In an era ripe with mistrust and fear, it’s easy to set empathy aside. But what if we could step into the eyeballs of another person to get his or her point of view from the inside? Could that lead to greater understanding? That’s the idea for a project at North Carolina State University that uses virtual reality to help engineering students understand different cultural perspectives…
Why Higher Ed Should Do More with Blockchain Tech
When Oral Roberts University hosted the one-day event, “Blockchain Essentials in Education,” all attendees received a blockchain-based certificate from the Tulsa university verifying their participation. Perhaps nothing else could have illustrated the potential of blockchain technology more appropriately.
As CIO Michael Mathews, the event’s organizer, explained, blockchain will be as important to transforming education as the internet was. He said he believes those colleges and universities that jump on the secure public ledger concept early enough and begin testing it out will be the ones who could see the biggest benefits…
How K-12 Learning Can Cultivate True Collaboration
There’s a reason even superheroes need to work together in the movies today to conquer the bad guys. Attacking complex problems single-handedly doesn’t work anymore. And even smaller projects need multiple minds going at them for success. Yet, while collaboration is certainly a critical need for the 21st century, too often students are simply thrown together into teams to tackle group projects without first being prepared for the challenge…
10 Steps to Achieving Active Learning on a Budget
Active learning is a great way to increase student excitement and participation, facilitate different kinds of learning activities, help people develop skills in small group work, promote discussion, boost attendance and give an outlet for technology usage that stays on track. It also requires remaking classrooms to enable that hands-on, collaborative student work — and that can often mean a six-figure price tag. But at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, NH, a $12,000 experiment proved successful enough that the institution now sports two permanent active learning classrooms as well as a brand-new active learning lab. Here are the 10 steps this school with just under 2,000 students followed on its road to active learning victory.
Turning Around an Enrollment Decline
There’s a difference between being part of a national trend of shrinking enrollment in two-year public institutions and having it hit your own college. While the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reported that two-year publics saw a 2.6 percent drop in student enrollment for fall 2016, Mesa Community College was facing a decline of 6 to 8 percent for the same period, one more data point in a series of waning enrollment numbers for the Arizona school. Surely, there was something that could be done to turn around enrollment retention.
Why One Professor Prefers Electronic Ink Over Fancy Tablets
There is no app store where people can acquire new uses for it. The interface is dim. And the stylus has to be recharged just like the device itself. Yet, at least one instructor wouldn’t give up his Sony Digital Paper, even for the most tricked-out iPad Pro or Microsoft Surface.
But then Akhan Almagambetov isn’t like most people. This assistant professor in electrical engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Prescott campus disavows PowerPoints, has been known to rip up textbooks and is highly protective of his eyes…
What You Need to Know About the 3.5 GHz Band on Campus
Rare is the campus with total coverage of cellular service. Maybe the problem surfaces for your institution in its basement-level spaces, or that oldest building on campus with walls built to bomb-shelter standards, or the newest, LEED-certified facility that uses energy-efficient glass or other construction materials that block radio frequency. Whatever the site or cause, it’s a big problem. Most mobile traffic originates inside buildings (ABI Research pegs it at more than 80 percent), so people get frustrated when they can’t use their devices to make a phone call — particularly in an emergency…
How a Video Boom Led to Better Campus Collaboration
Reorganizations can be tough on everybody involved. Work left behind. People’s emotions rubbed raw. New managers struggling to gain staff trust. But a restructuring within Princeton University (NJ) turned out to be a great example of how collaboration in higher education ought to work. And it all kicked off when the university decided to create its first massive open online courses (MOOCs)…