Exam stress? Head for the puppy room

It’s furry therapy apparently.

Indeed. A puppy room

Last year we heard that Dalhousie University in Canada had provided a puppy room to help students deal with exam stress. Now it seems that another university has joined in and, according to the Huffington Post, Aberdeen Students are also getting a puppy room to help them relax during revision:

Stressed out students at Aberdeen University in Scotland are going to be given a special room on campus to calm down with puppies during the exam period.

Aberdeen University’s Exam Welfare Initiative is teaming up with Guide Dogs For The Blind Association to offer the furry therapy after receiving positive feedback from students.

Emma Carlen, Aberdeen University’s president of societies and student activities, said in a statement: “We got a really positive reaction to that from both the guide dogs and the students, it really chilled them out, so that encouraged us to get this set up for the exam period.”

They are setting up a rooms on campus between the 13th and 23rd May. The university is also offering smoothie and apple give aways to calm stressed out students as well as onsite-massage at the library, yoga taster sessions a health walk on the beach.

Last October, researchers at Hiroshima University in Japan found that photos of kittens, puppies and the like don’t just make people feel better – they also help them to concentrate.

Don’t know what it will do for NSS scores but wouldn’t be surprised if this turns out to be an entry in this year’s Times Higher Education awards.

Latest campus craze? Humans v Zombies

And some have tried to stop this innocent fun…

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education , the craze that is the Humans versus Zombies game does continue on campuses, despite the efforts of “killjoys” to prevent it:

Napa Valley College officials are the latest to interfere with a popular campus-based game of tag called Humans vs. Zombies. More than 600 campuses in the United States play some version of the game, which originated at Goucher College.

To win, zombie players try to “infect” or tag the humans, thereby turning them into zombies, and the humans must protect one another from being tagged. Sometimes the teams also have missions to complete. In some iterations, the tags are tracked with person-specific ID cards, and then uploaded to a Web site. In others, as soon as you get hit with a Nerf dart, you’re dead. Well, undead. A game can last days or weeks, or merely until there are no “humans” left.

Must say it all sounds very exciting indeed. It also offers an entertaining analogy for the state of higher education more generally.

The student body. For sale

On “body commodification”.
Last year saw a rash of rather prurient press stories about students acting as escorts to help with university fees. Although vastly over-stated there are parallels with some developments recently reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

The sale of bodily goods or services—”body commodification”—is nothing new among college students. But strides in medical technology, the encroachment of market values on all facets of life, and the reach and culture of the Internet have combined to create a fertile environment for people who want or need to exploit the value of their skin or what lies beneath it—including students struggling to cover the rising cost of college in this sluggish economy.

Students sell plasma, take requests to perform custom erotic acts on Web cameras, or offer themselves as guinea pigs in paid drug trials. A master’s student in Penfield, N.Y., says she was kicked out of her social-work program last June for snuggling with strangers—no sex allowed—for $60 an hour. A handful of Web sites, like SeekingArrangement.com, promise introductions to young and attractive men and women—often students—for “mutually beneficial relationships.” An advertisement in campus newspapers at three elite colleges offers $35,000 for the eggs of a young woman with an SAT score above 1400. And though no one in the United States is openly selling kidneys from live donors, Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics started receiving inquiries from financially desperate people after it posted an article on its Web site in 1998 exploring the ethical issues that would surround such a market.

It’s not a terribly attractive prospect but I fear we are going to see more of this kind of thing.

Big Brother for University Sport

Responding to worries about student athletes on social media.

There has been not insignificant anxiety in US higher education about the inappropriate use of social media by student athletes and universities are looking to monitor activity much more closely. On this side of the Atlantic the issues have largely been confined to professional sports people (and Joey Barton).

Whilst there may be general worries in UK universities about student use of Facebook and Twitter these have yet to have the impact that some unfortunate transgressions have had in the US where some universities have banned athletes from using Twitter following concerns about insulting, vulgar and generally questionable posts by players. And also because the coaches suspect social media might represent something of a distraction for players.

