When the universities minister, Sam Gyimah, came online with the Open University earlier this month, he was able to successfully use the Westminster wi-fi to connect first with a group of students and their tutor in an online tutorial, and then to move pretty much seamlessly to our OpenSTEM Labs to set lab-bench experiments and […] … learn more→
Blog Archives
User-led design is essential for universities going digital
PhD fear (a personal account)
At 2.24pm on 6th June 2016, after a morning filled with panic, I plonked myself down at my kitchen table and wrote this: I’ve got PhD Fear. I’ve had it for three days now, and there’s no sign it’s toddling off to find someone else to haunt. It’s always there, like a software programme quietly running […] … learn more→
Why the Democrats’ new ‘debt-free’ college plan won’t really make college debt-free
Rising student loan debt and concerns about college affordability got considerable attention from Democrats in the 2016 presidential campaign. Those issues are bound to get renewed attention since House Democrats recently introduced the Aim Higher Act – an effort to update the Higher Education Act, the federal law that governs federal higher education programs. The bill promises […] … learn more→
Don’t assume online students are more likely to cheat. The evidence is murky
More university students are choosing to study online rather than face-to-face, prompting concerns about academic integrity. If you’re tempted to cheat in face-to-face courses, even during exams, how much easier would it be to pass off work that isn’t your own when you’re online? But research by us and others shows how university courses are delivered […] … learn more→
Will your College survive the next decade?
Inside Higher Education (IHE) released its 2018 Survey of College and University Business Officers last week. While the findings vary across the different sectors of American higher education, many are sobering, especially for four-year private colleges. Many Small, Private Colleges’ Financial State is Perilous According to the IHE survey, conducted in partnership with Gallup, “44 percent of chief financial officers […] … learn more→
Oxymoron of the week: Congress seeks to fix broken Higher Ed system
In an article for Forbes, Tom Lindsay reports on the scope of the student debt problem as a preface to discussing H.R. 4508, legislation introduced by Virginia Foxx (R-NC) to “reform” higher education ostensibly to make it more affordable. Titled the “Promoting Real Opportunity, Success, and Prosperity through Education Reform Act,” or PROSPER Act, “seeks to reform our […] … learn more→
Not doing the PhD (and being ok with that)
Earlier this year I told some of my friends that I was enrolling in a PhD. This was a lie, but at the time I thought it was the truth. In February I was made one of those offers that you can’t refuse, a true gift for an early career academic; I was offered a […] … learn more→
Millennials: the age of entitlement
I’m so lost! Your course is so confusing. Like, I really have no idea what to do and, like, I’m ready to simply cry and, like, drop this crazy course.” Susie, a major in education, blinked, but no tears came; she just kept glaring at me with her elaborately made-up brown eyes. She had texted […] … learn more→
Difficulties and ways to innovate in pedagogy
Designing new ways of teaching is an imperative if we want to help students to understand the upheavals brought about by societal and technological changes, and to teach them how to adapt to a world that is changing very quickly. Moreover, from MOOCs, to inverted class attempts, educational innovations often spur much experimentation and investment […] … learn more→
Rethinking the undergraduate business model
Despite clear differences in research intensity, size and age, most of the 20,000 universities in the world share four common assumptions about how they deliver undergraduate education. Students generally attend campus; where fees are being paid, they are paid directly to the university; the default setting remains full-time study and all the credits for a […] … learn more→
