OSU plans for online onslaught with fee

This article is from The Columbus Dispatch

Ohio State University has no academic programs that students can take entirely online.

But it hopes to soon, which is why campus trustees recently approved a new fee that will charge online students for what they use — and spare them the cost of services they don’t touch. The net savings for Ohioans will be worth at least $150 a semester.

Students from outside Ohio would save even more — roughly $7,400 a semester — because they wouldn’t have to pay out-of-state tuition.

“It will save students a lot of money,” said Geoff Chatas, Ohio State’s senior vice president for business and finance.

The Economic Advantage of Online Education

Susan Gilbert, Dean of the School of Business and Management at Thomas Edison State College, wrote this article for the Huffington Post. It discusses some of the advantages of online education. Here is an excerpt: 

When an economist refers to a "revolution", he/she means a dramatic change, not a battle; as in Industrial Revolution, Agricultural Revolution, Information Revolution. This change is often attributed to the introduction of a technology that changes the way things are done; e.g., a reaper, a steam engine, a personal computer. However, as Peter Drucker pointed out in 1999, the real revolution and resultant cost savings that occur in an industry do so as a result of industrial engineering and the teachings of Adam Smith, rather than the technology itself. (The Wealth of Nations, 1776). Yes, a sewing machine may increase the seamstress' productivity from 1 shirt to 5 shirts per day; but it is the assembly line and specialization of labor that can magnify those results. Can we apply these lessons of Adam Smith to higher education? Can colleges be compared to tee shirt factories? These are the burning questions of our times, at least for those of us in higher education.

Distance education has been around for nearly 30 years, if we go back to the first Computer Assisted Learning Center in 1982; and web-based services in the area of education
date back at least 15 years. Blackboard was founded in 1997. Around 2000, I began using Webex for Sunday night help sessions with my executive MBA students. I recall the freedom of "working" in my pajamas (no web camera, please) coupled with personal savings of time and gasoline for me and the students. There were no labor savings to the institution; the technology provided greater access.

Click on the link to read the full article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-gilbert/online-education_b_1282646.html

"The Advantages of Online Education for Professionals"

This article by careerealism addresses three of the most prominent advantages of online education for professionals. Here is an excerpt: 

How many hours are left in the day after work?

Is it enough to go to college?

Maybe not if you have to commute, but if it simply meant logging on to your school’s website, you could complete a simple reading assignment in the amount of time to watch a television show.

An estimated 6.1 million colleges take online courses, according to a report by the Babson Survey Research Center. The flexibility of online school has allowed working individuals to rise ahead, procuring a better position at a current company or even transitioning into a better working environment. Online education has really changed the game for military families and single parents as well. For these students, taking courses over the Internet really saves time and even money.

Click the link to read the full article! 

'An Opportunity, Not A Problem', Says School With Only 26 English-Speaking Students

This article by Lucy Sherriff of the Huffington Post is about a school providing a flourishing learning environment despite the obstacle of having many students of different linguistic backgrounds. Here is an excerpt:

A primary school has 26 out of 700 pupils who speak English as their native language but this has not stopped the school from receiving positive feedback from inspections body Ofsted and ranking high in league tables.

The rest of the pupils, who amount to 96.3% of the Bradford school's population, use another language, a Freedom of Information (FOI) request revealed.

According to the FOI response, primary school children in Bradford speak 140 languages, ranging from Polish to Punjabi.

Despite the difficulties the school may face with communication and language barriers, the school ranks in the top 25% in the country based on its exam results. Nearly 80% of Year 6 pupils gaining the required English and maths standards, the Telegraph reported, a figure higher than the national average.

News: University Libraries Receive Technological Upgrade

This article by Andy Wright from the New York Times discusses new library technology in California.

San Francisco State University has been renovating and expanding its library since 2008, and now the overhauled building is finally finished and partly open to students. But some who enter its newly pristine doors may notice something lacking: books. In a move that has thrilled some university employees and horrified others, only 25 percent of the collection of more than a million books and other materials will be available for browsing. San Francisco State is not alone; experts say there is a national trend toward digitizing university libraries.