Fortunately, for those universities which struggle with monitoring social media usage there appear to be several organisations dedicated to ensuring that student athletes behave themselves. Looking for example at via Varsity Monitor, one of these monitoring outfits, we find they have an interesting prospectus:

For Athletes and Parents:

College recruiters actively review social media accounts to fully evaluate the character of potential recruits. Varsity Monitor works to ensure that social media posts do not negatively impact recruiting or existing scholarship offers.

For Institutions:

Coaches, Administrators and Sponsors need to ensure that Athletes uphold their organization’s standards and adhere to their code of conduct when using social media. Varsity Monitor provides monitoring services that help verify that policies are being followed.

Varsity Monitor provides extensive social media education for athletes and administrators designed to establish a solid foundation for the positive use of social media. Exploring methods and techniques to leverage social media to promote and enhance their brand and reputation.

Just extraordinary. Is it worth it if the teams deliver the results required? Or is is excessive intrusion into students’ non-academic activities?

University Adds “Puppy Room” to Fight Finals Jitters

Now this is real innovation in supporting the student experience

A top story from Hack College on a university which has brought in a “Puppy Room” to help students fight exam stress:

Aww. Aren’t they cute? Now I’m ready to face that exam

 As finals week looms closer and the stress begins to pile, most college students see self-destructive habits rise considerably, in the form of eating worse, sleeping less, and more often than not, drinking too much. But one Canadian university has found a new, novel, and undoubtedly popular way to help combat stress in a safer, and altogether fuzzier way: a room full of puppies.

That’s right. Puppies.

Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada has made what could be the most popular addition to any university in history in the form of a room filled with puppies, solely to help students relax and drive away the finals week stress. The Puppy Room will be open to students of Dalhousie University from December 4th – 6th thanks to Therapeutic Paws Of Canada, a non-profit organization that brings dogs and cats to schools, residences and hospitals in order to promote happiness and relaxation.

“It’s a great idea,” said student Michael Kean, who suggested the puppy room to the school. ”There’s no downfall about therapy dogs. Students, we’re stressed out, don’t know what to do, and they’re fluffy. It comes down to that.”

Looking to the future, this idea could be expanded to cover a wider range of stressful activities for students and could include a variety of animals to ensure individual preferences are met. The first university to do this in the UK would be bound to win a THE award.

Anyway, this is the last piece of nonsense here in 2012. There will be more in the new year. Have a relaxing break (with or without puppies).

A New Type of University?

Or Back to Victorian Values?

Salman Khan, founder of the online enterprise which provides video lectures, the Khan Academy, has set out an alternative vision for education in a new book, The One World School House. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on this exciting new publication (which I must admit I am unlikely to buy):

Khan’s bold vision for education includes a chapter on higher education:

In a chapter titled “What College Could Be Like,” Mr. Khan conjures an image of a new campus in Silicon Valley where students would spend their days working on internships and projects with mentors, and would continue their education with self-paced learning similar to that of Khan Academy. The students would attend ungraded seminars at night on art and literature, and the faculty would consist of professionals the students would work with as well as traditional professors.

“Traditional universities proudly list the Nobel laureates they have on campus (most of whom have little to no interaction with students),” he writes. “Our university would list the great entrepreneurs, inventors, and executives serving as student advisers and mentors.”

In the book, Mr. Khan also advocates for a separation of universities’ teaching and credentialing roles, arguing that if students could take internationally recognized assessments to prove themselves, the playing field would be leveled between students pursuing different forms of higher education. Although students would not be graded in the imagined university he describes, they would compile a portfolio of their work and assessments from their mentors.

“Existing campuses could move in this direction by de-emphasizing or eliminating lecture-based courses, having their students more engaged in research and co-ops in the broader world, and having more faculty with broad backgrounds who show a deep desire to mentor students,” he writes.

Actually this really isn’t so much of an alternative vision as a fervent wish for a different world coupled with the demand for a “level playing field” which here means removing the elements which means that universities offer a genuinely higher education. It also has an echo of the Victorian patricians like Lever and Salt providing out of hours education for their workforce.  So it really doesn’t sound quite as visionary as all that.

