Best collection of e-Learning articles, e-Learning concepts, e-Learning software, & resources.

Blog:  Learning Innovation Staying Online: How to Navigate Digital Higher Education by Robert Ubell Published in September of 2021, Routledge. I grew up in an academic family. My Dad was a professor. Many of the adults in my life were academics. Some of these academics also taught at my Dad’s university. But most were my Dad’s colleagues from other schools. They would come to visit him on campus or at our home, or we would see them at conferences. (Dad would frequently combine family and professional travel). My childhood and teenage years gave me an appreciation of the value of an academic community. An understanding that colleagues and friends can be the same people. And that academia encourages these friendships to be developed with colleagues both nearby and faraway. Over the past 15 years or so, Bob Ubell has been one of the “faraway” colleagues that I’ve most valued. As I found my voice as a writer on higher education, Bob has always been a source of encouragement

Blog:  Higher Ed Gamma Few fields are as cluttered with cliches as education.  How many times have we heard that “teaching is not filling a pail, it's lighting a fire.”  Or "A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." Some of these catchphrases are inspirational. Others are mawkish, schmaltzy, sappy, corny, or syrupy.  Here are a few examples: “If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people.” “The dream begins, most of the time, with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you on to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called truth.” “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” Of course, some cliched  phrases should never be used .  You should never say words that are disparaging, insulting, and offensive – yet too ma

Image:  Rhodes College’s philosophy department hosted a conversation with controversial bioethicist Peter Singer Wednesday, as planned, despite opposition to the event from faculty members from several other programs. Singer has consistently argued  that parents should have the right to choose euthanasia for their severely disabled infants.  Prior to the virtual event, billed as a talk on pandemic ethics, the department of anthropology and sociology and the Africana studies program sent an open letter to the campus expressing “deepest dismay” that Singer would be welcomed, along with concern that the event could worsen the campus racial climate. The letter cited Singer’s “longstanding advancement of philosophical arguments that presume the inferiority of many disabled lives.” The “creation of a hierarchy of lives as a justification for the allocation or denial of limited resources (whether ‘pleasure,’ medical care, insurance, etc.) is a logic that has a long and violent hist

Image:  Representatives in the House are looking at new ways to hold colleges and universities accountable for Title IX misconduct under legislation introduced Tuesday that would establish stricter conduct standards for sexual harassment and assault. Institutions should be held liable for "cultures" of sexual misconduct on their campuses, according to Representative Debbie Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan, who introduced the Title IX Take Responsibility Act alongside Representative Jahana Hayes, a Democrat from Connecticut. The legislation comes as two universities in Dingell’s district, the University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University , face ongoing allegations about their handling of sexual assaults and incidents of harassment on their campuses. “What was really clear to me as I have been spending a lot of time talking to people is that there were patterns on these campuses,” Dingell told Inside Higher Ed . “There were cultures that people knew about

Image:  The National Labor Relations Board’s top attorney issued a memo Wednesday asserting that athletes at private colleges qualify as employees under federal labor law, entitling them to the same protections as other private sector employees, including the right to unionize. In the memo , NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo wrote that federal laws and NLRB policies “fully support the conclusion that certain Players at Academic Institutions are statutory employees, who have the right to act collectively to improve their terms and conditions of employment.” Essentially, it declares that athletes at private colleges are covered by the National Labor Relations Act, a foundational statute that guarantees the right of private sector employees to organize into trade unions, engage in collective bargaining and take collective action such as strikes. While it may ultimately benefit athletes, the memo doesn’t fundamentally change the relationship between players and their insti

Blog:  Call to Action: Marketing and Communications in Higher Education Most major colleges have a style guide in place with school-approved logos, Pantone-specific school colors and the usual editorial guides. But too often, one important guide is left out -- the correct language to use around diversity. There are many initiatives on campuses across the nation to improve diversity, equity and inclusion in their communities. Appropriate language in written and spoken communications needs to be a part of that. This terminology and usage are continually shifting and evolving, and agreed-upon guidelines for terminology have become critical. In short, the wrong word hurts -- and the right word shows you get it. As the parent of a nonverbal child with disabilities, I have always been prickly about language. People outside this world seldom understand how important correct terminology is. In fact, my family and I have been on the “language police squad” for the better part of 20 y

