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Blog:  Confessions of a Community College Dean Sometimes I really miss the comments section. This is one of those times. In a meeting earlier this week, a professor mentioned that they have had to tweak their grading schemes to reflect remote delivery. In the remote context, they mentioned that reliance on exams can be particularly problematic -- proctoring is a major issue -- so they’re shifted the weight of assignments to give more weight to other activities. We’re only a few weeks into the semester, but so far the results seem promising. That struck me as a terrific idea, and it got me wondering what kinds of alterations other people are making to the graded assignments in their classes. For example, someone else mentioned that they’ve started having students create mock podcasts in lieu of one of the usual short papers. They’ve been pleased with the results and report that the students really take to it. I liked these ideas for two reasons. The first is that they make

Chinese students stuck overseas bring censorship concerns into newly global online classrooms. from News https://ift.tt/3cI2ZIs

Blog:  Learning Innovation Zoom pop-ins have become a thing. We are at a point in our pandemic driven academic remote work culture that our use of synchronous meetings is morphing. The old way of Zooming (where old is four months ago in COVID time) was to schedule a 30 or 60-minute meeting. Scheduling would take place through the campus e-mail/calendaring system. (My school uses Office 365 / Outlook). Zoom work meetings were scheduled meetings. Nowadays, we are just as likely to jump into a Zoom on the fly. Slack messages flow seamlessly into Zoom meetings. (Even easier if your school has integrated the Zoom app into Slack). Team bounce from e-mail to Zoom, and back again. A group will be collaborating on a Google Doc, and then toggle to Zoom to work through a point. How are ad hoc Zoom meetings different from scheduled conversations? First, they then to be shorter, and they move more quickly to the work. No time for pleasantries when you are Zooming to work together. As t

The University of Kentucky has had more employees become infected with COVID-19 since mid-August than any other workplace in Lexington, the Lexington Herald-Leader has reported . At 103 infections from Aug. 13 to Sept. 14, the university has had more employees infected than the next nine employers -- including Amazon, Chik-Fil-A and grocery chain Kroger -- combined. That includes, but is certainly not limited to, faculty. Workers at the university have said the administration is providing adequate personal protective equipment but not comprehensively carrying out other measures that the state has mandated for businesses. Kentucky’s Healthy at Work minimums for businesses say workplaces must check temperatures of employees before work or instruct workers to take their own temperatures within 24 hours before reporting on the job. Some workers say neither of those things have happened. “There’s no temperature checks,” said Donald Moore, a custodian with the university for 15 year

Academics from 67 universities nationally have unanimously voted to approve a set of recommendations for recognizing innovation and entrepreneurial achievements among the criteria for higher education faculty promotion and tenure. The proposal is not to add a fourth prong to the traditional three of teaching, research and service. Rather, it is to place innovation and entrepreneurship within the three prongs. In addition, the proposal aims to be noncontroversial by saying that colleges and universities could let faculty members decide whether to be evaluated on that basis. But judging from the reaction of the American Association of University Professors, which was not consulted on the proposal, there is a controversy. The proposal came out of a National Science Foundation grant to Oregon State University to study whether it should add support for innovation and entrepreneurship into its tenure and promotion guidelines. That led to the creation of the Promotion and Tenure, Innova

Colleges are judged on traditional measurements of student success, like graduation and retention rates. These metrics can influence their funding levels, which is especially important given the pandemic-induced recession. But these measurements tend to focus on first-time, full-time students who are seeking degrees. These more traditional students are more likely to attend four-year colleges. Community colleges serve an increasingly nontraditional population of students, said Shauna Davis, executive director of programs at Achieving the Dream, a membership organization advocating for community college student success. Many are older adults, working, parenting or financially independent. These students often start and stop their education several times. They also are more likely to attend college part-time, which can have a big impact on funding for their institutions. Community college students also need support for basic needs, like food and housing. Graduation rates provide on

Undocumented immigrant college students, or Dreamers, are experiencing higher levels of anxiety about their legal status and increased financial and personal stresses due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new survey conducted by the scholarship-granting organization TheDream.US. A total of 2,681 of the approximately 3,850 undergraduate students supported with scholarships from the organization completed the survey, which was administered in May and early June at a time when Black Lives Matter protests were growing across the country and the Supreme Court was deciding the fate of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The survey closed on June 10, slightly more than a week before the Supreme Court issued a ruling striking down the Trump administration’s attempt to end DACA, which provides work permits and protection against deportation to certain undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children. Eighty-six percent of the sur

