Top 7 Campus Technology Stories in August

From virtual classrooms to Pokémon Go, here's what was trending on our website last month.

1) Making Virtual Classrooms More Interactive
Harvard and UC Berkeley share two different approaches to helping online business school students feel like they're attending class in person.

2) Taking Student Orientation Online
This state university turned to software it already uses — its learning management system — to transform new-student orientation.

3) 7 Best Practices for Deploying Lecture Capture Campuswide
Technology leaders from universities with large lecture capture implementations share their advice for rolling out the technology at scale.

4) An LMS to Support 'Gameful' Learning
Seeking to bring the qualities of well-designed games to pedagogical assessment, the University of Michigan created a learning management system that uses gaming elements such as competition, badges and unlocks to provide students with a personalized pathway through their courses.

5) Why Today's MOOCs Are Not Innovative
At the Campus Technology conference in Boston, Stephen Downes explained the difference between innovation and transformation.

6) Kentucky State U Offers Free E-Textbooks for All Students
Beginning this fall, Kentucky State University will provide all of its students with free e-textbooks for their courses in an effort to boost student success rates by providing equitable access to course materials.

7) Cal State LA Launches Pokémon Go Health Walk
To promote student health and wellness, the university created a walking path throughout the campus that incorporates the augmented reality game.

About the Author

Rhea Kelly is editor in chief for Campus Technology, THE Journal, and Spaces4Learning. She can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • a cloud, an AI chip, and a padlock interconnected by circuit-like lines

    Report: Attackers Increasingly Targeting Cloud, AI Systems

    CrowdStrike’s 2025 Threat Hunting Report found that AI tools are being weaponized and directly targeted, while cloud intrusions surge 136% in early 2025.

  • student and teacher using AI-enabled laptops, with rising arrows on a graph

    Student and Teacher AI Use Jumps Nearly 30% in One Year

    In a recent survey from learning platform Quizlet, 85% of high school and college students and teachers said they use AI technology, compared to 66% in 2024 — a 29% increase year over year.

  • geometric grid of colorful faculty silhouettes using laptops

    Top 3 Faculty Uses of Gen AI

    A new report from Anthropic provides insights into how higher education faculty are using generative AI, both in and out of the classroom.

  • magnifying glass highlighting a human profile silhouette, set over a collage of framed icons including landscapes, charts, and education symbols

    AWS, DeepBrain AI Launch AI-Generated Multimedia Content Detector

    Amazon Web Services (AWS) and DeepBrain AI have introduced AI Detector, an enterprise-grade solution designed to identify and manage AI-generated content across multiple media types. The collaboration targets organizations in government, finance, media, law, and education sectors that need to validate content authenticity at scale.