Category Archives: Student Life
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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September 8, 2011, 4:10 pm
By Alex Campbell
You’re a student whose latest stop on the campus-visit circuit is at Bradley University, in Peoria, Ill. Your tour guide brings you to “the Markin,” the institution’s newly renovated Markin Family Student Recreation Center.
But it’s summer break, so the Markin is almost empty. A couple of people are lifting weights, and both the pool and the climbing wall are closed.
Your tour guide asks you to turn to the iPad, which you were given when you arrived. A video pops up, showing the Markin at its buzzing best: an active weight room, a dance class in session, the intramural sports season in full competitive bloom.
Welcome to the tablet-integrated tour, which Bradley has pilot-tested and plans to use much more of in the coming months, though the logistics aren’t settled yet, university officials say. An iPad application designed by the university lets prospective students and parents …
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August 15, 2011, 4:56 pm
By Jie Jenny Zou
More than 200 students at Cornell University have signed an online petition calling for the end of the university’s Internet bandwidth policy, which charges fees to students who exceed a monthly cap. Though the policy has been in place for nearly a decade, students argue that they now need more bandwidth than ever to take full advantage of the Internet, considering the popularity of video-streaming services like Netflix and video-conferencing systems like Skype.
Cristina A. Lara, a sophomore at Cornell studying industrial and labor relations, said that she began the petition last week, arguing that “charging students for Internet is ridiculous” considering how much students pay for tuition. Her goal is to persuade at least half of the university’s 13,000 undergraduates to sign on, she added.
Such disputes over the cost of campus Internet connections may become more common….
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