And the Best Executive M.B.A. Programs Are…

Working with Management Research Group and Critical Insights, we asked thousands of students and hundreds of companies to rank executive M.B.A. programs in a host of categories, with a focus on how well they develop management and leadership skills. The result is a ranking of 25 schools world-wide that takes into account the rigor needed to build tomorrow’s corporate leaders and C-suite executives.

Topping the list: Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, which ranked No. 1, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, which came in No. 2. The two schools have among the largest E.M.B.A. programs, with 406 students currently enrolled in Wharton’s two programs and 843 candidates in the seven Kellogg programs, including four international partnerships and a satellite campus in Miami.

What set Kellogg and Wharton apart? The schools got high marks from companies — nearly double those of their nearest competitors — which gave them a clear lead overall. And those stellar grades far outpaced their lower marks from students.

Source: Wall Street Journal

‘Doing What Works’ Website Adds New Guidance on Effective Teaching

What is “spacing” learning and how does it benefit teachers and students? Do students learn more when solved problems are alternated with problems to be solved? And how do “higher order” questions enhance student learning and help students articulate their answers?

Visitors to the U.S. Department of Education’s “Doing What Works” Web site can find out the answers to these questions and much more. Just click on http://dww.ed.gov, and enjoy an engaging and interactive experience with Psychology of Learning: How to Organize Your Teaching, the latest addition to the site, which will empower educators and administrators with research-based strategies to help instructors organize their teaching and improve student learning.

Source: U.S. Department of Education

Insights regarding undergraduate preference for lecture capture (PDF; 412 KB)

This research study set out to understand student attitudes toward the value of adding lecture capture to existing courses and to assess preferences for classes with a streaming option. A survey was sent to 29,078 undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in April 2008. Average response rate exceeded 25%. Of the survey participants, a significant number of undergraduates (47%) have taken a class in which lectures were recorded and made available online.
Respondents answered 10 multiple-choice questions related to their perspective regarding streaming lectures and preference for streaming content.

Source: UW E-Business Institute

See: I’ll Take My Lecture to Go, Please (Inside Higher Ed)

College Bookstores to Begin Selling eTextbooks on Demand

Soon students will be able to buy electronic textbooks at the college bookstore, using kiosks that will download files and burn them to CD’s. The kiosks will also offer the latest Hollywood movies, which the machines will be able to burn onto DVD’s on demand.

The National Association of College Stores announced today that it has formed a spinoff company, NACS Media Solutions, to broker the deals with publishers to support the new on-demand service.

Movies will be the first product offered at the kiosks, which are scheduled to appear at seven stores next month. The plan is to add digital textbooks to the kiosks starting next summer, says Charles Schmidt, a spokesman for the association.

Source: Wired Campus (Chronicle of Higher Education)

U.S. Department of Education Unveils College.gov

The U.S. Department of Education today unveiled College.gov, a new website that aims to motivate students with inspirational stories and information about planning, preparing and paying for college. Designed with students’ input and participation, College.gov was created by the U.S. Department of Education to be a go-to online resource for credible information about college that also provides real life experiences of peers who are already attending college.
…
College.gov delivers the following unique features:

• Inspiring videos of college students sharing their stories and experiences about how they overcame obstacles to achieve their college dreams;
• Fresh design picked by students that boasts a non-government look-and-feel;
• An interactive tool for students to create an “I’m going” personalized roadmap that details the steps to take to get to college;
• Content organized and presented in a way for students to easily find the answers to their higher education questions: Why Go? What to Do? and How to Pay?

Source: U.S. Department of Education

From the announcement:

In celebration of Constitution Day, the Library of Congress has compiled a variety of materials from across its collections. This year, the Library introduced two lesson plan that help students analyze drafts of the Constitution and Bill of Rights to discover the process involved in creating the new nation. New online activities for secondary students help students connect particular phrases and ideas set down in these two documents with the texts that preceded them. A third new online activity for elementary students helps them get acquainted with some of the words related to the founding documents of the United States. Explore these rich resources and features to learn more about one of America’s most important documents.

