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Turn Your Laptop Into an Earthquake Sensor | Comment
Writing Students and Professors Fight to Keep Theses From Being Freely Available Online | Comment [4]
Educause Issues Statement on RIAA's Methods of Catching Music Pirates | Comment
ABC News to Open 5 University News Bureaus | Comment [10]
How a Lawsuit Over Electronic Reserves Could Affect Colleges | Comment [5]
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May 9, 2008
Proposed State Laws Would Link Piracy-Protection Requirements at College to Number of Takedown Notices
College leaders are nervously watching entertainment-industry groups this week.
As a free article in The Chronicle today notes, college technology officials meeting at a policy conference this week described a move in several state legislatures to pass laws that would force colleges to police their networks for illegal trading of music and video files and to buy software to stem the problem. Officials said the laws were backed by the Recording Industry Association of America and other entertainment-industry groups. But a spokeswoman for the RIAA would neither confirm nor deny that the group is singling out state legislatures.
One of the laws, which was recently enacted in Tennessee, requires colleges that have received 50 or more infringement notices in the past year to “reasonably attempt” to prevent infringement over their networks.
Just as these new measures that use the number of notifications as a trigger are beginning to appear, the RIAA and other groups have suddenly increased the number of notification letters they’re sending to colleges.
In an interview with The Chronicle this week, Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, insisted there is no connection between the recent spike in notification letters and the group’s lobbying efforts.
“There’s just no connection to anything that’s happening in Congress, in the courts, or anything else,” Mr. Sherman said. He added that the increase in notifications did not mean that there had been a sudden rise in campus piracy. “We’re constantly asking our vendor to improve performance,” of its software that scans for copyright violations online, Mr. Sherman said. “They just completed work on an upgrade and, poof, it just happened.”
Some college officials remain skeptical, and are redoubling their efforts to convince state and federal lawmakers not to back the proposed legislative measures. —Andrea L. Foster and Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Friday May 9, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [2]May 8, 2008
Educause Survey: Top 10 IT Issues in Higher Education
Educause, the higher-education-technology consortium, released the results yesterday of its 2008 survey on the top IT issues in higher education.
The top-10 issues “most important for… institutions to resolve for strategic success” are:
1) Security
2) Administrative/ERP Information Systems
3) Funding IT
4) Infrastructure
5) Identity/Access Management
6) Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity
7) Governance, Organization, and Leadership
8) Change Management
9) E-Learning/Distributed Teaching and Learning
10) Staffing/HR Management/Training
Since 2003, the top three issues issues have been, in various rankings, security, administrative/ERP information systems, and funding IT. This year was the first time that “change management” appeared in the top-10 list, however.
Click here to find resources relating to each of these issues and an additional breakdown of the survey results.—Catherine Rampell
Posted on Thursday May 8, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [3]April 30, 2008
Why Are Colleges Suddenly Getting More Alerts About Campus Piracy?
Tech officials at colleges across the country say they’ve seen a spike in the number of complaints they’ve received from the Recording Industry Association of America. Each complaint says that a specific song or movie is being illegally traded by a computer user on a particular campus.
For instance, George Washington University usually receives five to 10 notices a week. In the past week alone, however, the university has received 123 notices. The messages come to colleges by e-mail, with the subject line “RIAA Infringement Notification.”
But an industry-group official told The Chronicle that the group has not changed its detection methods in any significant way. Are college students suddenly going on a downloading binge? Is something else going on? —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Wednesday April 30, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [11]April 17, 2008
Company Defends Selling Blog Space at '.edu' Domain
A free article in The Chronicle today describes a controversy over an online college selling space on its .edu domain to just about any blogger who will pay $50 per month. Critics say the practice waters down the value of .edu Internet addresses, which are supposed to be reserved for accredited educational institutions.
The online college, the Pickering Institute, and the Internet company it is working with, LinkAdage, did not return calls and e-mail messages from The Chronicle. But John Lessnau, an official for LinkAdage, posted a comment on the Conversation Marketing blog today with a defense of the practice:
“What I am helping PI.edu do is create a blog community with a strong educational slant,” he wrote. “Our TOS requires us to be very strict as to the quality of our member blogs – and yes, the TOS will be enforced,” he added, referring the the “terms of service” that says the company will turn away blogs offering porn, online gambling, or misleading information. “Rest assured, blogs that are not up to standard will be given a warning, and deleted and refunded if they do not meet our TOS.”
Some have argued that the Pickering Institute should not even have a .edu address, since it is apparently not accredited by a qualified educational organization (its founders did not respond to a request for comment for this story). But officials for Educause, which manages .edu registrations, said that the institute received its approval for a .edu address back before the current rules were strictly enforced, and such institutions were grandfathered in and are allowed to keep their addresses. —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Thursday April 17, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [5]April 14, 2008
New School for New Media at DePaul U.
Today DePaul University has a School of Computer Science, Telecommunications and Information Systems. Tomorrow it will be gone, replaced by the College of Computing and Digital Media.
David Miller, dean of the old school, will be the dean of the new college. So what’s new, besides the name? The university announced that the college will be split into two parts. One, the School of Computing, will focus on traditional IT subjects, while the other, the School of Cinema and Interactive Media, will feature courses in digital cinema, computer games development, and interactive media.
“The new structure provides a platform for the digital arts majors, which have seen phenomenal growth,” said Mr. Miller in a statement, “while complementing our existing, outstanding computing program.”
For instance, the university notes that its digital cinema program, which began four years ago, is now the largest undergraduate major at the college, and has increased nearly 30 percent since last year.—Josh Fischman
Posted on Monday April 14, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [1]April 11, 2008
Notes From an Online College Fair
Check out a recent New York Times essay on a parent’s experience with CollegeWeekLive.com, a virtual college fair where students and parents chat live with admissions officers from 200 institutions.