Career Advice by ‘Virtual Inkblot Test’

A new approach to careers advice

The Chronicle has a short piece on a new approach to delivering careers advice. Essentially it is a contemporary take on the traditional inkblot test which has been updated to a set of images in an app:

Researchers at the company, Woofound Inc., have built an application for students that uses their reactions to a series of images to predict their personalities and to suggest careers tailored to their preferences. The creators also plan to have the application suggest what degrees they should pursue and what extracurricular activities they should join.

The project is part of a wave of technology applications that colleges are testing to help track students into fields that fit their interests.

While using the Woofound Career Module, students sift through 84 slides of images with words associated, such as a picture of a tent along with the word “camping,” or a picture of a man painting along with the phrase “creative expression.” Students click either “Me” or “Not Me” in response to each image.

There is, rightly, some scepticism about the approach. Whilst it is, of course, possible to distinguish broad preferences in this way surely this is one area in which students need a bit more than just an app in order to develop their career intentions? And there aren’t huge numbers of jobs for visionaries these days.

The Imperfect University: The Cult of Efficiency

The cult of efficiency

I’ve recently been reminded about a great book recommended to me by my former supervisor, Nigel Norris. Half a century since its publication it remains a fascinating read and sits midpoint between two eras of educational change which, perhaps surprisingly, seem to have a lot in common. (Note that a large part of what follows is taken from my book Dangerous Medicine: Problems with quality and standards in UK higher education which is available for Kindle via Amazon at what I’m sure we’d all agree is a very competitive price.)

Callahan’s book, Education and the Cult of Efficiency, published in 1962 offers a salutary warning about the hazards of imposing inappropriate models in education. When I first looked at this I was interested in the ways in which industrial quality assurance frameworks seemed to be enthusiastically adopted by some in higher education with little regard for context, with one of the main drivers for the application of industrial models to HE being the belief that efficiency and economy will result.

The economic imperative is one which has been vested in higher education with ever greater force since the early 1970s but has forerunners in other spheres too. Callahan’s detailed and in many ways prescient study, shows the effect of scientific management, Taylorism, on US schools in the early part of the last century, the effects of which were felt in the American education system until the 1960s.[i] The essence of the problems this approach caused are articulated as the promotion of cost accounting over educational value and these ideas permeated the whole education system including the universities. The notion developed of schools as ‘service stations’ which represented the ‘natural outgrowth of years of business influence’ and the idea ‘that the public should provide the specifications for the educational ‘products’ which were turned out by the schools’.[ii] These concepts provide interesting parallels with the educational landscape in the UK today.

The primacy of the world of business was as real in the US of the second decade of the last century as it is in the UK today with ‘the community’ and ‘the business community’ being seen by many school administrators at that time as synonymous. Students were expected to undertake service for their communities (which often meant cheap labour for local employers) and there was a strong emphasis on the importance of student thrift. The response by school administrators, in the face of a critical public which was concerned with economy in public spending, was to turn educators into technicians producing products to specifications.

Administrators therefore embraced economy measures and accepted increased class sizes based on ‘evidence’ that large classes did not diminish performance, a situation which remained in US schools until the 60s. One of the side-effects of this economy drive was a disproportionate focus on the trivial and measurable, a development supported by the training given to school administrators in graduate schools of education. This resulted in work which focused on measuring, for example, toilet paper use, ink consumption and heating savings.[iii] As late as 1938 a text on the principles of school administration included specific instructions on how a janitor should dust desks. Callahan cites Flexner who shows that the emphasis on service, selling education, mass production and measurement of trivia was equally widespread in US higher education at this time.[iv]

Overall, Callahan characterises the impact of scientific management as tragic with education ‘adopting values and practices indiscriminately and applying them with little or no consideration of educational values or purposes’. The wholesale adoption of basic business values and techniques represented a serious mistake in education and in the period from 1910-1929, when efficiency was demanded, what was actually meant was lower costs with no reference to the quality of the ‘product’. At this time the public was suspicious of public institutions and in awe of the world of business (before the stock market crash) and saw scientific management as an appropriate solution. Administrators were, in this context, entirely complicit with this misapplication of business processes and values. The impact of this period was widespread and enduring (despite the depression), as those trained during this period went on to hold positions of power for many years, and the ideas remained dominant into the 1960s with an emphasis on business and technical values at the expense of the educational. Similar societal factors can be seen in the UK in the 1980s onwards which perhaps helps to explain the potency of industrial ideas in education in this country too.

