Group items tagged

"these days when we say "textbook" we seldom mean textbook. We mean course materials. As the Vox article makes clear, the book is not always (not usually?) the hideously expensive part of the deal - the online access codes and other ancillary materials are. Certainly, there are amazingly expensive books out there that get assigned in classes (I hear law books are hundreds of dollars, I know some economics books are, some science books, etc. Even in Literature, a relatively inexpensive field, big anthologies can be pricey). But often - and maybe even usually - when we complain about the cost of books, we're complaining about the cost of supplemental media, password-protected websites, and other items that may include text but are certainly not books. The term "Open Educational Resources" recognizes this. It's a strange habit of language that has kept us from parallelism, though: What OERs oppose is not textbooks, but CERs, Closed Educational Resources."

"The National Academy of Education (NAEd) released a new report on Big Data in Education: Balancing the Benefits of Educational Research and Student Privacy. The report addresses a fundamental tension of how to reap the educational benefits that access to comprehensive "big" data provides while ensuring student privacy."

"The Copyright Advisory Network (CAN) exists to help librarians understand copyright law and appreciate the important role that they can play in serving the public "to advance the progress of science and the useful arts." We use the Network to respond to copyright questions posed by librarians, but perhaps-more importantly, help librarians learn about copyright from a broader perspective, primarily its impact on information policy issues fundamental to our profession, including free expression, equitable access to information, censorship, and intellectual freedom."

"The evaluation of the factors leading to the digital divide can be summarised as the gap between 1) older generation and the digital natives, 2) level of education, and 3) high income - low income groups. These factors are further influenced by the geographical location Rural-urban divide, and Governmental policies. All these factors determine the level of skills of an individual and the quality of access of ICTs which determines their position in the digital divide."

"Knewton today announced the launch of Alta, the company's fully integrated adaptive learning courseware for higher education. Available at $44 per course for two years of access, Alta delivers an affordable and impactful teaching and learning experience that combines Knewton's adaptive learning technology with high-quality openly available content."

"The echo chamber doesn't need any bad connectivity to function. Limbaugh's followers have full access to outside sources of information. According to Jamieson and Cappella's data, Limbaugh's followers regularly read - but do not accept - mainstream and liberal news sources. They are isolated, not by selective exposure, but by changes in who they accept as authorities, experts and trusted sources. They hear, but dismiss, outside voices. Their worldview can survive exposure to those outside voices because their belief system has prepared them for such intellectual onslaught."

"Not everyone will successfully navigate the shifting jobs market. Those most at risk of technological disruption are men in blue-collar jobs, many of whom reject taking less "masculine" roles in fast-growing areas such as health care. But to keep the numbers of those left behind to a minimum, all adults must have access to flexible, affordable training. The 19th and 20th centuries saw stunning advances in education. That should be the scale of the ambition today."

"Zapps are apps that you can use within the Zoom platform to help improve productivity and create more engaging experiences. No more switching between multiple applications on your desktop. Now you can quickly navigate to apps within the Zoom interface to streamline permissions, grant document accessibility, and collaborate on screen."

Vol 14, No 2 (2013)

"The unpopularity of personal data encryption isn't a problem in itself but a symptom of a bigger issue: The increasingly social, distributed and proscriptive nature of computing means that if you want to use the latest software and services you simply cannot keep your personal data to yourself."

"Between 2006-07 and 2011-12, average published tuition and fees at public four-year colleges and universities increased by about $1,800 in 2011 dollars, an annual rate of growth of 5.1% beyond inflation. The average net tuition and fees in-state students pay after taking grant aid from all sources and federal education tax credits and deductions into consideration increased by about $170 in 2011 dollars, an annual rate of growth of 1.4% beyond inflation."

Nancy and I decided to organize the special issue around "socially mediated publicness," both because we find that topic to be of great interest and because we felt like there was something fun about talking about publicness in truly public form. We weren't sure what the response to our call would be, but were overwhelmed with phenomenal submissions and had to reject many interesting articles.

The rising costs of postsecondary education present challenges to maintaining college affordability. Textbooks are an important factor students need to consider when calculating the overall cost of attending college. In an effort to ensure that faculty and students have sufficient information about textbooks, Congress included requirements in HEOA concerning publisher and school disclosures, as well as publisher provision of individual course materials. HEOA directed GAO to examine the implementation of the new textbook provisions.

Captioning YouTube Videos

There are 3 categories of audio or video recommendations that I found. Each had slightly different requirements for faculties or staffs: Real time meetings or online courses in real time. Here the recommendations are mainly to contact the Disability Resource Office well ahead of the need to set up a real time captioning service if there is an individual who needs it, or if it will be archived online for more than one term. There is also the important guidance to set it up and test it in the same environment before it will be used. Audio or video materials that faculty or staff produce and upload onto the institutional web (this includes courses). The prevailing wisdom is that if the faculty produce it themselves, they should also take responsibility for captioning; whether they do it themselves or not. Considering how easily this can be done in YouTube with a transcript and the synch captions feature, it is probably not too high a bar for someone who has the sophistication of producing the video in the first place. Of course it requires that a transcript is available or produced. Audio or video materials that faculty or staff find for use (e.g., link or upload materials from other sources). On this point there seem to be differences across institutions around what faculty and staff members should do. The section below details these differences.

"University officials say the higher tuition rates for online courses are the result of expensive infrastructure and the costs for designing the courses, which often involve partnerships or contracts with outside online education providers.   Nassirian said the infrastructure costs make it difficult to create online classes cheaply on a small scale."

"For a student who is visually impaired, alt-text descriptions are very important pieces of information. And when these descriptions are well-written, they can provide information just as effectively as the image they describe. So what makes an alt-text description effective? Here are five important characteristics they share:"