It must be getting close to September, because that “back to school” month is when magazines come out with various rankings of colleges and, sure enough, rankings issues are starting to hit the newsstands. This week Computerworld released its list of 56 “most innovative” IT schools in the U.S. The magazine chose to profile 13 of them. Listed in no particular order (at least no order explained by the magazine), they are:
Carnegie Mellon University
Georgia State University
Indiana University at Bloomington
Northeastern University
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Stanford University
University of Pennsylvania
University of Virginia
Virginia Tech
Polytechnic Institute of New York University
San Jose State University
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Washington
How were these universities selected? By their reputations among a small group of people. Computerworld polled about two dozen IT executives and academics and asked them to name “graduate-level IT programs and schools that are giving graduates the best deal in terms of salary increases or promotions vs. cost of tuition, and that are best at gearing their curriculum to the everyday demands of today’s IT workplace.”
The magazine’s editors picked the 13 to profile, while the Web site lists all 56 institutions. Some of them even get letter grades, derived from a survey of alumni who were asked to rate their institution’s impact on their careers, as well as the relevance of course content to on-the-job activities. Carnegie Mellon got props for its human-computer interaction program, and an A from 152 alumni surveyed. Georgia State got a B+, based on answers from 14 graduates. It makes one wonder what students and professors at these lauded institutions make of the statistical validity of the survey. —Josh Fischman
14 Responses to The Most Innovative IT Schools?
Kris Shaffer - May 7, 2012 at 9:22 pm
WordPress is great four a course website. I used it in the fall, then tried out CourseKit this spring. I’m going back to WordPress again in the fall. (Self-hosted multi-user, since I already have the web space and a stable server, and it gives me even more control.) Great platform.
I didn’t know about LaTeX and WordPress. A lot of things seem to have that (including Learning Catalytics). There’s a music notation application based on LaTeX that’s really good. Maybe I should encourage developers to make their software compatible with that, as well…
amcdawes - May 8, 2012 at 1:13 am
Thanks for the tip on WeBWorK, I’ll keep that in mind for when I break free of the LMS trap in the Fall. One thing I’ve realized is that I’d reach more students if I didn’t stubbornly insist on using email as a primary communication medium. One great way to allow students to receive course updates via text message is https://www.remind101.com/ They offer free text messages to students, and it is all anonymous (students don’t have to share their number etc). Of course a twitter feed or hashtag does a similar thing but not everyone wants to join twitter.
Doug Holton - May 8, 2012 at 3:59 am
You may want to try Socrative – it’s free while in beta, or Poll Everywhere if some students don’t have a laptop or smartphone. I have a table comparing different classroom response systems here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AlUZm-Jmwzz1dHpQQ09Mc3c2NVFRelgxbi01elA0OVE#gid=0
Robert Talbert - May 8, 2012 at 6:13 am
Kris, just to clarify, that’s WordPress.com not wordpress.org. The former is sort of like blogger — a free web service that doesn’t require any self-hosting. If you want LaTeX on a self-hosted wordpress.org blog you have to have a plugin like MathJax.
Robert Talbert - May 8, 2012 at 6:15 am
I was going to go with Socrative but I just found that I was fighting it too much. For example there’s no way to have two rounds of voting on the same question unless you duplicate the question inside a quiz — which you have to do by hand. LC on the other hand was built from the ground up specifically for use with peer instruction, so it’s an excellent fit for the pedagogy I’m using in the class.
Poll Everywhere was attractive because of the SMS entry capability, but I just didn’t like using it. Didn’t seem to be designed with education in mind somehow.
alanng - May 8, 2012 at 12:43 pm
What does your institution think about your students being required to create and store their identities and course grade records with off-campus services that have student-facing click-thru agreements that do not promise anything like FERPA-compliant security and privacy protection?
Robert Talbert - May 8, 2012 at 4:30 pm
I’ve asked the LearnBoost people to come here and respond to that question themselves. In the meanwhile, here’s their privacy policy: https://www.learnboost.com/info/privacy/
LearnBoost - May 8, 2012 at 4:53 pm
Thanks for keeping us in the loop!
I can definitely speak to LearnBoost’s privacy settings and FERPA compliancy, but for non-education-specific tools, I would recommend reaching out or doing a bit of research to ensure that data remains secure and confidential. Within LearnBoost, student data is regulated at the teacher or school level, which is fully FERPA compliant. We store data redundantly across several of the most secure servers out there, and every LearnBoost page (even our blog!) is run behind the highest SSL security layers. We collect only the most relevant info, allowing a ton of utility with a really light-weight product. Ultimately, teachers can download or export all of their LearnBoost data in the event they’d like to save a hardcopy. As you see more innovative web-based companies filling the gaps where clunkier proprietary software used to reign, I think you’ll see a higher standard of security (just as we saw online payments become much more secure), but as always, best practice demands that we do our due diligence before entering student information anywhere on the web. Bravo! Email the LearnBoost team with any other questions – support@learnboost.comRegards,MeredithHead of Community Development@LearnBoost:disqus
wlgoffe - May 8, 2012 at 5:22 pm
Love to hear about Learning Catalytics in a future post.
LearnBoost - May 8, 2012 at 5:23 pm
Apologies for lovely Disqus formatting above :) – Meredith
alanng - May 8, 2012 at 6:09 pm
Thanks for bringing LearnBoost’s perspective in – but the question remains (for anyone considering using 3rd-party Web apps in their courses) what your *institution* thinks of it. Does the click-thru agreement facing students meet the minimum standards of your institution regarding storing and handling student data? Probably many institutions aren’t even prepared to answer that question …
Robert Talbert - May 9, 2012 at 6:20 am
I’m planning on that, once I get a bit more comfortable with the system. I’m still ironing out some classroom workflow issues (my issues, that is, not the system’s).
mitchkeller - May 14, 2012 at 3:46 am
How do your students feel about you not using the LMS? At Georgia Tech, one of the top things that undergraduates kept raising about their online educational experience was that faculty insisted on using too many different websites. They wanted to just log in to T-Square (GT’s Sakai implementation) and have the information on all of their courses available there. Until I heard such commentary, I’d always maintained my own course websites and just used the LMS for grades. Afterward, students seemed rather happy to have everything integrated in one place. I’m going to be having to make the personal website vs. blog (probably hosted on my personal domain) vs. LMS decision again in a couple of months, so I’m curious to hear what current student perceptions are.
Robert Talbert - May 14, 2012 at 12:42 pm
I don’t know for sure, but I’ll ask them. I think that having everything integrated into a single, simple portal like I have on the blog mitigates the fact that they’re going to several different websites. The problem comes in when students feel like they have to literally GO to 4-5 different sites all the time. Having one site where all the other stuff is a click away seems to make this less cognitively demanding (especially when Bb itself is cognitively demanding).
Another factor with my class is that there are several non-GVSU students who are home from their colleges for the summer and taking a class. (I have students from U of Michigan, Michigan State, Hope College, Calvin College….) They’re not used to Bb necessarily and so out approach is actually a little easier for them.