of shared students. They reveal where students applied and where they got in, and what courses successful students had in common.
From the 2012 Higher Ed Tech Summit in Las Vegas, I explore the innovations of the online “transfer college,” community colleges solely focused on moving students to four-year institutions. My guest, Paul Freedman, chief executive of Altius, describes how his partnership with Ivy Bridge College and Tiffin University helped them negotiate transfer agreements with 130 universities, including many public flagships, across the country. He explains the prominent role of success counselors who help students navigate the bridge between two- and four-year colleges, a bridge that has historically been blocked for many potential transfer students.
Right now, college recruiters are blitzing high-school juniors with marketing e-mails and brochures—many of them much the same. Students often ignore them.
“None of us is naïve enough to hope for 10 percent of the population to open an e-mail,” says Allen Kraus, Ohio State’s point person on communications to prospective students.
So Ohio State decided to try a different approach to piercing the clutter. On Sunday night, the university e-mailed more than 100,000 high-school students with this pitch: Why not get to know “the real Ohio State” by connecting with a current student who does not work for the admissions office?
In the experiment, these would-be-Buckeyes can e-mail, instant-message, or telephone any of 68 Ohio State students who work for a start-up company called CollegeSolved. They can drill down into the company’s online network to find chat partners with common…
A Syracuse University graduate student who had been prohibited from student-teaching because of a Facebook posting will be allowed to finish his degree this spring, the university said on Wednesday. The decision came just a few hours after a free-speech group publicly denounced Syracuse’s handling of the matter.
Matthew S. Werenczak, a master’s student in social-studies education, made the comment on Facebook last July while he was a tutor at a local high school as part of a Syracuse class.
Mr. Werenczak said that during a field trip, he had heard a local NAACP representative say, “We need to start hiring our teachers from historically black colleges.” Since he and another tutor had just introduced themselves as Syracuse students, Mr. Werenczak said he found the remarks offensive.
On his personal Facebook page, he wrote that the comment was an example of “racism” and…
Las Vegas—At the very start of the Higher Ed Tech Summit here this week, James Applegate threw out a challenge. Mr. Applegate, vice president for program development at the Lumina Foundation, told an overflow crowd that the United States needed 60 percent of its adults to hold high-quality degrees and credentials by the year 2025.
During the rest of the day, technology executives described programs that could improve graduation rates and learning, but won’t be able to do so for several years. They collect many points of data on what professors and students do, but can’t yet say what results in better grades and graduation rates. “We’re beginning to get lots of data on things like time of task, but we don’t have the outcomes yet to say what leads to a true learning moment. I think we are three to five years away from being about to do that,” said Troy Williams, vice president and…
The faculty union at the University of Manitoba, in Canada, sent an e-mail message to its members this month alerting them to a popular Web site where students are sharing course materials, including what the union calls professors’ “intellectual property.”
In the e-mail, the union defines intellectual property as “lectures, course notes, laboratory materials, exams, and other works created by members for their class,” which cannot be published without the author’s permission. The e-mail encourages members to warn their students that posting any of the above materials is prohibited by law.
Students can legally share their own notes from a class, but taping a professors’ lecture and posting that to a Web site is a violation of copyright law, argued James L. Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, in an article in the Winnipeg Free Press.
Jon Corshen, CEO of a new academic social-media network, says students don’t want to be friends with their professors on Facebook but are left with few alternatives for interacting with instructors on the Internet after class time ends. So he created a space on the Web for students and professors to “meet up” outside the classroom.
In two years, Mr. Corshen and his team have raised $7-million in venture capital, from Granite Ventures, Omidyar Network, and other investors. The Chronicle caught up with him to talk about the ideas behind the online academic platform, known as GoingOn.
Q. What prompted you to develop an academic social network for college students? A. The ways students connect with their online identities and their academic lives are clearly changing. But institutions continue to spend an immense amount of time and energy communicating with students in ways…
Students at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale were surprised to discover last week that their posts were being deleted from the university’s official Facebook page. The censoring of comments began shortly after a union representing faculty members announced Wednesday night that it was going on strike, following months of heated negotiations with the administration.
Students said their comments were being individually deleted every few minutes, and finally all posts were disabled. The decision was made in an attempt to stop posts that were “pretty nasty and pretty rude and not acceptable,” Rod Sievers, a university spokesman, told the student-run newspaper, The Daily Egyptian. But one student told the paper it appeared at first that only pro-union posts were being deleted, and some students said they are now wondering about their freedom of speech.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. announced on Tuesday the winners of a contest dubbed Apps Against Abuse, a White House-issued challenge to developers to build a mobile application that helps prevent sexual abuse on campuses. On Watch, a mobile app that allows students to connect to friends and family members “instantly and discreetly” with two thumbstrokes, won the challenge alongside Circle of 6, a mobile app that allows students to connect to a small group of friends and provide their location or request an interrupting phone call. On Watch features alarms, a flashlight, and a series of alert levels, as well as links to sexual-assault hotlines. Circle of 6 also requires just two swipes at the buttons to send out a preset signal. Both applications will be available for download in January.
College students are taking social media to a new level, using Web sites like Facebook to communicate with other students about their coursework, according to results of a new survey on student technology use.
Nine out of 10 college students say they use Facebook for social purposes, like writing status updates and posting pictures. And the majority, 58 percent, say they feel comfortable using it to connect with other students to discuss homework assignments and exams. One out of four students even went so far as to say they think Facebook is “valuable” or “extremely valuable” to their academic success.
The survey was conducted in June by the Educause Center for Applied Research, and was taken by 3,000 students from more than 1,000 colleges. The results show how technology is shaping students’ lives both inside and outside the classroom.
Developing online and blended learning programs requires research and collaboration. Learn how top technology companies are partnering with campuses across the country to advance online learning as it becomes an increasingly important aspect of higher education.
A Syracuse University graduate student who had been prohibited from student-teaching because of a Facebook posting will be allowed to finish his degree this spring, the university said on Wednesday. The decision came just a few hours after a free-speech group publicly denounced Syracuse’s handling of the matter.
The faculty union at the University of Manitoba, in Canada, 
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Developing online and blended learning programs requires research and collaboration. Learn how top technology companies are partnering with campuses across the country to advance online learning as it becomes an increasingly important aspect of higher education.