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School Daze: Eye-Tracking Study Reveals What Earns Students’ Attention in Classroom

A new study contradicts the widely accepted belief that classroom attention peaks during the first 15 minutes of class and then generally tapers off. Instead, David Rosengrant, an associate professor of physics education at Kennesaw State University, discovered that classroom attention is not as linear as previously thought and is actually impacted by various factors throughout the duration of the lecture.

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Mary Bart August 14, 2012

Should Professors Use Facebook to Communicate with Students?

Nearly 85% of faculty have a Facebook account, two-thirds are on LinkedIn, and 50% are on Twitter according to research from Faculty Focus. But, professors’ use of social media shows we are behind the relationship curve when it comes to connecting with students. Only 32% have friended undergrad students and about half (55%) connect with some students after graduation.

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Kirk Wakefield February 27, 2012

More Than Six Million Students Learning Online, Study Finds

For the past nine years the Sloan Consortium and the Babson Survey Research Group have taken a look at the state of online learning in the United States. The 2011 survey reveals that the number of students learning online has now surpassed 6 million, with nearly one-third of all students in higher education taking at least one online course.

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Mary Bart December 2, 2011

Students Study about 15 Hours a Week, NSSE Finds

Findings released today show that on average, full-time college students study 15 hours a week. However, study time differed by academic majors, with seniors in engineering averaging about 19 hours per week, while their peers in the social sciences and business averaged around 14 hours per week.

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Mary Bart November 17, 2011

Pearson Launches OpenClass, a Free LMS

In a major move to increase access and collaboration in higher education, last week Pearson launched a free learning management system (LMS) delivered from the Cloud. Dubbed OpenClass it offers institutions and instructors the ability to engage and interact with their students using the collaborative technologies that students are embracing.

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Mary Bart October 18, 2011

Understanding the Potential Pitfalls of Social Media

Whether it’s the professor who creates Twitter backchannels in his courses, the admissions counselor who uses Facebook to engage prospective students, or the librarian who tweets about available resources in the library, higher education professionals have come up with a variety of creative ways to use social media both in and outside of the classroom.

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Mary Bart September 26, 2011

Web 2.0 Tools in the Classroom: Embracing the Benefits While Understanding the Risks

Earlier this year a UCLA student made a video tirade against Asian students and posted it to YouTube. She quickly removed the hateful clip, but it was too late. The damage was done.

Although an extreme case, it’s a good example of how inappropriate behavior can not only spread rapidly far beyond one’s circle of friends, but can damage a reputation for years to come. Students don’t always thinking about this, nor are they aware that employers now regularly use Google and social networks to check out prospective employees.

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Mary Bart June 22, 2011

Turnitin Study Examines ‘Copy and Paste’ Plagiarism

When students need to write a paper, where do they go? A study released last month on plagiarism found that social and user-generated websites are the most popular resources, followed by academic and homework-related sites. Cheat sites and paper mills comprised less than 15 percent of the total resources used and showed the most significant decline over the period examined.

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Mary Bart May 17, 2011

Survey Says 80 Percent of Faculty Use Social Media in Their Teaching

More than 80 percent of college faculty use some form of social media in their teaching, with online video by far the most popular application, according to a new survey from the Babson Survey Research Group and Pearson. The results were presented early this month during Cite 2011, Pearson’s 12th annual higher education technology conference.

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Mary Bart April 22, 2011

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