A student at Appalachian State University , in Boone, N.C., died after experiencing complications related to a COVID-19 infection, the university confirmed Tuesday. Chad Dorrill was diagnosed with COVID-19 earlier this month and later experienced complications, according to an announcement from the university’s chancellor, Sheri Everts. Dorrill was a 19-year-old sophomore majoring in exercise science, the High Country Press reported . He graduated from Ledford High School, in Davidson County, N.C., in 2019. He was noted for his kindness and attention to others in statements posted to social media and in press reports. One acquaintance recalled him showing up at her door with a bag of toys for a kitten she’d just adopted. Dorrill’s death is one of the first reported among students -- and a general undergraduate population -- since some colleges resumed in-person instruction this fall. However, differences in the way colleges track COVID-19 infections and a lack of clear standar

Listening to the news can be overwhelming at times. In today's Academic Minute, the University of Texas at Austin 's Heather Houser explores how art can help bring renewal to our senses. Houser is an associate professor of English at UT Austin. A transcript of this podcast can be found here . Section:  Academic Minute File:  09-30-20 Texas - Infowhelm.mp3 Event's date:  Tuesday, September 29, 2020 - 5:15pm School:  University of Texas at Austin Insider only:  from Inside Higher Ed https://ift.tt/2HM9u1D

Blog:  Conversations on Diversity Anybody who has even a passing familiarity with social change movements of the past knows that religion and spirituality play a central role -- there was Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Christian love” approach in the civil rights movement and Gandhi’s Hindu-based satyagraha movement in South Asia. But there is not a lot of rigorous research on the way that people understand spirituality, religion and civic engagement in contemporary times. Enter the Fetzer Institute and their important new study, " What Does Spirituality Mean To Us? " Here are some things we learn: eighty-eight percent of people said that they engaged in at least one practice they considered spiritual or religious on a weekly basis. As Vanessa White of Catholic Theological Union explained, this finding illustrates what scholars of spirituality have long believed: spirituality is fundamental to human experience. Moreover, as people’s self-identified spirituality increa

Teaching Today Alexander Astin outlines some specific pedagogical practices that might enhance student involvement online and warns against a course content approach. Job Tags:  FACULTY JOBS Ad keywords:  faculty teachinglearning Section:  Teaching and Learning Transforming Teaching & Learning Editorial Tags:  Online learning Teaching Show on Jobs site:  Image Source:  Istock.com/yayasya Image Size:  Thumbnail-horizontal Is this diversity newsletter?:  Is this Career Advice newsletter?:  Disable left side advertisement?:  Trending:  Live Updates:  liveupdates0 from Inside Higher Ed https://ift.tt/3l3wJlN

House Democratic leaders dropped the idea of canceling up to $10,000 in student debt for economically distressed borrowers in their scaled-down $2.2 trillion proposal for a new stimulus package. But confusing some higher education advocates, Democrats are proposing to cancel up to $10,000 in debt for economically distressed borrowers with private student loans. House Democrats in their prior $3.4 trillion HEROES Act proposal had included debt cancellation for economically distressed federal loan borrowers as well. A House education committee spokeswoman referred questions about why the plan was dropped in the new package, while private loan borrowers would have loans forgiven, to Speaker Nancy Pelosi. A spokeswoman for Pelosi did not respond. Pelosi’s new proposal, however, would continue excusing federal loan borrowers from making payments until Sept. 30, 2021, without interest. Most borrowers with federal student loans have been allowed to not make payments under the CARES Act

Today on the Academic Minute , Heather Houser, associate professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin , explores how art can help bring renewal to our overwhelmed senses. Learn more about the Academic Minute here . Is this diversity newsletter?:  Hide by line?:  Disable left side advertisement?:  Is this Career Advice newsletter?:  Trending:  College:  University of Texas at Austin Live Updates:  liveupdates0 from Inside Higher Ed https://ift.tt/3kRpjCi

The number of young adults with COVID-19 rose by 55 percent from early August to early September, as most colleges were bringing students back to their campuses, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a new report published Tuesday. The federal agency's "Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report" found that the incidence of COVID cases among people aged 18 to 22 years increased by nearly 63 percent from Aug. 2 to Aug. 29, then dropped off slightly through Sept. 5, accounting for the 55 percent rise. The increases were greatest in the Northeast (144 percent) and Midwest (123 percent). The increases were particularly sharp among white young adults, as seen below. The CDC study includes its usual disclaimer that the increases in cases "were not solely attributable to increased testing." The report suggested that multiple factors are likely at play, but said, "Because approximately 45 percent of persons aged 18-22 years attend colleges and u

American higher education has a long history of turning crisis into opportunity. Now is the moment to do so again. The disruptions of the pandemic for colleges and students will be felt for a long time to come. But another educational crisis was already underway before the virus struck, and it, too, requires an urgent response. Too many students leave college with a blinkered view of the world -- trained in this or that specialty but unprepared to reflect on the meaning and purpose of their own lives, and to participate in an informed and deliberative way in the collective life of our nation and the world. A key reason is the decline of general education -- the prescribed portion of a student’s work that falls outside their chosen major. With increased enrollment in technical fields such as business, engineering and computer science, general education represents the best and last chance for students to discuss and debate broad human problems with their peers. Far too few instituti