While the focus here is on K-12 school systems, Higher Ed would be wise to take note of this new federal program regarding digital textbooks:

FCC Chairman Genachowski's Remarks: http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2012/db0201/DOC-312248A1.pdf

FCC Fact Sheet: http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2012/db0201/DOC-312244A1.pdf

FCC Digital Textbook Playbook: http://transition.fcc.gov/files/Digital_Textbook_Playbook.pdf

Digital Textbook Playbook Homepage: http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/digital-textbook-playbook

This Center for American Progress and Delta Project report provides an overview of how business analytics could be used to improve the return on investment in higher education instruction.

“This is as important a time as there has ever been for the CIO to have a seat at the table with the president or provost of an institution. It is also a key time for the IT organization to be seen as a partner. It is absolutely essential for the IT organization to run first-class, cost-effective, efficient services to support the institutional missions… The IT organization can help the college or university balance centralization and commoditization, address funding challenges, and preserve knowledge.”
― Michael A. McRobbie, President, Indiana University

read more

This guide was published by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) as a clear and easy-to-use statement of fair and reasonable approaches to fair use developed by and for librarians who support academic inquiry and higher education. The Code was developed in partnership with the Center for Social Media and the Washington College of Law at American University. Winston Tabb, Johns Hopkins University Dean of University Libraries and Museums.

The Code identifies the relevance of fair use in eight recurrent situations for librarians:

• Supporting teaching and learning with access to library materials via digital technologies
• Using selections from collection materials to publicize a library’s activities, or to create physical and virtual exhibitions
• Digitizing to preserve at-risk items
• Creating digital collections of archival and special collections materials
• Reproducing material for use by disabled students, faculty, staff, and other appropriate users
• Maintaining the integrity of works deposited in institutional repositories
• Creating databases to facilitate non-consumptive research uses (including search)
• Collecting material posted on the web and making it available

In this paper, by authors Amy L. Ostrom, Mary Jo Bitner, Kevin A. Burkhard,  the Center For American Progress takes the position that higher education is a service, or a service system, and that transformative initiatives aiming to address the types of problems noted earlier will benefit from viewing them through a service lens. A service lens puts the customer at the center of improvement and innovation initiatives, considers the customer experience to be a foundation for analyzing and making enhancements, and assumes the customer is a co-creator of value.

Senate HELP Committee Hearing on "Innovations in College Affordability" on Feb. 2, 2012, at 10:20 am EST:

WITNESSES: Education Undersecretary Martha Kanter; Kevin Carey, Education Policy Director for Education Sector; Charlie Earl, Executive Director of the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, Olympia, Wash.; Robert Mendenhall, President of the Western Governors University, Salt Lake City, Utah; and Carol Quillen, President of Davidson College, Davidson, N.C.

LOCATION: 430 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C.

Webcast:  http://www.help.senate.gov/hearings/hearing/?id=a3f52183-5056-9502-5de6-a9c486cfa17d

Tune in to the next IAM Online, which will take place Wednesday, February 8, 2012, at 3 p.m. EST, to learn more about "Policy and Privacy Considerations for Identity and Access Management in a Federated World" with speakers Steven Carmody (Brown University) and Ken Klingenstein (Internet2). Rodney Petersen (EDUCAUSE) will moderate this discussion. For more details, or to access archived sessions, visit http://www.incommon.org/iamonline.

read more

This annotated bibliography aggregates a wide range of resources related to analytics in higher education, from basic introductory material to more complex treatments of sub-topics. It also contains links to organizations involved with analytics.

Each year, the Horizon Report describes six areas of emerging technology that will have significant impact on higher education and creative expression over the next one to five years. The areas of emerging technology cited for 2012 are:

Time to adoption: One Year or Less

• Mobile Apps
• Tablet Computing

Time to adoption: Two to Three Years

• Game-based Learning
• Learning Analytics

Time to adoption: Four to Five Years

• Gesture-based Computing
• Internet of Things

ELI has released a new white paper, Analytics in Higher Education: Establishing a Common Language, by Angela van Barneveld, Kimberly Arnold, and John P. Campbell, Purdue University.

read more