Blog:  Tackling Transfer In 2016, four organizations -- the Michigan Community College Association, the Michigan Association of State Universities, the Michigan Independent Colleges and Universities, and the Michigan Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers -- partnered together to form the Michigan Transfer Steering Committee with a focus on increasing associate and bachelor’s degree completion among Michigan transfer students. Their objective was to make the overall transfer experience more efficient, easy to understand and simple to navigate while optimizing credit transfer in a state with little higher education policy and no state agency to coordinate institutions. Their transformative work resulted in the creation of the MiTransfer Pathways , Michigan’s statewide transfer pathways. Through the MiTransfer Pathways, students can complete required and recommended coursework in the first and second year at any participating community college and be ready

HelioCampus, a ​​higher education analytics company, will acquire AEFIS, an assessment management platform for higher education, HelioCampus announced today. HelioCampus plans to grow the AEFIS team and expand its offerings, according to a press release. Darren Catalano, CEO of HelioCampus, will take on the CEO role for AEFIS, and the assessment company’s co-founders will be “assuming new leadership roles,” the release said. “Our mission has been to use technology, benchmarking, and decision support to help colleges and universities improve their efficiency and effectiveness,” Catalano said in a statement. “Institutional success and long-term sustainability require aligning investments with both financial and student learning outcomes and creating a culture that is data-informed. The addition of AEFIS expands our ability to help institutions measure and evaluate how well they are fulfilling their mission and achieving their goals.” Is this diversity newsletter?:  Hide b

All college and university presidents want to boldly define what it means to be a member of their community. What it means to be a Golden Bear. What it means to be a Greyhound. Or, in our case at the University of Maryland, what it means to be a Terrapin. Proud community members, whether recent alumni or longtime faculty, may attempt to define it themselves. They may describe the culture of their alma mater or beloved institution, citing a cherished memory or a quintessential campus experience. But one of us, Darryll, made it a priority on his first day as the current president of our university to find a way for new Terps to know what being a Terrapin means from day one, no experience required. And through our work over the past year, we’ve determined that a critical part of this goal lies in first impressions. We have been thinking a lot about the role of first impressions in inclusion and in creating a common university identity that inspires action. Social scientists have reve

Many employers and critics of higher education think many colleges and universities focus too little on ensuring that their graduates thrive after they leave, and favor holding institutions accountable for how their students fare in the job market. That’s unpalatable to a lot of academics, who view a college education as about more than how much you earn.  The guests in this week's episode, Wake Forest University’s Andy Chan and Christine Cruzvergara of Handshake, endorse the view that colleges and universities should be collecting and sharing data about how well they are preparing students for success in the workplace, given that that’s the primary reason many students go to college.  But the set of common metrics they propose colleges use to measure their own performance is broad, and it includes such data as how much institutions expose students to experiential learning in college to graduates’ satisfaction with their jobs once they leave.  Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Co

Image:  Wallace State Community College in Alabama plans to create a community learning center in Arley, a town of approximately 330 people in Winston County, about 45 minutes from the campus. College administrators spent years reaching out to residents of the county, which Vicki Karolewics, president of the college, described as “extremely rural” with “significant poverty,” but the pandemic intensified that goal as students struggled with remote learning. Even with laptops and Wi-Fi hotspots provided by the college, she said some students were left trying to complete their assignments on their phones because of poor internet access. Karolewics said the pandemic exacerbated “a long-standing challenge” that demanded “a local solution.” The focus of the center “will be to place a resident of Winston County who seeks our services … to place them on a career path … at the moment they come in the door.” Wallace State is among the many community colleges across the country rampi