Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4

Category: University

  • Supply and Demand

    Here is a shocking idea. People get college degrees because graduates are valued. This leads to parents sending more kids to college who get degrees. Eventually higher education reaches the point where the overabundance of graduates decreases the value of a degree. Weak students have been admitted for years. Universities struggle to identify who will…

  • Students First

    Yesterday Gina, a coworker, joined me for lunch. She asked about where GeorgiaVIEW‘s attention is focussed since we recently completed our upgrade to Blackboard Learning System Vista Enterprise 8. She pointed out students are the most affected by and most important constituent for any decisions we make. Yet the student point of view is almost…

  • Turnitin.com

    I’m surprised I have not blogged here about the student lawsuit against Turnitin.com? An anti-plagiarism service, Turnitin has students or faculty members upload papers into the database. By comparing new papers to the database, it gives ratings as to whether it is likely a student plagiarized. Now the search goes out for any student who…

  • Information Should Be Free

    Mark Guzdial makes the point teachers add value to the learning process. Normally, I would agree. However, I got hung up on a misquote from a Walter Isaacson article How to Save Your Newspaper in TIME offering micropayments as the solution to newspapers finding a working model to survive since advertisements are not the right one. Mark said it…

  • Most Wired Teacher

    “Who is the most wired teacher at your college?” (A Wired Way to Rate Professors—and to Connect Teachers) Although the university runs workshops on how to use Blackboard, many professors are reluctant, or too busy, to sit through training sessions. Most would prefer to ask a colleague down the hall for help, said Mr. Fritz.…

  • Merge Historically Black Colleges With White?

    Retention is one of those numbers higher education leaders tend to review to determine how effectively the faculty reaches the students. Historically black colleges and universities were created because students found it difficult both to get into “neutral” colleges and graduate from them. That latter part sounds like they were created in part to solve…

  • What does a CIO do?

    I guess it depends on who you ask. Well, the CIO’s thought they were most effective as classic IT-support providers. That’s basically putting PC’s on desktops. But their managers thought that CIO’s were most effective in explaining and determining the college’s technology course into the future. Managers really want their CIO’s to be “informaticists.” Wayne…

  • UGA Pres defends speaker choice

    Judge Clarence Thomas is the perfect choice to speak at UGA’s graduation. He is from Georgia. He has a unique view of national coverage for sexual harassment scandals. So Judge Thomas shows it is possible for stupid scandals of the past to net awesome book deals.

  • Study Groups Violate Academic Integrity?

    Maybe I need to add a “What were they thinking?” category? A student created a Facebook group for chemistry students to ask peers for help. As these students already collaborate face-to-face in a study room and use official tutoring services, this was just replicating this online. The students claim to just be helping each other.…