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Fortify Your Institutional H1N1 Plan with Lecture Capture: Mediasite at Washington State University Tuesday, November 10, 200911:00 – 11:45 a.m. Central Washington State University’s main campus is currently experiencing what the New York Times called perhaps the largest college outbreak of the H1N1 flu virus. More than 2,000 students report symptoms of swine flu, which has led the entire Washington State system to take measures to avoid the spread of the disease between and beyond campuses. And for WSU Spokane, which specializes in health science programs, lecture capture has become central to their pandemic and academic continuity planning. The campus began using the Mediasite webcasting platform just a year ago when its new nursing building came online. Since that time, capturing courses – both on-campus and from faculty home offices – is a key element to span the time, distance and space constraints that are dramatic factors when flu preparedness is introduced on today’s scale. Saleh Elgiadi, Director of IT Services for WSU Spokane, has agreed to share his fundamental principles and practices included in the campus’ comprehensive H1N1 and disaster recovery plans

These results strongly suggest that, like humans, Physarum doesn’t attach any intrinsic value to the options that are available to it. Instead, it compares its alternatives. Add something new into the mix, and its decisions change.

But how does Physarum make decisions at all without a brain?  The answer is deceptively simple – it does so by committee. Every plasmodium is basically a big sac of fluid, where each part rhythmically contracts and expands, pushing the fluid inside back-and-forth. The rate of the contractions depends on what neighbouring parts of the sac are doing, and by the local environment. They happen faster when the plasmodium touches something attractive like food, and they slow down when repellent things like sunlight are nearby.

It’s the ultimate in collective decision-making and it allows Physarum to perform remarkable feats of “intelligence”, including simulating Tokyo’s transport network, solving mazes, and even driving robots.

The unusual project aims to create robots that can teach English to schoolchildren here, and it is a huge undertaking. The research is supported by more than $100-million in grants, mostly from the South Korean government, and it involves more than 300 researchers, said Mr. Kim.

Forty robots will go into service for a pilot test in December, teaching at 18 elementary schools for three months to see how well they do.

“There are some problems and some accidents in hiring native speakers at the schools right now,” said the researcher. “For example, the immigration system in Korea is not good enough to examine whether the foreign visitors are clean or not, or they did some crime,” he added. “That’s the reason why the government thinks about such robot systems—they don’t have any such social problems, they don’t do the drugs.”

I actually learned something in these classes for 3 main reasons. The first reason was that the class size was small, and my interaction with my classmates and professor/teacher made the material meaningful and educational. Secondly, the essays required for these classes pushed me in my writing skills, and promoted independent research and construction of ideas through writing.

Taking the class with students who were serious and knowledgeable about their field of study made my experience educational. Sitting in a large lecture hall with 200 other students who also are taking the class just to get the requirement is not educationally stimulating.

Spending money on classes that don’t have any impact is especially hard now that tuition has gone through the roof. Requiring less classes of greater quality will help alleviate this problem and help students graduate on time.

the organizer unveiled a project that would effectively rank the rankers.

As rankings proliferate around the world, they are increasingly having a direct impact on the decisions of students, academic staff, institutions, and policy makers, but each of those groups differs in its use of rankings and the sophistication it brings to evaluating them.

IREG's principles, which emphasize clarity and openness in the purposes and goals of rankings, the design and weighting of indicators, the collection and processing of data, and the presentation of results.

A project led by the American Association of Community Colleges to develop common, voluntary standards of accountability for two-year institutions is moving forward, and specific performance measures are being developed, an official at the association said.

financed by the Lumina Foundation for Education and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is now its second phase

The project's advocates have begun pushing a public-relations campaign to build support for the accountability effort among colleges.