Features
- Student Retention: Are Schools Taking Advantage of Technology?
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5/13/2008
College and university administrators consider personal attention to be the most critical factor in retaining at risk students. But what role should technology play in the effort? While many consider technology-based interventions important to student retention, few seem to be using such solutions, and only 2 percent have any kind of early warning system in place to identify at risk students, according to data released to Campus Technology by higher education strategy firm EducationDynamics.
- Business Intelligence Tool Means Healthy Data at UVA
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5/8/2008
University IT groups will recognize the challenge of combining disparate data from more than one department in order to create meaningful reports for various users. At the University of Virginia Department of Medicine, which is overseen by UVA's School of Medicine, data was coming from two very different accounting systems, which meant problems for faculty members whenever they needed to run reports.
- Michigan Embraces Electronic Transcripts
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5/7/2008
"We get wheelbarrows of paper documents in the mail every day," according to Michael Cook, senior associate director of admissions at Michigan State University. "Our goal is to become paperless here in the admissions world," he added, "but that's not as easy as it seems."
- Next-gen WiFi Expected To Be in 99% of North American Campuses by 2013
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5/5/2008
Although the wireless standard 802.11n is found in less than 3 percent of North American universities currently, it will be available in 99 percent by 2013, according to a new study by ABI Research. According to the research firm, the increases are driven by a variety of needs and demands in both K-12 and higher education.
- Idaho State Simulates Emergency Response in Second Life
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5/1/2008
Imagine entering the virtual world Second Life to discover that a flu pandemic requires you, a health care professional, to attend to stricken patients lying on the streets around an over-capacity virtual hospital. When you report in to collect your virtual uniform, you're told what your responsibilities will be during the disaster and to whom you'll report.
- Classroom and Community Intersect in Workflow Management
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4/30/2008
Integrating the classroom with the community to give students hands-on experience is a laudable goal, but not always easy to do. At the University of Arizona, J. Leon Zhao's upper-level and graduate business students gain an understanding of workflow management software and business applications through real projects in the surrounding business community in Tucson.
- Web 2.0 Event Draws the Bleeding-Edge Cloud Crowd
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4/30/2008
Tim O'Reilly woke up his end-of-the-day audience when he took the stage at the Web 2.0 Expo, held April 22-25 in San Francisco. The publisher of the popular "In a Nutshell" computer books series declared that the Internet is fast becoming "a global platform for everything," and an "amazing tool for harnessing collective intelligence."
- Convergence Idea Gets Serious with Live Mesh, Analysts Say
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4/29/2008
Analyst reaction last week to Redmond's "Live Mesh" initiative can be deciphered in one of two ways. On the one hand, it's an old idea, namely "convergence," with new buzzwords. On the other, it means that industry leader Microsoft has become serious about playing hard ball with its more nimble competitors, working to simplify the end user experience in a Web 2.0 era.
- Information Security Set for Explosive Growth
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4/24/2008
Driven by compliance and public confidence issues, information security is expected to expand dramatically over the next few years, according to new research released by Frost & Sullivan and (ISC)². Worldwide, the number of information security professionals will grow from 1.66 million in 2007 to about 2.7 million in 2012, experiencing a compound annual growth rate of 10 percent.
- The Unfair Advantage at RIT: Sponsored Research Services
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4/24/2008
When Bill Destler was named president of Rochester Institute of Technology in March 2007, he summarized his vision for the Rochester, NY school this way: "Take advantage of your unfair advantages."
- MySQL Keynote: An Open Source Love Fest
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4/17/2008
Sun Microsystems's acquisition of MySQL was "a billion-dollar vote for the LAMP stack." That's how former MySQL CEO Marten Mickos, now senior vice president in Sun's Database Group, characterized the deal during his keynote speech at this week's MySQL Conference and Expo. "It's a game-changing move in the industry, and we can all be proud that it's happening," he said.
- Will the CafeScribe Acquisition Give a Boost to Electronic Textbooks?
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4/16/2008
The digital textbook is one of those technologies that seem obvious but can take a long time to gain traction. In March, the concept got a boost when long-time textbook distributor and retailer Follet Corp. acquired Salt Lake City-based Fourteen40, and, along with it, CafeScribe, a Web site in its beta phase of offering electronic textbooks.
