Will banning laptops in class work?

de Vise, D. (2010) Wide Web of diversions gets laptops evicted from lecture halls Washington Post March 9

An article about instructors who have banned the use of laptops in class, and why. I liked the comments by Professor Vaidhyanathan:

“If students don’t want to pay attention, the laptop is the least of your problems,” [...]

A critique of Tapscott and William's views on university reform

Tapscott, D. and Williams, A. (2010) Innovating the 21st century university: It’s Time Educause Review, Vol. 45, No. 1

First of all, thanks to both Burkhard Lehmann and Clayton Wright for directing me to this article. I had however seen it myself a couple of weeks ago, and have hesitated to respond to it, for reasons [...]

Learning technologies in engineering education

Regular readers will know that I believe that ‘real’ engineering is one of the tougher areas for e-learning, because of the need for hands-on experience with equipment and materials (see ‘Can you teach ‘real’ engineering at a distance?’). Simulations and animations are obvious uses, but often expensive and difficult to develop.

So I was interested to [...]

Has the credit hour become a relic?

Blumenstyck, G. (2010) Beyond the Credit Hour: Old Standards Don’t Fit New Models Chronicle of Higher Education, January 3

Blumenstyck writes:

In the era of distance education and a growing movement toward the “unbundling” of higher education to allow for study outside traditional classroom formats, has the “credit hour” become a relic?

The credit [...]

Reigning in costs with online learning

Bassis, M. (2009) Reigning in college costs Businessweek, December 21

This is a useful article, from the President of Westminster College, Salt Lake City, to give to your administration to get more support for online learning. I liked particularly his description of how the college business school uses a competency-based approach and e-portfolios within an online [...]