Looking forward, it is possible to envisage a (not very attractive) future in which most of our schools are ‘free’ and, in the absence of any other direction, turn to inappropriate models and measurements and follow a 21^st Century version of Taylorism in order to deliver ‘products’ which it is believed the country needs. Whether or not such a scenario comes to pass it is to be hoped that a similar cult of efficiency will not take hold in higher education.

---

[i] Callahan, R E (1962), Education and the Cult of Efficiency, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

[ii] ibid, p227.

[iii] ibid, pp242-3.

[iv] ibid, p243, referring to Flexner, A (1930), Universities America, English, German, New York.

The Beginning of the End for Traditional HE?

Will MOOCs kill universities?

The future for universities?

No.

Forbes carries an expansive piece on the implications of MOOCs and asks ”Is Coursera the Beginning of the End for Traditional Higher Education?“.

Could high-quality MOOCs eventually do to traditional colleges and universities what Craigslist has done to classified advertising in newspapers and what Wikipedia has done to encyclopedias? In other words, could Coursera and its ilk replace a $250,000 college degree and decimate the world of brick-and-mortar colleges and universities?

A previous post highlighted many of the issues and challenges associated with MOOCs. In summary, some of problems with these developments include:

• There is no proper academic quality assurance: by and large anyone can offer any course they want without any need for approval.

• Self-selection: courses are offered by self-selecting academics and followed by self-selecting students.

• Drop out rates are inevitably very high.

• There isn’t any meaningful or quality assured assessment.

• Non-accreditation: completion will get you an attendance certificate or a virtual badge rather than credit or a real qualification.

Of course this Forbes piece is just the most extreme example of the overblown hype surrounding MOOCs. As suggested in the earlier piece on these developments, MOOCs have more in common with the growth in adult education and the expansion of Mechanics’ Institutes in the late 19th Century. Unlike classified ads in newspapers and encyclopaedias, universities are built on more enduring foundations. Yes there will be challenges from the new online provision but the idea that Coursera and the like will kill off universities is just absurd. And all that content has to come from somewhere.

The most entertaining response to this kind of piece I have seen is over at the Easily Distracted blog. Under the headline “Listen up you primitive screwheads” we find the following spot on observatopn:

Again, pundits, let’s talk. MOOCs are damn interesting, you betcha, but seriously, if you think they’re about to solve the labor-intensivity of higher education tomorrow with no losses or costs in quality, you have a lot of learning to do. Not just about the costs and budgets of higher education today, but about the history of distance learning. Right now you guys sound like the same packs of enthusiastic dunderheads who thought that public-access television, national radio networks, or correspondence courses were going to make conventional universities obsolete via technological magic. And hey, if you’re that keen on the digital, skip the drinks, I’m happy to educate you via email.

Hear, hear.

I’m looking forward to when the fuss dies down a little and we can assess more soberly the contribution that MOOCs might make to higher education more generally. In the meantime I guess we’ll just have to put up with this kind of ‘is this the end for universities?’ silliness.

Is this the university of the future?

A new model. Designed by consultants

Worried about the future of higher education? Concerned about the impact the new fees regime is going to have on your university? Bit nervous that everyone is talking about ‘disruptive innovation’ in HE without really knowing what it means? Then fret no more. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on a proposed ‘reinvention’ of the university at UNT-Dallas. Developed by external consultants this will draw on all the very latest up to the minute thinking about higher education. Look and learn:

Now UNT-Dallas administrators are considering a new model, based on the work of Bain, that would use those disruptive, efficiency-minded ideas as tools to reshape this fledgling university, which has a full-time-equivalent enrollment of only about 1,000 and a 264-acre campus with exactly two buildings. The prospect excites local civic leaders but has left faculty members here scared—and feeling like pawns in the emerging national debate on how to make colleges more affordable and accessible.

