e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: SUNY

  • Some SUNY Trivia

    Here are some interesting facts about my new employer:

    • The total number of students, 413,000, is pretty close to the total poplulation of the European country Luxembourg, making SUNY the largest state university system in the country.
    • That 413,000-person student body includes 40 percent of all New York State high school graduates and roughly 37 percent of the state’s entire higher education student population.
    • Despite the fact that New York has one of the highest costs of living in the Union, SUNY has the 13th cheapest cost of state university tuition, i.e., 37 out of 50 state universities are more expensive than SUNY.
    • The per-pupil cost of education exceeds in-state tuition, which means that the New York state taxpayers partially subsidize the education of every in-state student.
    • One of the reasons that it’s worthwhile for New York state taxpayers to subsidize SUNY education is because, for every state dollar received, SUNY generates $8 in total spending in NYS. For example, SUNY estimates that it had a $17.6 billion total economic impact in 2003.

    Pretty impressive, huh?

  • Experience as a Distance Learning Teacher Makes You a Better Classroom Teacher

    According to a faculty satisfaction study [DOC] conducted by SLN, a whopping 85% of their faculty reported that their experience as online teachers “will have a positive effect on their classroom instruction.”

    Here is their explanation for their findings: (more…)

  • Research at the SUNY Learning Network

    One of the things that I love about the program here at SUNY is that staff has integrated a well-oiled research machine right into the daily operations. They have a growing theoretical/pedagogical framework from which they are building. Apparently, each year they pose hypotheses based on that framework. They construct and conduct faculty and student surveys at the end of every semester to test their hypotheses. And then they take the results of their research and roll them back into the next year’s faculty training. Very slick.

    I haven’t had a chance to give their research papers my full attention yet, but once I do I will blog about what I’m learning from them. In the meantime, you can read them yourself here.

  • Search, Copyright, and Course Pack Affordances

    I’m still very much interested in the idea of creating a system that enables professors to assemble course packs out of Open Access or, better yet, Creative Commons-licensed content. But my idea is broadening somewhat based on what I’m learning at my new job. (more…)

  • Learning Activity Management Systems

    SUNY has a home-grown Lotus-Notes-based learning management system that has some truly remarkable features. I’ll be posting about some of these innovations over the coming weeks as I get to know the system better. What I want to focus on in this post, though, is a feature that I have only ever heard of one other LMS providing in a meaningful way, which is providing a fundamental course organization structure (i.e., a user interface to the course) that focuses on the temporal sequence of learning activities rather than the more typical interface that simply organizes the course based on types of functionality and content resources (e.g., course notes, discussions, etc.). In previous posts, I have referred to this idea in terms of learning experience objects, but the folks at Macquarie University in Australia have built a system based on the same principles that they call a Learning Activity Management System (LAMS). (more…)

  • A New Job

    I have some personal news that will have an impact on this blog. After 8+ years in the consulting world, I am moving over into the world of higher education. I am delighted to announce that I have accepted a position with the State University of New York (SUNY) as part of the SUNY Learning Network (SLN). (more…)