If you build it, will they come?

Note: This is a presentation I gave in February 2010 at the 27th Annual Academic Chairperson’s Conference. It’s fairly long, by blog standards, the equivalent of six double spaced pages. A retrospective analysis of the launch of a new online only program, it discusses what I call the Field of Dreams model of program development. [...]

too little too late

It’s no surprise that administrators at the Association of American Colleges and Universities’ conference this month felt that expectations about research and tenure were interfering with the quality of learning. What is surprising is that the solutions proposed are so timid. Fewer lectures will help but it won’t save us.

the price of Twitter

Over at the New Yorker, George Packer has an interesting and important essay about social media and its effects on culture, particularly the news. “Any journalist who cheerleads uncritically for Twitter is essentially asking for his own destruction,” he says. I’m not sure he’s right about that, but there are lots of hidden costs we [...]