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"Several weeks ago the University of Florida Online program opened for the Spring 2014 semester, accepting 600 transfer students, and the new program will accept Freshmen starting August 2014. This announcement comes just 2 years after the Florida legislature commissioned a study from the Parthenon Group on how to best leverage online programs in the state, and this program is probably one of the highest profile new online programs in the US within the past few years (along with California's online initiative, Open SUNY, SJSU / Udacity and GaTech / Udacity)."

"The University of Florida made an unusual offer to more than 3,000 high-school students who would otherwise have been rejected for admission: Pass two semesters of online coursework, and then you can enroll on the campus. But less than 10 percent of them took the offer. Joseph Glover, the provost, defended the new option, called the Pathway to Campus Enrollment, or PACE, saying it hadn't been well explained. "This year, now that the program is in place and there is time to advertise and explain what it is all about, we hope to get a better response," he told The Gainesville Sun. Pathway builds on UF Online, the online-only undergraduate program that state legislators pushed for about two years ago."

"Florida Virtual Campus is pleased to announce Florida's first Open Educational Resources Summit. Hear from Cable Green, director of Open Education and other national and campus leaders involved in defining and driving OER strategy and initiatives."

"To nudge students toward job-friendly degrees, the governor's task force on higher education suggested recently that university tuition rates be frozen for three years for majors in "strategic areas," which would vary depending on supply and demand. An undergraduate student would pay less for a degree in engineering or biotechnology - whose classes are among the most expensive for universities - than for a degree in history or psychology."

"Systemwide, roughly 71,000 students, or 21 percent, complete their undergraduate and graduate degrees completely or partially online, a number that grows each year as the paradigm of higher education evolves from four years in a bricks-and-mortar classroom to an education available nearly anywhere on the planet."

"The same is true in the digital world. Gregory Ulmer, a theorist at the University of Florida coined the term electracy to describe this broader notion of digital literacy. At universities we are all more aware now of the growing significance of digital literacy, as we are seeing a widespread transition from print to digital and an accompanying transformation of teaching and learning practices."

"Thirty-five" was the answer to the following question posed to a marketing agency's hiring manager: "What is the minimum Klout score a college student can have and still be considered for an internship at your firm?" I immediately went into a state of shock - Shock that Klout has gone mainstream so quickly, and shock because my digital marketing student's Klout scores typically range from 15 to 25. As an instructor, I had to ask myself: "Am I doing everything I could to prepare my students for the real world workplace?"

"A POLITICO investigation has found that Pearson stands to make tens of millions in taxpayer dollars and cuts in student tuition from deals arranged without competitive bids in states from Florida to Texas. The review also found Pearson's contracts set forth specific performance targets - but don't penalize the company when it fails to meet those standards. And in the higher ed realm, the contracts give Pearson extensive access to personal student data, with few constraints on how it is used."

"The program kicks off today with two curriculums, Business or Supply Chain Management for associate and bachelor's degrees with additional curriculums to follow at three non-profit universities: University of Florida which is ranked #17 in the nation for its business school by U.S. News and World Report, Brandman University and Bellevue University. The five-year long program will include what Carlson calls "having a personal coach for education" from the application process up through graduation."

"Would you rather spend four years plodding toward a diploma, or networking with Wall Street CEOs and diplomats as a member at US president Donald Trump's exclusive "Winter White House" resort in Florida? For some people, the latter would be far cheaper."

"It was an interesting conference, with several excellent speakers. One message became clear. In the words of Mark Valenti of the Sextant Group in UB's June edition of its magazine: "we're basically seeing  the beginning of the end of the lecture hall.' In essence, new technology, hybrid learning and the need to engage students and develop core '21st century skills' are leading some institutional leaders to rethink the classroom and the way it's used - and about time."

"By outsourcing digital education services -- by partnering with a massive open online course provider, for example -- Hilton and Wheeler argue that universities "shift control and economic power to entities outside of academia that develop and own technologies and services at scale." As a result, "long held faculty and student rights regarding control of intellectual property and privacy might no longer be decided in the academy.""

"To be top 10, you have got to be global," Elias Eldayrie, UF's vice president and CIO for Information Technologies, recently told the board of trustees. "You need to connect." Creating Unizin with Indiana University, the University of Michigan and Colorado State University was a year in the making, Eldayrie said.