Category Archives: Student Life
December 21, 2011, 1:30 pm
By Alexandra Rice
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.
The…
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December 6, 2011, 1:59 pm
By Alexandra Rice
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…
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November 7, 2011, 3:43 pm
By Lacey Johnson
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.
November 1, 2011, 3:11 pm
By Collin Eaton
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.
October 27, 2011, 4:28 pm
By Alexandra Rice
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.
Kevin Roberts, chief…
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October 24, 2011, 5:52 pm
By Alexandra Rice
A draft social-media policy at Sam Houston State University—which would force anyone with a campus-related Twitter, Facebook, or other online account to give university administrators editing privileges—led to calls of censorship by students. Now officials say they will revisit the plan.
The backlash followed the university’s release last month of a new social-media portal, called Social Universe. The original draft of guidelines for using the portal stated that any department or organization that joined would be required to release its username and password to the university, giving the college the right to oversee and edit any activity on the accounts.
Some students felt the language in the guidelines was overreaching, so they staged a demonstration against the policy late last month, says Stephen M. Green, a sophomore and associate editor of the campus newspaper. The protest…
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October 14, 2011, 2:07 pm
By Alexandra Rice
A new effort will help college newspapers add paywalls to their Web sites, enabling editors to collect donations or charge subscription fees to frequent readers of online editions.
The digital-subscription company Press+ and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation will cover the start-up fees for adding a meter system to the first 50 campus papers that sign up.
So far, most of the newspapers interested in adopting the system do not plan to charge on-campus users, and many plan to simply ask for donations from off-campus readers rather than making payment mandatory.
The project follows recent high-profile moves by national and local newspapers, such as The New York Times and The Dallas Morning News, to require readers to pay for access to certain online content.
Boston University’s Daily Free Press introduced a system for donations a few weeks ago, and it has already…
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September 15, 2011, 7:00 am
By Jeffrey R. Young
A game-changing e-textbook project at Indiana University—in which the university requires certain students to purchase e-textbooks and negotiates unusually low prices by promising publishers large numbers of sales—now has the participation of major textbook publishers, and university officials plan to expand the effort.
Today McGraw-Hill Higher Education announced that it has agreed to join the project, which has been in a pilot stage for more than a year. A handful of other publishers—John Wiley & Sons; Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishing Group; W.W. Norton; and Flat World Knowledge—have signed on to the effort as well.
Here’s how it works: Students in a select group of courses are required to pay a materials fee, which gets them access to the assigned electronic textbooks or other readings for the course. The university essentially becomes the broker of the textbook sales…
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September 14, 2011, 6:29 pm
By Alex Campbell
The University of North Carolina has a special message for students who want to access the dorm’s Internet network: “UNC-CHAPEL HILL IS BLOCKING FILE-SHARING THROUGHOUT STUDENT HOUSING.”
That’s at the top of a Web page which pops up on laptops that have file-sharing programs, when they connect to the university’s network. Students aren’t allowed to access the Internet until they’ve uninstalled the offending software or request an exception that the university is calling a “hall pass.”
The pass is an agreement the student signs that says he or she has a file-sharing program but “any copyright violation linked to a device registered under my name will result in an automatic referral to the Dean of Students office.” They also agree to learn what does and does not violate copyright law.
Officials hope the new policy will both prevent students from getting into legal pickles and help…
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September 13, 2011, 5:29 pm
By Alex Campbell
Eighteen students will take an introductory teaching course at National-Louis University at a steep discount, thanks to the institution’s experiment with Groupon, a popular deals Web site. But the students have no guarantee that they will be accepted into the master’s program that the course is part of.
The students bought a discounted tuition voucher for the course, called
“Introduction to the Profession and the Craft of Teaching.” For the deal to kick in, a minimum of 15 participants had to buy in before the offer expired last Friday. The coupon-toting students will pay $950 to take the course, instead of the typical cost of $2,232—a savings of nearly 60 percent.
But they won’t be enrolled at the institution. Instead, each participant will be considered a “student at large,” said Nivine Megahed, the university’s president.
The at-large students will be taught in their own …
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