EDUC 439/639 Social Networking - Fall 2012

"we cannot be dependent on Facebook's benevolence for protection in a world where so much of our daily activities are codified into data and collected by third parties. Indeed, we should be skeptical of Facebook's own efforts to use artificial intelligence to monitor user data for what it deems dangerous content. To continue down this path is to passively accept a surveillance society and sacrifice the liberty that enables a democracy to flourish."

"Point Loma began offering some of its 4,500 students money to pay for college in exchange for a percentage of their future earnings. The model, known as an income share agreement, requires colleges and students to take a chance on each other, a shared responsibility that attracted Point Loma."

"Lessons learned from campuses nationwide have informed an approach to compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act during the process of online course design. Providing multiple ways for students to gain knowledge, demonstrate knowledge, and interact goes a long way toward making a course accessible to all students, including those with disabilities. Accessibility efforts benefit not only students with disabilities but also students who are English language learners and those working in noisy or quiet environments."

"The number of distance education students grew by 5.6% from Fall 2015 to Fall 2016 to reach 6,359,121 who are taking at least one distance course, representing 31.6% of all students."

"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 average cost for a textbook bundle in the report sample was $157, versus $134 for a new textbook from the college bookstore or $56 for a used textbook from Amazon. The report calculated that by switching from publisher textbooks to open educational resources from organizations like OpenStax, the 40 colleges in the sample could save students up to $13 million per semester for these 10 courses."

"we will walk you through the features of some of the interactive video tools that can take learning experience to a different level. Also we have included, at the end, a feature comparison table for the various tools."

"In-depth ideas about the behavior of students in the course and predicts future trends. Research-based on algorithms to calculate measures; for instance, entries to the platform, staying in a course, social connections, forum discussions, linguistic analysis of the use of the words that students say, and comparative analysis of courses. Ideas about the problems of the course so that instructors they can take immediate action."

"On average, faculty participants reported working 61 hours per week - more than 50 percent over the traditional 40-hour work week. They worked 10 hours per day Monday to Friday and about that much on Saturday and Sunday combined. Perhaps surprisingly, full professors reported working slightly longer hours both during the week and on weekends than associate and assistant professors, as well as chairs."

"Unpaywall is a service that indexes open access repositories, university, government and scholarly society archives, and other sources that make articles available with authorization from the rightsholders and journals -- about 47% of the articles that its users seek."

"Adobe Software Engineer Pete De Vasto demonstrates how users can open and navigate through PDF files using accessibility tools."

"There are many ways to apply accessibility and universal design principles to improve learning experiences for all."

""I thought it was an opportunity for the university to take on a new field and maybe build a franchise in this area," said David Yermack, a finance professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, of his decision to offer a digital-currency class in 2014. Today, he says, "the thing has really taken on a life of its own.""

"Student debt in the U.S. has reached record levels, making higher education out of reach for many people. In New York City, a program called ASAP is gaining national attention for helping students earn a college degree and escape the burden of loans they would struggle to repay."

"A handbook for faculty interested in practicing open pedagogy by involving students in the making of open textbooks, ancillary materials, or other Open Educational Resources. This is a first edition, compiled by Rebus Community, and we welcome feedback and ideas to expand the text."

"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."

"Understanding how time "works" in online courses can be a challenge for instructors: How do I determine the total time on task expected of students? How can I calculate the time students will need to complete course work? What should students be doing to accomplish course goals and learning outcomes? What should I be doing with my time as online instructor?  "

"This month's episode of the Pulse podcast presents the keynote address from Bryan Alexander at this month's USciences eLearning 3.0 Conference. The talk was entitled "Academia Beyond Millennials: The Next Generation of Higher Education," and examined topics such as globalization, defunding of public universities and the role of artificial intelligence."

"Mozilla's Core Web Literacy Curriculum consists of Core Activities aligned with the Web Literacy Map to provide learners with a basic understanding of the web and web technologies, and with confidence and satisfaction to read - how we explore the web, write - how we build the web, and participate - how we connect on the web. "