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Katisha Smith writes: "Here are 12 pioneering Black American librarians you’ve probably never heard of, but should definitely know. However, this is not an exhaustive list and represents only a fraction of the black librarians who have made significant contributions to librarianship. Hopefully, learning more about these library pioneers will inspire further exploration of other trailblazing Black American librarians."
Via Mary Reilley Clark
Occupying one of the most lucrative job positions in the enterprise, data scientists must keep their skills fresh in the workplace. Here’s how.
With a 56% increase in US job openings within the past year, data scientists hold the title of the most promising job in America for 2019, according to a recent LinkedIn report. Data scientists have been gaining momentum in the tech world in the past decade, also topping Glassdoor’s list of the Best Jobs in America for the past four years.
Higher education institutions can close the achievement gap among their students through data-driven communication and planning. Higher education advisors are finding new ways to use data analytics to communicate, strategize and execute graduation plans for traditionally underserved students. At Georgia State University, modern data collection tools give college counselors crucial academic and financial information, allowing them to make more informed suggestions to help their students succeed.
Libraries have long counted up the books on their shelves to show their value. That meant Harvard University’s library (with 18.9-million books) was clearly superior to Duke University’s (with 6.1-million volumes) or University of California at Riverside’s (with a mere 3 million titles).
These days, though, libraries are finding new ways to measure their worth. They’re counting how many times students use electronic library resources or visit in person, and comparing that to how well the students do in their classes and how likely they are to stay in school and earn a degree. And many library leaders are finding a strong correlation, meaning that students who consume more library materials tend to be more successful academically.
May 2019 marks five years since I completed the practicum to earn a Master of Science degree in Library Media Education (LME) from Western Kentucky University. The LME Practicum requires 120 field hours—with 40 of these hours being completed in a school library media/educational technology center under the supervision of an experienced library media/educational technology specialist. The goal of the LME Practicum is for graduate students to be able to apply library media education skills in instruction, technology, collaboration, and administration under the supervision of a certified school librarian. Performance is assessed using the supervising media specialist evaluation, video conferencing, student time log, practicum evidence presentation, and a practicum reflection. Not much has changed regarding the practicum and its requirements since my experience five years ago. What has changed is the fact that I am no longer the one completing the practicum. Now, I am the supervising librarian.
M.A.—$20,000 dollars of student debt, 14 months, one thesis, two internships, $1,500 dollars worth of textbooks, and countless sleepless nights later and I finally earned those two little letters following my name. It wasn’t until three semesters into my degree, after spending $1,000 dollars merely renting my textbooks that I discovered my University’s ebook library. To be clear, I didn’t just stumble upon it either. After learning about open educational resources (OER) at the HEeD Think Tank last spring (now UPCEA’s eDesign Collaborative), I spent hours doing my own personal research on my university’s open access policy and scouring the library website. Eventually, I was able to find all but three of my 11 textbooks for my master’s degree in educational technology freely available on the library website, not to mention plenty of other materials (e.g., case studies and articles I had purchased over the years).
NEW YORK — At New York City’s Urban Assembly Maker Academy high school in lower Manhattan, two things immediately stand out. First, its teachers are rarely standing at the front of the classroom dispensing facts and figures for students to dutifully transcribe. Instead, they’re constantly on the move, going from table to table facilitating group discussions and providing feedback as students work. Second, the students reflect the racial diversity of the city. Within one of the nation’s most segregated school systems, Maker Academy has attracted a mix of black, Latino, white and Asian students in which no single group makes up less than 10 percent or more than 46 percent of the population.
The study by the Babson Survey Research Group, Freeing the Textbook: Educational Resources in U.S. Higher Education, 2018, was supported by a grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and is based on responses from more than 4,000 faculty and department chairs. The study shows improvements in OER awareness, and growing concern among faculty regarding the cost of course materials.
59% of U.S. teens have been bullied or harassed online, and a similar share says it's a major problem for people their age. At the same time, teens mostly think teachers, social media companies and politicians are failing at addressing this issue.
This article is part of a series on innovative teaching methods in higher education. Check back for more stories in the coming weeks.
Like many of her peers, Ann Wai-Yee Kwong struggled in statistics while working towards a bachelor's degree in psychology at UC Berkeley. But because she is legally blind, she had an added challenge of not being able to see the diagrams and notes projected in the lecture hall or assigned for homework.
The bundle gets a bad rap. Want to look smart the next time you are on stage participating in another academic panel of dubious value. Just say something like “the future of higher ed is unbundling”. Trust me, nobody will argue with you. I know, as “unbundling” is one of my panel go to catch phrases when I can’t think of something actually smart to say about higher education. But maybe those in the room should argue with the pro-unbundlers.
California could be the first state to create a statewide, online community college system targeting 2.5 million workers who need — but don't have — a college degree.
Via EDTECH@UTRGV
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America is suffering through two insidious and deadly pandemics, one brought forth by a novel virus and the other by a long-overdue reckoning of the intransigent racial and ethnic disparity at every level within all of our systems. Nowhere is this more evident than in our public schools, where nearly 50 percent of children come from communities of color, and with nearly one-third of Black children and one-quarter of Hispanic children living at or below the poverty level. It is precisely these students who are trapped in the crosshairs of both pandemics: the coronavirus having laid bare inequities in health risk, access to virtual education platforms and basic safety both in and outside of their homes—all factors compounded by the profoundly damaging effects of poverty and racism.
