March 18, 2008Core curriculum meetingYou can get a look at -- and make comments on -- the "tentative learning objectives" of RU's developing core curriculum Wednesday, March 19. Faculty, students and staff are invited to the Bonnie auditorium from 11a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and from 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. January 15, 2008Is new software an invasion of student privacy?Check out this article on a software program being marketed to universities as a way to track online postings of their student athletes. Sounds downright Orwellian. When Virginia Tech's internal review concerning campus security and infrastructure after April 16 was released I heard from some students who were freaked out at the thought of beefed-up security cameras and even talk of technology that could track where students were on campus. I'd be interested in your thoughts on where the line should be drawn when it comes to using technology to monitor students' -- or anyone's -- whereabouts, online interactions, etc. December 18, 2007Monkeys have college kids' skillsA Duke University study shows that college students and monkeys have about the same math skills. Hmmm. Maybe that's the reason for the low grades you've been posting. Basically, the researchers put two monkey against a couple dozen Duke students to see who outperformed each other. The task was to mentally add two sets of dots that were briefly flashed on a computer screen. The teams were asked to pick the correct answer from two choices on a different screen, news wire Reuters wrote. In an interview with the wire service, researcher Jessica Cantlon said, ""It shows when you take language away from a human, they end up looking just like monkeys in terms of their performance." December 12, 2007Students choose easier classesWhile finals are in full swing, and everyone is studying hard, I thought I'd throw this piece of not-quite-shocking research out there: Students like easy classes. According to a recent study when students at Cornell University were given the median grades for courses, they tended to choose the seemingly easier ones. Who would have thought that? Every semester, Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences publishes the median grades of similar clases. It's been going on for about 10 years with the rationale being that students would get a better idea of their performance if they knew just how difficult the class was. While that might be the case, students are cherry picking the courses with higher median grades and professors that give higher grades are the more popular. That might backfire soon if the school actually puts those median grades on the student's transcript, showing employers just how difficult the course was. Yale courses archivedYale has officially launched an online archive of some of its course material open to anyone interested. Seven courses, from introductory poetry to beginning astronomy, are availabe at the portal and include a full set of videoed class lectures. Students or teachers interested can also search an indexed version of class notes and read syallabi. The downloadable vidoes are the latest lectures to come from colleges. The University of California, Berkeley, has done the same. And, some Virginia Tech work is available at the Open Education Resources archive. Interested people can view the course material, but they will not get credit from Yale. However, teachers can use the material in their own courses. November 13, 2006Foreign professors wantedAfter reading my story on Virginia Tech's new policy about sponsoring foreign faculty and staff for Green Cards, I received an email from Steven Toth of Roanoke which read, in part: "It was an eye-opener to read that VT found it necessary to establish a policy for a "growing number of foreign scholars" at VT. Why does VT find it necessary to hire foreign scholars to teach science and engineering at VT? Is there some sort of a prestige status or label attached to that practice? Aren't there enough U.S. scholars interested and capable of teaching at VT?" This article in today's Inside Higher Ed suggests that people in higher education think that looking beyond national borders, at least for students, is a good idea. And after a post 9-11 decline in foreign students in American schools, the numbers are finally on the way up again. August 4, 2006School's out for summer, but you might still have to read a book
Cover of the book Roanoke College freshmen are reading this summer One of the best was the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition at the University of South Carolina. On the site you can find an extensive list of books used by colleges for incoming students and a list of colleges that have the programs. One note of caution: The latter is incomplete, as it depends on other colleges writing in and telling USC about their programs, but it's a good start. I also had a chance to sit in on a discussion by faculty and staff members at Roanoke College about the book the college is using this year. The school's reading committee chose a different sort of offering this year: "Persepolis" by Marjane Satrapi. As I noted in my story, the book is a graphic novel about a girl growing up in Iran during the revolution in the 1970s. A large part of the discussion was about the format of the book itself. Some of the people in the room had never read a graphic novel before, but others mentioned the powerful impact of the wonderful and beautiful Maus by Art Spielgelman. In the discussion, an English professor said he might be interested in forming a course entirely about graphic novels or other media that try to tell stories through comics (such as the film "American Splendor"). It sounded like a great idea to me -- and one that would likely get a lot of interest from students. I wonder if faculty members at other institutions have done something like that before. Continue reading "School's out for summer, but you might still have to read a book" » |
About this blog
Rhode Island native and Virginia Tech reporter Greg Esposito posts on everyday college life, trends and issues affecting the 35,000-plus students in the New River Valley and beyond.
Tim Thornton, who is old enough to have children attending college, is still taking classes and is still fascinated by colleges, the students who populate them and the bureaucrats who operate them. His reporting beat is Radford University.
West Virginia native Anna Mallory blogs on student life topics at Virginia Tech, Radford University, New River Valley Community College -- and beyond.
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