Red Balloon Resources

"Californians Worry About Support for Higher Ed As California's public colleges and universities have faced severe budget shortfalls, many state residents have been slow to see a problem, but that may be changing. A statewide survey released by the Public Policy Institute of California found increases in the percentage of Californians who appear to see real problems. Among California residents, 74 percent of residents say the state does not provide enough money for colleges and universities, up 17 points from 57 percent in October 2007. Most Californians (68 percent) believe that spending for public higher education should be given a high or very high priority - up from 54 percent in November 2008, And 57 percent favor spending more on higher education, even at the expense of other programs."

No Time to Waste A publication of the SREB 4 Imperatives for States: 1. Set statewide priority and direction, with specific goals, for increasing the numbers of degrees and certificates - including raising accountability for system and institutional leaders and setting measures to assess credential completion, among other actions. 2. Increase access and enrollment in postsecondary education even more, by improving college affordability, students' college readiness, and drawing more adults to postsecondary study. 3. Increase the numbers of credentials earned by students in all colleges and universities through targeted institutional actions- building campus cultures that make completion the first priority and institutionalizing a series of actions that guide students more directly to a credential. 4. Increase productivity and cost-efficiency in degree completion ─ by introducing strategies that reduce excess credits, streamline college-transfer systems, and expect timely degree completion at lower costs.

"In 5 States, Public Reluctance to Hike Taxes for Higher Ed A new poll from the Pew Center on the States and the Public Policy Institute of California finds that the public is much less likely to back tax increases for higher education than it is for elementary and secondary education. The poll looked at five states: Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois and New York. In all five states, more than 60 percent of voters said that they would back tax increases for elementary and secondary education, and majorities said that they would do so for health and human services. For higher education, support topped 40 percent in all five states, but did not hit a majority in any of them."

"July 2, 2009 Online-Education Study Reaffirms Value of Good Teaching, Experts Say By David Glenn In a much-debated 1983 essay on distance learning, Richard E. Clark, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Southern California, argued that it was beside the point to ask whether distance education is better or worse than the traditional classroom. The medium isn't the crucial variable, Mr. Clark wrote. What is important is to look at the effectiveness of specific instructional strategies, regardless of how those strategies are delivered. Last week, more than 25 years after Mr. Clark's provocation, the U.S. Department of Education released a report that, at least at first glance, carries a strong message about the medium: Students learn more effectively in online settings. Most powerful of all appear to be "blended" courses that offer both face-to-face and online elements. Previous research has generally found that online and offline courses are equally effective. But even though the report, which synthesized data from several dozen high-quality studies, was framed and publicized as a circuit board-versus-chalkboard showdown, its authors do not view themselves as having flouted Mr. Clark's principles. On the contrary: Mr. Clark served as a technical adviser to the project, and the report's lead author says that Mr. Clark's basic insights are correct. "This report should not be interpreted as saying that one medium is better than another," says Barbara Means, a director of the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International, a California research firm that conducted the project under contract with the Education Department. "This should not be interpreted as saying that computers are better than professors." Instead, Ms. Means says, the study offers evidence that particular kinds of online instructional techniques are effective-and some of those techniques, she suggests, could theoretically be imported into old-fas

"Searching For Better Research Habits September 29, 2010 NEW YORK CITY -- Should colleges teach students how to be better Googlers? Educators who see the popular search engine as antithetical to good research might cringe at the thought of endorsing it to students. But they might not cringe nearly as hard as did attendees of the 2010 Ithaka Sustainable Scholarship Conference when Andrew Asher showed them what happens when students do not learn how to use Google properly. "Students do not have adequate information literacy skills when they come to college, and this goes for even high-achieving students," said Asher, the lead research anthropologist at the Enthographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries (ERIAL) Project, which recently studied the search habits of more than 600 Illinois students spanning a range of institutions and demographic groups. "And they're not getting adequate training as they're going through the curriculum," he said. Asher moved swiftly through a few slides featuring excerpts from interviews with students, each eliciting both chuckles and gasps from the audience of librarians and technologists. "I'm just trusting Google to know what are the good resources," responded one sophomore biology student. "Of all the students that I interviewed, not a single one of them could give an adequate conceptual definition of how Google returns results," said Asher. Not even those "who should know better," like computer science students. The word "magic" came up a lot, he noted. Asher pulled quotes from other students evidencing how the expectations and ignorances bred by habitual, unthinking use of Google had affected how students use other search engines, such as those built into the scholarly archive JSTOR. The students in the ERIAL sample seemed oblivious to the logic of search or how to generate or parse search results with much patience or intelligence. "I just throw up whatever I want into the search box and

"MBS expands into online marketplace By Victoria Guida Oct 1, 2010 Dennis Flanagan, CEO of MBS Direct, recently launched Xplana, an online student learning platform that helps students manage their academic lives through social networking, study groups and e-textbooks. Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other online resources have transformed the way students receive information. MBS Textbook Exchange, eying the exodus from print to digital, is evolving to keep up with the technological transformation. This summer, MBS launched an online social learning platform called Xplana that strives to connect Internet resources in a way that makes learning easier and more interactive for students. The company has since made the case that the new website is the way of the future on college campuses. "We began looking at the fact that learning was evolving in a lot of different ways," said Dennis Flanagan, CEO of MBS Direct and Xplana (pronounced ex plah' nah). "The traditional print book has always been one of the primary sources of learning, with the teacher standing up in front of the classroom. The Internet kind of changed that whole process. You don't necessarily look in a book to find information." MBS, which leads the textbook industry in wholesale production, acquired Xplana last October as a strategic move to keep up with the times, said Rob Reynolds, founder of Xplana."

"Call for 'Consumer Revolution' in Britain November 18, 2010 British students plan to launch a "consumer revolution" against a sector they see as unprepared for the consequences of marketization and high fees. The National Union of Students has demanded that sector-owned quasi-government entities be replaced by tough new regulators with the power to protect students from "collusion" on fee levels and to impose "genuine penalties" for malpractice and maladministration. With students saying that they have been let down by politicians and the "deafening silence" of most vice chancellors on the issue of the cuts facing the academy, Aaron Porter, the NUS president, said the union had no choice but to "completely change" its approach."