With all of the talk about the unreasonably high price of college textbooks, the unfulfilled potential of open educational resources (OER), and student difficulty in paying for course materials, it is surprising how little is understood about student textbook expenses. The following two quotes illustrate the most common problem. Atlantic: “According to a recent College Board […]
Austin Community College’s ACCelerator: Big bet on emporium approach with no pilots
While at SXSWedu, I was able to visit Austin Community College’s ACCelerator lab, which got a fair bit of publicity over the past month. While the centerpiece of ACCelerator usage is for developental math, the 600+ workstation facility spread over 32,000 square feet also supports Tutoring in a variety of subjects, First year experience, Group advising, Academic Coaching, Adult Education, Continuing […]
Our Policy on Cookies and Tracking
In the wake of the Pearson social media monitoring controversy, edubloggers like Audrey Watters and D’arcy Norman have announced their policies regarding code that can potentially track users on their blogs. This is a good idea, so we are following their example. We use Google Analytics and WordPress analytics on both e-Literate and e-Literate TV. […]
Back To The Future: Looking at LMS forecasts from 2011 – 2014
At today’s Learning Analytics and Knowledge 2015 conference (#LAK15), Charles Severance (aka Dr. Chuck) gave the morning keynote organized around the theme of going back in time to see what people (myself and Richard Katz primarily) were forecasting for education. By looking at the reality of 2015, we can see which forecasts were on track […]
Blackboard Brain Drain: One third of executive team leaves in past 3 months
In August 2013 Michael described Ray Henderson’s departure from an operational role at Blackboard. As of the end of 2014, Ray is no longer on the board of directors at Blackboard either. He is focusing on his board activity (including In The Telling, our partner for e-Literate TV) and helping with other ed tech companies. […]
Rutgers and ProctorTrack Fiasco: Impact of listening to regulations but not to students
If you want to observe the unfolding impact of an institution ignoring the impact of policy decisions on students, watch the situation at Rutgers University. If you want to see the power of a single student saying “enough is enough”, go thank Betsy Chao and sign her petition. The current situation is that students are […]
Slides and Follow-up From Faculty Development Workshop at Aurora University
Today I facilitated a faculty development workshop at Aurora University, sponsored by the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and the IT Department. I always enjoy sessions like this, particularly with the ability to focus our discussions squarely on technology in support of teaching and learning. The session was titled “Emerging Trends in Educational Technology […]