Source: LC

History Engine

The History Engine is an educational tool that gives students the opportunity to learn history by doing the work—researching, writing, and publishing—of a historian. The result is an ever-growing collection of historical articles or “episodes” that paints a wide-ranging portrait of life in the United States throughout its history and that is available to scholars, teachers, and the general public in our online database.

Source: University of Richmond

See: The Little Engine That Can (Inside Higher Ed)

Course Correction: How Digital Textbooks are Off Track and How to Set Them Straight

Textbooks are an essential but increasingly expensive part of obtaining a college degree. With students spending between $700 and $1,000 per year and prices rising faster than inflation, the need for a solution is increasingly urgent.

Digital textbooks are a promising way to lower costs for students. The digital format has the potential to cut production costs, increase options for students, and open up the market to more competition.

Digital textbooks are now beginning to gain a more prominent position in the textbooks marketplace, making it a critical time to ensure that they are on the right track. We are concerned, however, that digital textbooks are on the wrong track.

The Student PIRGs conducted this study to determine how digital textbooks can live up to their potential as a solution. Through a survey of 504 students from Oregon and Illinois and 50 commonly assigned textbook titles, we confirm three fundamental criteria – affordability, printing options, and accessibility. We found that publishers’ digital “e-textbooks” fail to meet these criteria, and that an emerging form of digital textbooks – open textbooks – are a perfect match.

+ Full Report (PDF; 1.6 MB)

Source: Student PIRGs

Patent Office Will Continue Reexamination of Blackboard’s Controversial Patent

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected a request by Blackboard Inc. for a temporary halt in the office’s review of a software patent the company holds concerning course-management systems.

This year Blackboard won a lawsuit in federal court against a rival software company, Desire2Learn, for violating the patent, though Desire2Learn has appealed the decision. Meanwhile, Desire2Learn had formally challenged the validity of the patent with the patent office, arguing that it is overly broad and covers technology that other companies had developed before Blackboard filed its patent. The patent office issued an initial verdict in March that rejected all 44 of the claims that make up Blackboard’s patent. But that review is “nonfinal,” meaning that the review is still underway.

Blackboard officials filed a request to the patent office in May asking that the review of the patent be put on hold until the patent lawsuit is fully resolved. The patent office denied the request this month.

IT Schools to Watch

These leading-edge graduate schools are moving at the pace of the IT workplace, delivering coursework that’s relevant to today’s IT professionals. Read profiles of 10 innovative schools, plus view listings of 56 top IT schools from across the country.

Source: Computerworld

Read brief summaries of past Democratic and Republican National Conventions.

PDF files.
Source: Humanities and Social Sciences, Library of Congress

CDC Releases 1918 Pandemic Flu Storybook

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released today an online storybook containing narratives from survivors, families, and friends about one of the largest scourges ever on human kind – the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed millions of people around the world. The storybook provides valuable insight for public health officials preparing for the possibility of another pandemic sometime in our future.

This year marks the 90th anniversary of the 1918 influenza pandemic. The internet storybook contains about 50 stories from individuals from 24 states around the country as well as photos and narrative videos from the storytellers.

+ Pandemic Influenza Storybook

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Student Files Are Exposed on Web Site

The Princeton Review, the test-preparatory firm, accidentally published the personal data and standardized test scores of tens of thousands of Florida students on its Web site, where they were available for seven weeks.

A flaw in configuring the site allowed anyone to type in a relatively simple Web address and have unfettered access to hundreds of files on the company’s computer network, including educational materials and internal communications.

Another test-preparatory company said it stumbled on the files while doing competitive research. This company provided The New York Times with the Web address of the internal files on the condition that it not be named. The Times informed the Princeton Review of the problem on Monday, and the company promptly shut off access to that portion of its site.

Source: Gainesville.com

From the guide:

The digital collections of the Library of Congress contain a wide variety of material associated with Woodrow Wilson. This resource guide compiles links to digital materials related to Wilson such as manuscripts, broadsides, government documents, images, sheet music, and films that are available throughout the Library of Congress Web site.

Source: LC

From the National Science Foundation:
Science and Engineering State Profiles: 2005-07
Material in XLS and PDF formats.

Source: NSF