academhack

And the word for obvious conclusion of the week goes to John William Pope Center for Higher Education which concludes that sharing syllabi online is a good idea. Really? You’re kidding sharing knowledge actually helps?
Seriously is there a reason to not do this? Are you really going to suggest that education is fostered by being [...]

One of the things I am trying for the second time this semester, is assigning wiki contributions as part of my class. I tried this last semester with mixed results. I created a wiki and suggested topics for students to contribute on, and had the class work on it as a whole, with the expectation [...]

I have spent some time (actually too much time) over the last three-four weeks figuring out all the details to my syllabi for this coming semester. I will be teaching two courses which I have not taught before (one grad, one undergrad) although the topics are similar, meaning that I didn’t have to design two [...]

The short version: Yale now offers a range of course materials online free to the public. While currently the number of courses is rather limited, the scope of materials for each class is substantial and more thorough than current alternatives. The Yale Online Initiative isn’t perfect, but it is a huge step in the right [...]

Let’s say you have a bunch of content on a Blackboard system, and have decided that their copyright policies are bad, or that it is a clunky, inadequate CMS, but you don’t want to leave all your hard work behind. Never fear. The University of North Carolina has come to the rescue with the Blackboard [...]

According to the Harvard Crimson newspaper, students are being prohibited by the bookstore from copying down textbook information. Why would a bookstore want to prevent this? Because students then use this information to purchase the books for cheaper online. Sounds like good business/financial smarts to me?
Seriously the textbook market is such a racket of copyright/intellectual [...]

A while ago I mentioned on this blog, and on another site, that the one computer program/application that I want that does not exist is a syllabus creator. I want something that is more than a word processor. A program that will ask me the range of dates for class, the number of [...]

I have said here before that I think most of what professors want to accomplish online for their classes is easily done by a blog. That’s it no WebCT or Blackboard needed. A blog can handle making a syllabus accessible, updating assignments, providing links to outside information, and with a little creative effort, [...]

Via Kairosnews I ran into eoffice hours today. Basically this is a free version of WebCT of Blackbaord. You can sign up at the site and they will host the online portions of your class. You can have discussion boards, assignments, syllabus, all of the things you are used to with the [...]

So this is the second post in my series on how to teach a digital game for your higher ed class (if you are just joining us you might want to tune into the first episode here.