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This may sound a little over the top, but a CareerBuilder.com survey found that 45 percent of employers use social networking sites to research job candidates (more than double from the year before). Industries that specialize in technology and sensitive information are most likely to screen job candidates via social networking sites or online search engines. If you’re indiscreet on Facebook, who’s to say you can hold your tongue about Top-Secret government programs?

Although it is just one degree at one university, the prospect of a prestigious low-cost degree program has generated great interest. Some educators think the leap from individual noncredit courses to full degree programs could signal the next phase in the evolution of MOOCs — and bring real change to higher education.

Despite increasing rates of enrollment in online colleges, the most recent studies show that faculty in all fields has mixed feelings about the quality of online courses and online teaching. This has been a consistent trend for several years

48% of faculty who have taught online thought that online courses were inferior to on-the-ground courses, and only 37.2% thought that online and face-to-face courses were equivalent in quality and outcomes.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, more than 50% of college faculty consistently report that institutional support for teaching and developing online courses is below average

Classroom Behavior Your behavior in class, or the manner in which you conduct yourself, is also an ethical choice. One of the most common set of rules for interactions within a technologically-enabled environment is called Netiquette, which is important because “the distance imposed by computer networks disrupts our interactions so that people may become more vocal (mostly a good thing), but also more careless.” What I’ve noticed during class discussions is that students may forget that their classmates are people and can read, interpret, and misinterpret what has been posted. That’s why I remind students to read their messages aloud before posting them and consider both the content and possible tone of the messages. I also encourage students to find specific elements of their peers’ responses to focus on when they are posting messages – in other words, keep it academic, not personal.  Another ethical choice to make, concerning your classroom behavior, is related to the issue of cyber safety, which involves how you behave or act towards others online. Cyber safety for students “includes the language they use and the things they say, how they treat others, respecting people's property (e.g. copyright) and visiting appropriate websites.” Also related to cyber safety is cyber bullying. Forms of cyber bullying can include: •    “Insulting: Posting or spreading false information about a person that will cause harm to that person or that person’s reputation. •    Targeting: Singling someone out and inviting others to attack or make fun of her or him. •    Excluding: Pressuring others to exclude someone from a community (either online or offline). •    Harassment: Repeatedly sending someone nasty, mean and insulting messages.” It is your responsibility as a student to act ethically in your class. Instructors know the importance of monitoring online interactions to ensure that students have a safe classroom environment to work in. For example, if I observe a message within the discussion board that may be perceived as threatening or hostile, I’ll address it right away with that student and should the problem continue I can file a Student Code of Conduct violation with the school.

took a rare stance against grade inflation in 2004, and publicly announced a policy designed to curb it. The policy states that A's should account for less than 35 percent of the grades for undergraduate courses and less than 55 percent of grades for junior and senior independent work

To date, the administration has not taken steps to strictly enforce these guidelines, instead opting to rely on departments to apply them

nearly constant in the Natural Science departments, which were typically at or near the 35% guideline

Wikipedia and other social networking sites provide a space or platform upon which all kinds of activities can flourish, with the idea of a platform transcending any particular technology or application and referring to either virtual or physical worlds. Collaboration among many users upon such a platform often produces unplanned and emergent

results—results frequently unattainable in a command-and-control management setting

the logic of commons-based peer production, and the logic of platform management transform the idea of the university and the very activities—teaching and learning, research, and publishing—that lie at the heart of this enterprise