One thing Michelle Slatalla, the essay’s author, seemed to miss about going to a real (offline) college fair was the ability to follow the crowd to the “most selective” institutions: “here there was no way to gauge whether more attendees were flocking to Bryn Mawr College or Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa.”
The next CollegeWeekLive fair, which is free, is scheduled for the fall.—Catherine Rampell
Posted on Friday April 11, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [1]April 8, 2008
Advanced Placement Computer-Science Course Hangs On
The College Board is eliminating only one Advanced Placement computer-science course after the 2008-9 academic year, the U.S. Association for Computing Machinery is telling its membership. The group, made up of computer scientists in academe, government, and industry, says people may have been misled by a recent Washington Post article that stated that the College Board is doing away with AP Computer Science AB. That’s true, but the more popular AP Computer Science A will survive.
The computing group posted on its blog a recent e-mail message from the College Board saying that it has an “intensified commitment to AP Computer Science A.” The AB course is more comprehensive than the A course, and includes an analysis of algorithms, data structures, and data abstraction.
The computing group speculates that factors other than declining participation may have led to the College Board’s decision to eliminate AP Computer Science AB. “With federal policy focused on testing in reading and math,” the group states, “core courses receive many more resources and attention than electives.” —Andrea L. Foster
Posted on Tuesday April 8, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [3]March 28, 2008
A Hostage Incident at U. of Louisville Provides Lessons in Emergency Response
Less than a half an hour after police at the U. of Louisville discovered that a woman was holding someone hostage at a university health center yesterday, officials sent a notification to students, professors, and staff members by e-mail, text message, and telephone.
It was one of the first times the university had used its text-messaging system, which it installed in October, and officials say that they learned at least one important lesson: make your message as crystal clear as possible.
The message read: “There is a student armed with a weapon at Student Health Services on Belknap Campus. Please avoid the area. THIS IS NOT A TEST”
Dennis K. Sullivan, assistant director of environmental health and safety at the university, said some people on the medical campus at first believed that the incident was taking place there. The medical campus, which also has a health center, is located a few miles away from the main campus, where the trouble occurred.
“In hindsight it should have read ‘Belknap campus health services center’” so that the location was clearer, said Mr. Sullivan.
Officials had prepared a variety of messages for various types of events, but none of those scripts fit the situation that unfolded yesterday. “The one event that does occur is the one that you don’t have an e-mail message scripted for,” he said. The university’s emergency-response procedures are published online.
The text-messaging system used by the campus — made by Rave Wireless — worked well, Mr. Sullivan said. Officials of the company said that messages were delivered to all 5,689 users registered for the service in just 64 seconds, and that 97 percent of the users had valid cellphone numbers in the system.
Mr. Sullivan said he would like to get more of the 27,000 eligible people on the campus to sign up for the alert system.
“We’ve had drawings for iPods, we’ve given away radios, we’ve done a lot of things to promote it,” he said. The incident has led about 500 more people to sign up for the system since yesterday’s alert was sent. “I’d be really satisfied if we get 20,000 people.” —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Friday March 28, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [5]March 27, 2008
Colleges Bought Classroom Technology, but Are Enough Professors Using It?
A commentary article in this week’s Chronicle raises some interesting questions about the level of technology use on campus compared to how much colleges have invested in smart classrooms, course management systems, and more.
“Time after time, when I visit a campus, read an article, or talk to colleagues, I’m surprised at how low the adoption rates of technology really are,” writes Judith Tabron, who is director of faculty computing services at Hofstra University. “The trouble is that it’s going to take a long time for academe to figure out what to do with all the technology it already has — and we need time and money to do that.”
Of course, there’s pressure to adopt even newer classroom technologies, such as Web 2.0 tools. The author urges professors, academic departments, and IT staff members to do more to encourage training and experimentation in using technology in the classroom.
“Colleges may feel that they can’t afford to provide any space and time for improving teaching,” says Ms. Tabron. “They may blame faculty members, students, or even society for a lack of innovation in education — and those charges may well be fair. But colleges unwilling to plant the seeds for change shouldn’t be surprised that they grow nothing.”
Posted on Thursday March 27, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [55]Campuses Turn to Sirens as Part of Upgraded Emergency Alert Systems
An informal survey on an e-mail list for college technology leaders this week confirmed a growing interest in installing sirens on college campuses to enhance emergency-notification systems. A free Chronicle article this week found that more than a dozen colleges have installed such systems in the past year.
The quick survey of members of an Educause e-mail list identified at least 14 campuses that have outdoor siren systems, most of which can also deliver spoken messages that can be heard over a wide area of campus. Another nine colleges said they are in the process of setting up a siren system. Two colleges said they were not interested — one because the college is in an urban area where officials deemed it would not be effective, and another that said it is situated in a residential area.
As of the fall of 2007, about 23 percent of campuses said they had a siren system, according to the Campus Computing Project, an annual survey of how colleges use information technology. But the number of campuses with sirens seems to have grown since then, as colleges have reviewed their emergency-notification strategies in the wake of the deadly shootings at Virginia Tech last spring. That tragedy, in which a student killed 32 people before committing suicide, led many administrators to imagine how they would communicate with their diverse mix of students, professors, and staff members if a similar tragedy took place on their campuses.
One official who answered the e-mail survey this week warned that the outdoor siren systems do not do a good job of getting a message to people inside of buildings, since the sound does not always carry clearly into buildings. And many officials interviewed by The Chronicle this month said that sirens should be part of a broader alert strategy that includes other technologies — including text-message systems and old-fashioned telephone hotlines for emergencies.
Does your campus have a siren system? Are they worth the cost? —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Thursday March 27, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [4]