The tools to succeed

Bain’s model calls for a narrow set of career-focused majors in fields like business, information technology, and criminal justice, as well as for a year-round trimester calendar. It would de-emphasize research by faculty members so they could teach as many as 12 courses per year, and it would rely on heavy use of so-called hybrid courses, which would replace some face-to-face teaching with online instruction.

It would focus not only on the adult students the institution serves now but also on motivated 18-to-22-year-olds, and it would pay students to take on some advising and administrative tasks normally handled by staff members. It would also reimburse students for their final two trimesters if they’re on track to graduate within four years.

Genius. Year round teaching. Very few courses. Stop research. Less class contact. Use students to replace administrators.

This really is the university of the future.

More distinctive provision: new course on Beyonce

Responding to market demand?

A recent report suggests that a US university is to offer a class on Beyonce.

Beyonce is many things: singer, dancer, living pop icon, wife, mother, and namesake of a new breed of horsefly. She is also the subject of a new course being taught at Rutgers University, “Politicizing Beyonce.”

Taught by lecturer and doctoral student Kevin Allred, he tells Focus that “this isn’t a course about Beyoncé’s political engagement or how many times she performed during President Obama’s inauguration weekend.”

A post last year summarised the latest position in the provision of bonkers degrees and earlier items covered similar ground including a zombie course at the University of Baltimore and a course covering Lady Gaga. Also we previously looked here at the launch of an MA in Beatles Studies and the offer of a degree in Northern Studies as well as offering a podcast on “bonkers or niche” degrees. Most recently there was, shockingly, an MA in horror and transgression at Derby. So, this is simply another one in a fine tradition.

Back to Beyoncé:

The university’s news site gives this description: “The performer’s music and career are used as lenses to explore American race, gender, and sexual politics… Course topics include the extent of Beyonce’s control over her own aesthetic, whether her often half-naked body is empowered or stereotypical, and her more racy performances as her alter ego, Sasha Fierce.”

Fuller details can be found at the Rutgers site for those minded to enrol. It’s this kind of market responsiveness that will become the hallmark of the successful university of the future.

Online Badges v Degrees

Is the gig up for universities? You decide

The Chronicle carries some entertaining hokum about degrees being overtaken by online badges:

Employers might prefer a world of badges to the current system. After all, traditional college diplomas look elegant when hung on the wall, but they contain very little detail about what the recipient learned. Students using Mozilla’s proposed badge system might display dozens or even hundreds of merit badges on their online résumés detailing what they studied. And students could start showing off the badges as they earn them, rather than waiting four years to earn a diploma.

“We have to question the tyranny of the degree,” says David Wiley, an associate professor of instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young University. Mr. Wiley is an outspoken advocate of so-called open education, and he imagines a future where screenfuls of badges from free or low-cost institutions, perhaps mixed with a course or two from a traditional college, replace the need for setting foot on a campus. “As soon as big employers everywhere start accepting these new credentials, either singly or in bundles, the gig is up completely.”

 

Death of the university etc etc, we’ve been here before but the phrase “tyranny of the degree” is what got to me in this report. What this really means is that someone genuinely believes that a bit of online twiddling is in some way to be regarded as intellectually comparable to a three year intensive, rigorous, properly assessed undergraduate degree. Cobblers. Whilst not everyone who achieves a medical degree can be a top surgeon, who would you trust to operate on you? A qualified doctor or some teen who did his bypass badge online? And will the world’s most successful companies suddenly start choosing staff by the duration of their online experience or their Klout score rather than their real qualifications? I wonder.

Whilst we must never be complacent about competition I think the gig is very far from up.

More bonkers degrees?

Are they bonkers? Or just very well targeted?