- CIOs See Declining Budgets in Q1
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4/10/2008
Although IT budgets are expected to grow in 2008 overall, about a fourth of CIOs in the United States reported decreases in their budgets in the first quarter of 2008, according to a survey released by Gartner this month and highlighted at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo: Emerging Trends event this week in Las Vegas.
- U Wisconsin Expands Collaboration with Office Live Workspace
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4/9/2008
Students at the University of Wisconsin at Parkside can now enjoy file collaboration capabilities via a free software-and-service product from Microsoft called Office Live Workspace. The university, which last year outsourced its student e-mail accounts to Microsoft Live@edu, now offers students, faculty, and staff the ability to store, share, edit, and collaborate on documents in common Microsoft file formats.
- Scheduling To Reduce Energy Consumption
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4/9/2008
Two companies have partnered to help institutions reduce their carbon footprint. CT interviewed PeopleCube President and CEO John Anderson about the integration of his company's Resource Scheduler with BSL's Footprint Tracker energy consumption and carbon emissions tracking solution.
- University of Houston Study: Hybrid Courses More Effective for Students
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4/8/2008
A technical report from a University of Houston Department of Health and Human Performance researcher finds that students in a hybrid class that incorporated instructional technology with in-class lectures scored a letter grade higher on average than their counterparts who took the same class in a more traditional format.
- Data Mining at UCF Helps Measure Goals Against Booming Growth
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4/3/2008
Rapid enrollment growth is great, but can bring its own set of challenges. Ask administrators at the University of Central Florida, one of the fastest-growing universities in the country. With 46,000-plus students, the university has seen enrollment jump 35 percent in 10 years.
- Blackboard Vows To Press On
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4/2/2008
Despite last week's apparent setback in the Patent Office, Blackboard is vowing not to go down without a fight even as Desire2Learn and the Software Freedom Law Center--the two groups that sought to have the patent revoked--celebrate victory. We have the first interview with Blackboard's chief legal officer, Matthew Small, since the action. He discussed Blackboard's plans moving forward and why he sees that patent as still being valid and strong.
- USPTO Rejects Blackboard Patent Claims
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3/28/2008
[Update 10] Blackboard's e-learning patent looks to be going down. The United States Patent and Trademark Office this week sent out a "non-final" determination on the reexamination of Blackboard's patent in which all of the claims on the patent were rejected. Blackboard still has a period of two months to respond to the determination.
- 10 Tips for Injecting New Technology into Your Campus
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3/26/2008
Introducing new technologies to faculty members can be a challenge--they are often simply too busy or don't see the point of mastering yet another tool.
- The Ins and Outs of Access Control at a Community College District
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3/20/2008
Campus security takes many forms--emergency notification, monitoring for Web breaches, data privacy protection, video monitoring. But when was the last time you thought about the security offered by your school's doors?
- Homegrown Software Boosts Interactivity at Community College
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3/19/2008
In search of an inexpensive solution to engage students in challenging courses like physics and astronomy, a semi-retired professor has created a popular interactive software tool that reportedly increases classroom participation and boosts grades and learning.
- Desire2Learn CEO Makes Case Against Blackboard Patent, Court Ruling
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3/17/2008
In this exclusive interview, John Baker, Desire2Learn's president and CEO, discusses the company's recent patent infringement case, its impact on the company and its customers, and the implications for education technology as a whole.
- Electronic Transcripts at the Tipping Point
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3/13/2008
In an age of electronic information, it seems obvious--exchange student transcripts electronically, thereby cutting costs, speeding the process, and making fraud more difficult. But in a process that has taken many years, student transcripts are just now being pushed and pulled into the 21st century. Often on a state-by-state basis, high schools and colleges are gradually adopting technologies to allow them to exchange transcripts electronically.
- Engineering Collaboration at Virginia Tech
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3/12/2008
What does it take to convert a soon-to-retire engineering professor enamored of the chalkboard into someone who loves a technology tool? For Virginia Tech Alumni Distinguished Professor Charles Bostian, it took a collaborative teaching tool that he is using in engineering classes as large as 180 students.