Accessibility is a big deal. We include statements about accessibility in our syllabi and on our institutional websites. We also need to ensure that we comply with the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act of 2008 (ADAAA), and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, as amended in 1998, and that learners with disabilities have “equal access” to online course content.
Several Twin Cities library systems are considering an “open libraries” model that would give patrons access to books, computers and other resources by themselves at times when the library isn’t open and staffed. Two west metro libraries already use the idea on a small scale. The setup relies on technology — via a central management system — to let people enter the library, check out items and log onto computers — all while video monitors record their actions. There’s a phone connected to a central library or an on-call librarian so patrons can ask questions. Automated systems announce when the library is closing, flick the lights off and on and can even operate amenities like a gas fireplace on a schedule.
Welcome to Teaching, a free weekly newsletter from The Chronicle of Higher Education. This week: - Beckie describes how some colleges and professors are using Michele Norris’s Race Card Project as a teaching tool.
- Beth shares readers' examples of engaged scholarship.
- We point to some recent articles you may have missed.
Apparently Stanford’s administration was publicly shamed enough to walk back its announcement that they can’t possibly afford to spend money on their university press anymore because its $26 billion endowment isn’t yielding enough cash and something’s gotta give. (Those bribes aren’t helping the balance sheet, either, dammit.) Sharing scholarship is apparently too great a luxury for a university that has the fourth largest endowment among US higher ed institutions. The press has been given a year’s reprieve in hopes we will forget how angry we got when we heard about the plan.Apparently Stanford’s administration was publicly shamed enough to walk back its announcement that they can’t possibly afford to spend money on their university press anymore because its $26 billion endowment isn’t yielding enough cash and something’s gotta give. (Those bribes aren’t helping the balance sheet, either, dammit.) Sharing scholarship is apparently too great a luxury for a university that has the fourth largest endowment among US higher ed institutions. The press has been given a year’s reprieve in hopes we will forget how angry we got when we heard about the plan.
Students at our public, urban community college were experiencing difficulties finding correct, consistent answers to their questions about navigating college processes, information students needed to succeed in school. These difficulties were fueled not only by our students’ backgrounds—they are often the first generation in their family to attend college, may require additional academic preparation, or lack support for their higher education dreams—but also by the siloed information environment prevalent in academia. When our college president realized the extent of student challenges in this area, she looked to the college’s librarians, campus experts in knowledge organization and provision, for direction with a knowledge management initiative to support our students.
Knowledge management can be broadly thought of as the ways institutional knowledge is gathered, organized, and made available in coordinated ways that are useful to the organization. Along with Student Affairs, the Library co-led the development of a collegewide knowledge base, the goal of which was to provide students and other users, including college faculty and staff, with the correct answer to common questions. The Library hired a part-time metadata librarian originally just for this project, but that librarian was later appointed full-time faculty while continuing to manage daily operation of the knowledge base.
Now in its fifth year, the collaborative Ask LaGuardia knowledge base has become an institution at the college. Usage has grown. Librarians involved in knowledge
There is currently a dearth of research on African American college students and their interactions in academic libraries. The purpose of this quantitative study is to investigate whether African American college students view academic libraries as welcoming places and to identify factors that are most influential in their perceptions of welcomeness. Adopting the theoretical lens of “library in the life of the user,” we administered a national online survey questionnaire to 160 black college students attending non-historically black colleges and universities in the United States. The survey data were analyzed by employing correlation coefficient and multiple regression analysis to test our hypotheses. The analytical results showed that participants felt welcomed in academic libraries, and library as place and information needs were significant factors that affected students’ perceptions of welcomeness. Our findings suggest that library patrons are important actors in constituting the atmospheric character of the library.
While the role of the library has evolved to provide services from internet access to journalism programmes, countless libraries still face closure, as civic leaders fail to recognise the critical social, intellectual, cultural, and economic roles they play
On April 4th, Last week Lou Pugliese joined the Future Trends Forum to describe a forthcoming research project he’d just completed. I’d heard about the research secondhand and was intrigued. One text described it as looking into institutional return on investment (ROI) for digital learning. So I convinced Lou, senior innovation fellow and managing director technology innovation Action Lab at Arizona State University, also co-creator of Blackboard, to appear on the Forum and give the community an advance look into the report’s findings, before they were published:
New survey data challenge perceptions about first-generation college students, showing strong academic engagement and commitment to college. But the group lagged behind their peers in social comfort and resiliency.
I’m working currently on a book about why people choose college. In the course of the research, I’ve listened to hundreds of students tell their story about how they made the college—or any postsecondary education—decision.
Many of the students I’ve listened to were, at one time or another, college dropouts. They left for a multitude of reasons, from family needs and responsibilities to medical and financial hardship, as well as a lack of purpose for being at college in the first place.
In a rapidly diversifying district with a largely white teaching force, how do you foster mutual trust and understanding? Send teachers to school.
By Carly Berwick, May 19, 2017 One day this past March, a middle school student placed a new Air Jordan on his desk at school in Montgomery County, Maryland. The boy, who is Latino, became fixated on the shoe, rubbing the leather and fingering the laces. His teacher, who is white, asked him to put it away, but the boy refused. He became “combative,” according to the teacher, and a tug-of-war ensued. Security was called to remove the shoe.
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