A former University of Louisville nursing student who was dismissed for writing comments about patients on her MySpace page cannot collect damages as a result of being expelled, because she waived her free-speech rights when she signed an honor code that included a confidentiality agreement, a federal judge ruled Monday.
The former student, Nina Yoder, sued the university three years ago for dismissing her after learning of online postings she wrote that referenced her patients, gun rights, and abortion. A district court decision allowed Ms. Yoder to re-enroll, and she earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing in 2010. Ms. Yoder sought damages from the university, but U.S. District Judge Charles R. Simpson III ruled Monday that she had “had no constitutional right” to write about what she saw as a student because of the honor code’s confidentiality agreement, the Associated Press
A WikiLeaks-style Twitter account that on Monday published confidential information about Lindenwood University students has been unplugged.
The anonymous account, called LindenLeaks, drew the attention of Lindenwood University officials and the police in St. Charles, Mo., on Monday evening after leaking the names of more than 180 students who were suspended for the fall 2011 term, according to a report on Wednesday in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
A university spokesman told the newspaper that all the students on the list had been notified of the breach, and the institution broadcast news of the leak via its own Twitter account on Tuesday. Although the list contained telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, and grade-point averages, no Social Security numbers were released. The spokesman added that the university intended to prosecute the account’s owner.
When it comes to renting or buying textbooks, students can pick from several different services to help them find the best deals. It’s often hard for university stores to compete with independent vendors, since wholesaler agreements can inflate stores’ used-book prices above their market value. It’s also tough for stores to track which titles students choose. So one textbook-rental company, BookRenter, is today introducing a spinoff company that it says will help university stores compete. The spinoff will do so by making it easier for stores to see how their textbooks are priced elsewhere.
The new company, called Rafter, was born two years ago and grew out of BookRenter’s university-store-services platform. Mehdi Maghsoodnia, BookRenter’s chief executive, said the spinoff came to life because institutions needed a better way to structure their selection of course materials …
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…
The MIT Press and other critics say proposed legislation to
limit public access to the results of some studies would work
against the open exchange of ideas.
Budget restrictions are an ever-present threat to innovation on college campuses. Learn how top technology companies are working with institutions to advance online learning as programs continue to expand on campuses across the country. This special sponsored section features resources available to help develop a successful online education program at your institution.
A former University of Louisville nursing student who was dismissed for writing comments about patients on her MySpace page cannot collect damages as a result of being expelled, because she waived her free-speech rights when she signed an honor code that included a confidentiality agreement, a federal judge ruled Monday.
A WikiLeaks-style Twitter account that on Monday published confidential information about Lindenwood University students has been unplugged.
When it comes to renting or buying textbooks, students can pick from several different services to help them find the best deals. It’s often hard for university stores to compete with independent vendors, since wholesaler agreements can inflate stores’ used-book prices above their market value. It’s also tough for stores to track which titles students choose. So one textbook-rental company, BookRenter, is today introducing a spinoff company that it says will help university stores compete. The spinoff will do so by making it easier for stores to see how their textbooks are priced elsewhere.
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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Budget restrictions are an ever-present threat to innovation on college campuses. Learn how top technology companies are working with institutions to advance online learning as programs continue to expand on campuses across the country. This special sponsored section features resources available to help develop a successful online education program at your institution.