McGraw-Hill Higher Education and Cambridge University Press Partner to Distribute Content for Digital and Traditional English Language Learning Programs

This article is from Market Watch The Wall Street Journal

McGraw-Hill Higher Education today announced a partnership with Cambridge University Press that will expand the reach of McGraw-Hill's leading "English as a Second Language" (ESL) teaching and learning content in the United States. This agreement brings together two leaders in education to further support the needs of English language learners, preparing students for success in an academic or career setting.

McGraw-Hill publishes more than 150 ESL titles, including Interactions/Mosaic, All-Star, Grammar, Form and Function and Excellent English, that support English instruction through both digital programs and traditional instructional models. Beginning in March, Cambridge University Press will be the exclusive distributor of all McGraw-Hill ESL content in the United States. Bringing together McGraw-Hill Higher Education and Cambridge University Press's full range of ESL titles will meet the diverse needs of learners across the field.

Wayne State University Selects SciQuest to Enhance Purchasing Processes

This article is from Market Watch The Wall Street Journal

A leading provider of on-demand strategic procurement and supplier management solutions, announced today that Wayne State University (WSU) has selected SciQuest's solution to gain greater control over individual business transactions and enhance overall strategic purchasing.

WSU, Michigan's only urban public research university, offers more than 400 academic programs to nearly 32,000 students through 13 schools and colleges. The university's procurement team, which is responsible for purchasing all goods and services supporting academic and research projects, oversees approximately $190 million in spending annually.

Linguamatics, Brandwatch and University of Sussex Announce Project to Enhance Language Processing of Big Data

This article  is from Market Watch The Wall Street Journal 

Linguamatics, Brandwatch and the University of Sussex are pleased to announce a joint project funded by the UK's Technology Strategy Board to address challenges faced by automated language processing software in harnessing diverse data sources. The project forms part of a broader Technology Strategy Board initiative focusing on enabling technologies to harness "big data" for economic growth.

The development will improve automatic extraction of information from scientific papers, news or social media for applications in research and development, marketing, and competitive intelligence. Dr David Milward, Linguamatics CTO, points out: "Good quality vocabularies are a key part of 'intelligent' text mining. This project will allow us to develop vocabularies much faster, and adapt them efficiently for new applications."

The current generation of language processing has had considerable success in extracting useful information from unstructured text, whether this is research literature or social media. However, adapting to a new domain is often a laborious process, with respect both to the type of data (e.g. newswire vs. patent literature) and to the terminology used in a given domain (e.g. in medical practice vs. pharmaceutical research). Humans can perform these tasks on small data sets, but face a huge challenge in the face of massively increasing amounts of electronic text. The EVOKES project, which stands for "Exploitation of Diverse Data via Automatic Adaptation of Knowledge Extraction Software" will exploit distributional similarity techniques developed by the University of Sussex. The project will run for 18 months.

Editors' notes:

About Linguamatics

Linguamatics is the leader in deploying natural language processing (NLP) based text mining for complex, high-value problem solving. Used by nine of the world's Top-10 pharmaceutical companies, and other prestigious commercial, academic and government organizations, Linguamatics operates globally, with offices in the UK and USA. 

About Brandwatch

Social networks and the rest of the Web have become massive indicators of consumer influence, market insight and brand reputation. Launched in 2007, Brandwatch provides one of the world's leading tools for monitoring, capturing and analyzing social media. 

About University of Sussex

The University was first in the new wave of UK universities founded in the 1960s and is now a leading teaching and research institution. Sussex research has been formally recognized as world leading, confirming the University among the leading research universities in the UK. 

About the Technology Strategy Board

The Technology Strategy Board is a business-led government body which works to create economic growth by ensuring that the UK is a global leader in innovation. Sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Technology Strategy Board brings together business, research and the public sector supporting and accelerating the development of innovative products and services to meet market needs, tackle major societal challenges and help build the future economy.