What's Happening In Technology Sectors
UT-KNOXVILLE STUDENTS can reserve study space
on the fly with a swipe of their campus ID cards.
:: NEWS
SELF-SERVICE SAVES TIME.
With about 12,500 students, Columbia
College Chicago schedules more than
1,000 student appointments a week
across campus. To streamline the
process, the school has deployed
TimeTrade's Enterprise Scheduling
Application campuswide, enabling
students to self-schedule time with
advisers and staff across Admissions,
Student Financial Services, the Advising
Center, the Portfolio Center, the
Learning Center, and more. According
to administrators, the new web-based
system is saving each department an
average of six hours per week; students
are spending 66 percent less
time scheduling meetings, and no-shows
have been eliminated.
GUIDING ADULTS TO ONLINE
EDUCATION. The President's Forum,
a consortium of traditional and nontraditional
adult-serving colleges and
universities focused on online education,
has launched an initiative called
Transparency by Design, aimed at helping
adult learners find online education
institutions that support their professional
and personal goals. Via the new
website, the initiative provides information
on program-level learning outcomes,
how outcomes are being measured, and
how students have performed on those
measures. Still in development are modules
that will provide student satisfaction
data, progress rates, and other stats
on each member institution participating
in the initiative. American InterContinental University Online is a
charter member of the site.
TEXTBOOK RENTAL PARTNERSHIP. McGraw-Hill Education
and online textbook rental company
Chegg.com have announced the launch
of a pilot shared-revenue program in
which McGraw-Hill will provide new
print textbooks directly to Chegg for
its online rental business. Both companies
will receive revenue for each
rental through the life of each textbook,
and students will benefit from
the expanded supply of textbooks
available from Chegg's rental service.
The pilot program will be used to
determine the economics of renting
textbooks in a live-market test.
ROOM SCHEDULING AND
ACCESS. Bringing together technology
from three different vendors, The
University of Tennessee-Knoxville has
created an integrated room reservation
and building access solution for its
James A. Haslam II Business Building.
A network of 42 kiosks at the entrance
of classrooms, conference rooms, and
team room suites throughout the building
allows students and faculty to view
room schedules at a glance, reserve
rooms, see the latest college and university
news, and gain scheduled access to
rooms-- all with the swipe of a university
ID card. NetSimplicity's Meeting
Room Manager web scheduling engine
handles the building's room scheduling,
and the Cardax door access system
from Gallagher Security Management
Systems controls building access. Janitor
Joe from Coactive Systems acts as
middleware to integrate the Cardax and
Meeting Room Manager databases and
manage communications between the
two systems.
NEW LMS FOR SJSU. San Jose
State University (CA) has selected
the Desire2Learn enterprise eLearning
solution for campuswide implementation.
The school is looking to increase
adoption of its eLearning initiatives
while maximizing financial resources,
reports William Maguire, VP of IT
and CIO. Read more here.
OPEN SOURCE RESOURCE. Edu1world.org, an online professional
networking site for higher education
technology professionals and practitioners,
has launched an open source
community to connect successful open
source users on campuses worldwide
with colleagues looking for guidance
on a wide variety of products and
providers. The vendor-neutral community
is free for employees of higher ed
institutions; vendors and consultants
may also join for a monthly fee.
:: PEOPLE
PRESIDENTIAL
MOVES. Northwestern
University (IL) President
Henry Bienen
has retired, and will
now serve as vice chairman of the
Rasmussen College (online) Board of
Directors. Morton Schapiro has taken
the helm as Northwestern's president,
coming from a nine-year stint as
president of Williams College (MA).