With apologies for repetition. But it is August. And in the context of A-level results day, we all need to reflect on the real value of some of the finest HE provision around. Previous posts have covered similar ground including a zombie course at the University of Baltimore and a course covering Lady Gaga. Also previously looked here at the launch of an MA in Beatles Studies and the offer of a degree in Northern Studies as well as offering a podcast on “bonkers or niche” degrees. Most recently there was, shockingly, an MA in horror and transgression at Derby.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has new update on some of these:

Pop quiz: What is the difference between a tangerine and a clementine? If you’re stumped, then you probably did not get a degree from Florida Southern College in citrus studies, an interdisciplinary major that introduces students to the ins and outs of producing and marketing—you guessed it—citrus fruits. Courses include CIT 3301: “Introduction to Citrus” and a for-credit internship in Florida’s citrus industry. If that experience doesn’t result in a full-time job, at least graduates know they’ll have a leg up in the produce aisle on all those chumps who majored in history.

It also highlights a number of other exciting degrees:

Carnegie Mellon U.

Major: Bagpipes – Notable courses: One-on-one bagpipe studio courses with Andrew Carlisle, a master piper

Bowdoin College

Major: Arctic studies – Notable courses: “Arctic Peoples,” “Arctic Explorations,” “Arctic Politics”

Harrisburg Area Community College

Major: Auctioneering – Notable courses: The program requires two semesters of “Procurement and Appraisal of Merchandise” as well as a semester of AUCT 106: “The Auction.”

Kansas State U.

Major: Bakery science – Notable courses: “Cereal Science,” “Fundamentals of Food Processing,” “Principles of Milling”

There are more…

Meanwhile, back in the UK, the Telegraph has published a list of “unusual university courses”. A remarkable list on two counts. First, few of the courses listed are that unusual (Aerospace Engineering is pretty big in quite a few universities) and secondly (as @TriBen pointed out to me, for which many thanks), it fails to cite Surf Science at Plymouth, which is usually a banker for such lists (there is a picture of a surfer though). The horse pic below relates to Equine Studies, of course.

It is August. And there is a need to fill some space before all those pictures of happy students on A level results day can be published.

Cover your eyes – another frightening course emerges from the crypt

Seriously scary

Have posted before about some rather leftfield programmes, including a zombie course at the University of Baltimore and, more recently, a course covering Lady Gaga. Also previously looked here at the launch of an MA in Beatles Studies and the offer of a degree in Northern Studies as well as offering a podcast on “bonkers or niche” degrees. But now, not for the faint-hearted, there is a new MA in horror and transgression at Derby.

Bit of a shocker?

BBC News reports that students will learn about the history of horror on screen and in books while the transgression part of the course will focus on “films and literature with disturbing and taboo themes”:

Students at the University of Derby are being offered a taste of the dark side with a new degree in horror.

Ghosts, serial killers and vampires will all feature in the university’s new postgraduate MA in horror and transgression.

The one-year course, which is aimed at would-be film-makers and writers, will examine all aspects of the genre.

British horror author and director Clive Barker has given the degree his backing and hopes to take a class.

It’s a novel proposition in an area that does seem under-explored. The university has had pretty widespread media coverage for this. Let’s hope it doesn’t scare away prospective students (sorry).

Value of iPads for teaching and learning?

iPads: “Bane or Boon”?

An earlier post commented on the use of iPads in the classroom. The Chronicle of Higher Education notes two contrasting reports of the value of iPads for teaching and learning, the one referred to in the previous post and the other in the FT. The latter was much more positive about the value than the former:

How could this be? The two articles even reported on some of the same studies. One possible reason for the differing conclusions is that the FT story focused more on students’ reactions—the devices are great for reading, and just plain cool—and less on teaching.

For instance, both articles quoted Corey M. Angst, an assistant professor of management at the University of Notre Dame who tested the tablets in class. The FT reported, correctly, that students felt the iPad was easy to use and hard to give up. The Chronicle, however, also noted students’ complaints that it was hard to use iPads to take notes—the finger-touch interface isn’t good for writing. And one more telling fact: “For their online final exam, 39 of the 40 students put away their iPads in favor a laptop.”

Mr. Angst felt the iPad was an overall plus, but other professors who use computers in class to highlight material and respond to students’ questions said the iPad couldn’t do what they wanted.

No doubt iPads aren’t for everyone but, as the article also notes, iPad2 is arriving and may well address some of the issues identified in the piece.