Angry Birds as metaphor for learning?

Or just an excuse for playing more Angry Birds? The Chronicle of Higher Education has an entertaining piece about what Angry Birds "Can Teach Us About Universal Design for Instruction". In part, I think that Angry Birds is so fun to play because it helps develop our meta-cognitive skills. Throughout playing Angry Birds, one must …

Banning key Twitter words for athletes

Vocabulary tightening for student athletes using Twitter It seems that, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, two universities are to bar athletes from using hundreds of words on Twitter. Monitoring social media postings by athletes is, apparently, quite normal but this goes even further: The University of Louisville flags 406 words or slang expressions …

More Dodgy College Rankings

Because you can never have too many rankings It's Newsweek and The Daily Beast rankings. College Rankings from Newsweek and The Daily Beast give you everything you want to know about silly categories of colleges in the US. Most and least affordable Best party colleges Most conservative, most liberal Most beautiful, most stressful, happiest Utter …

Just a bit of fun – it’s the table of tables

Table of Tables Back in June Times Higher Education published its annual table of tables. Essentially it's a bit of a cheat in that it simply uses the results of the three domestic league tables to derive a score (the Sunday Times table, which isn't published until August or September, is ignored). As Peter Snow used to …

Fake Plastic Degrees

Easy come, easy go for fake degrees Previous posts have noted the problems with fake degrees and there have been some high profile politicians unaccountably caught up with fake degree scandals in recent times. My eye was caught recently by this piece on degrees issued by an institution which doesn't exist, Westfield University: Ann E. …

The Times, Guardian and Complete University Guide League Tables 2012-13

The three most recent UK University League Tables Given that searches for UK university league tables are among the most frequent reasons for visitors to the blog, particularly during Clearing, it seemed that another summary might come in useful. Three major league tables have been published during 2012 so far (Sunday Times is due next …

2012 Shanghai Jiao Tong World Rankings: Top 20 and UK placings

2012 Shanghai Jiao Tong World Rankings: Top 20 and UK placings Keep calm. Top 20 follows: 1 Harvard University 2 Stanford University 3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 4 University of California, Berkeley 5 University of Cambridge 6 California Institute of Technology 7 Princeton University 8 Columbia University 9 University of Chicago 10 University of …

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 …

Austerity in the USA

Savings needed at US Universities University World News. carries a piece by William Patrick Leonard, vice dean of SolBridge International School of Business in Daejeon, Republic of Korea, suggesting that US Higher education institutions need to rein in their costs. The traditional approaches to meeting financial shortfalls, raising tuition fees or increasing student numbers, are, …

True Crime on Campus §22: Surprise, surprise

More true crime on campus: some surprising occurrences  Surprising things can happen on campus. Fortunately, it's hard to catch our ever-vigilant Security team unawares... 07:15 Security received a report of a delivery driver stuck in the car park barriers at EMCC. Security attended and resolved the matter. 0500 Patrol Security spoke to an Ambulance crew outside …

Agent power and international student recruitment

Are agents too powerful? A recent Times Higher Education story on the use of agents by UK universities in international student recruitment noted: UK universities recruited more than 50,000 international students through commission payments to overseas agents last year, spending close to £60 million on the practice in 2010-11. Using data obtained under the Freedom …

On the real bottom line

Transnational initiatives pay dividends far greater than a share of the overseas student market Times Higher Education carries this piece (by me) on the real value of international activity: The British Council has predicted that most universities in the West - with the exception of some in Australia - will recruit markedly fewer international students …

Fast Food Degrees

KFC launches finger lickin' good honours degree A previous post some 18 months ago noted that Morrisons was to fund 20 students a year to undertake a business and management degree it is sponsoring. Before that there were reports of Wal-mart partnering with a US university and Harrods joining forces with Anglia Ruskin. Now there …