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By now just about everyone has gotten the message that the adjunctification of higher education is unsustainable. Yet there's no apparent sense of urgency by administrators to address the problem, as academe continues to "react" -- rather than thoughtfully "respond" -- to the changing makeup of the faculty and the factors driving it, argues a new book from Adrianna Kezar, founder of the Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty and Student Success at the University of Southern California.

Dive Brief: Implementing new technologies can yield challenges for students, faculty and other campus users that are not accustomed to these tools, especially if instruction on their use is "nebulous and frustrating," writes Eric Stoller, a student affairs and technology blogger for Inside Higher Ed. Stoller suggests institutions provide quality customer service around digital services, and pressure "old-guard" technology companies to provide systems that meet or exceed users' expectations or aligning themselves with "solutions/providers with less built-in corporate rigidity." He also advises that institutions' marketing teams and communications offices make sure that digital services like campus mobile apps make sense for their students' preferred user experiences, so that the technologies enhance the overall student experience and boost branding and recruitment efforts.

A Call to Reform Undergraduate Education Major study by American Academy of Arts and Sciences seeks change in curriculum and assessment, commitment to funding public higher education, new ideas about the faculty role, and more.

hen it comes to facilitating online classroom engagement, discussion boards are a great go-to. They're practically omnipresent; a tool used in every virtual classroom in every college curriculum. Ideally, the boards not only fuel student engagement, but they also facilitate critical thinking and a sense of community in online environments.