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Josipa Roksa and Richard Arum stirred up a great deal of conversation at SCUP–46. (SCUP members, and others who attended, can view video of Roksa and Arum’s plenary session in the SCUP–46 proceedings.) In this Change magazine article, they report on their research about what’s happening in the lives of recent college grads.

In this study, we explore how recent college graduates have navigated transitions into adult roles in this time of economic crisis. While these transitions are often rife with difficulties, college graduates today are facing unique obstacles in cutting a path toward independence and economic self-reliance.

These challenges are worthy of note, as early transitions tend to shape long-term trajectories, giving initial outcomes lifelong consequences. In his pioneering study of children born in the 1920s (i.e., shortly before or during the Great Depression), Glen Elder documented the profound effects that early experiences of economic hardships can have on human development, not only in the formative years but also throughout life (Elder, 1974).

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At This School, You Must Incorporate to Graduate

[The] global training program called the Founder Institute, which was started in 2009. For tuition of less than $1,000, students attend classes with one goal in mind: to create a fully operational company. In fact, they are required to incorporate before they can graduate.

To be accepted, students don’t need to have a fully baked idea, but they must take a test that the institute says can predict their entrepreneurial success. They can keep their day jobs while attending class, but that does not mean the program is easy. The workload is grueling, and 60 percent of the students fail to graduate.

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A number of comments on the SCUP–47 evaluations indicated attendees enjoyment of more active learning in conference sessions and workshops. Here’s a related piece, mentioning the conference, in University Business magazine.

At a panel discussion hosted by Steelcase, a 100-year-old Grand Rapids, Michigan-based company, following SCUP-Chicago, experts shared their experiences with the role of interactive design in higher education.

“How do we prepare the next generation to navigate this constant change?” asked Trung Le, a principal and pioneer at Cannon Design's education practice. Le advocates for incorporating multiple learning styles in the design of education environments. By breaking down walls in physical spaces, and incorporating elements that foster both interaction and individual deeper thinking, higher education institutions can strengthen the way both their students and faculty engage in learning.

Le noted the Adler School of Professional Psychology’s Chicago campus as one example (the school also has a Vancouver, British Columbia campus). 

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At SCUP–47, the awards jurors took the time to make several presentations about themes and trends they observed among the awards applications. We captured the remarks of three jurors on (handheld) video. These are the remarks of Victor E. Sidy, Head of School and Dean, Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, served up from YouTube. An organizing slide from his presentation is also shown below. (Click on them to see a larger version.)

He shares juror observations, using examples from award recipients and from those which did not receive awards (not each project illustrated in this talk received an award) about some of the best new trends and campus buildings this year.

A Summary Slide

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At SCUP–47, the awards jurors took the time to make several presentations about themes and trends they observed among the awards applications. We captured the remarks of three jurors on (handheld) video. These are the remarks of Cathrine Blake, Associate Director/Landscape Architect, Stanford University, served up from YouTube. Some of the slides from her presentation are also shown below. (Click on them to see a larger version.)

She shares juror observations, using examples from award recipients and from those which did not receive awards (not each project illustrated in this talk received an award) about:

• Sustainable landscape planning;
• Transit Transitions; and
• Urban campuses.

Some Summary Slides

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At SCUP–47, the awards jurors took the time to make several presentations about themes and trends they observed among the awards applications. We captured the remarks of three jurors on (handheld) video. These are the remarks of James Goblirsch, Vice President, HGA Architects and Engineers, served up from YouTube. Some of the slides from his presentation are also shown below. (Click on them to see a larger version.)

He shares juror observations, using examples from award recipients and from those which did not receive awards (not each project illustrated in this talk received an award) about:

• A new baseline for sustainability;
• Learning space evolution; and
• Community space.

Some Summary Slides

A solid majority of faculty members (58 percent) described themselves as filled more with fear than with excitement ... . Meanwhile, academic technology administrators —defined as “individuals with responsibility for some aspect of academic technology at their institutions”—were overwhelmingly enthused; 80 percent said the online boom excited more than frightened them.

A new study—quite timely in light of the University of Virginia presidency situation and its relationship to online learning—shows faculty more fearful of online learning than tech administrators. Here’s an Inside Higher Ed article about it and here’s the PDF of the study. Inside Higher Ed is having a free webcast about this report on July 10.

Faculty and tech administrators also disagree on assessment of online instruction:

Meanwhile, online courses tend to generate more data from which instructors and their overseers can glean quantitative insights on student engagement and the degree to which a professor has succeeded in meeting specific learning objectives.

Administrators seemed more confident that their institutions were indeed supplying their online instructors with good quality-assessment tools; more than 50 percent of administrators believed their institutions had such tools in place, compared to 25 percent of faculty members.

“It’s cool to be a drop out these days.“ ... “It’s the dying companies that value college degrees. You have to think beyond that piece of paper.”

-> A College Education on the Cheap? Tech Start-Ups Take on Higher Ed is a short read from CNBC.com. The reporter speaks with Sebastian Thrun of Udacity (formerly of Stanford) and Eren Bali of Udemy. Toward the end of the interview, Thrun makes the point that—education aside—what these large, freely offered MOOC-type course offerings may do really well is act as a search engine for intellectual and creative talent that might otherwise never have a chance to be recognized:

“It’s not necessarily about educating, but discovering,” Thrun says, “We can reach and then develop talent that most universities cannot.”

Hmm. MITx may well be MIT’s way of doing the same thing. What do you think? 

Related opportunity. Note that the theme of the January–March 2013 issue of Planning for Higher Education will be Change-Disruption. If you know of someone who could write credibly about these topics throughout a campus’ integrated planning processes, or from a unique perspective, please suggest authors to Planning’s managing editor, claire.turcotte@scup.org. We’ll be looking for articles, planning stories, bloggers, and more. Insights as to what these MOOCs and new for-profit enterprises might do to our planning environment are welcome.

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My main point is that participatory teaching methods simply will not work if they do not begin with a deep bond between teacher and student. Importantly, this bond must be built through mutual respect, care, and an ongoing effort to know and understand one another. Somebody using traditional teaching methods (lecture) can foster these bonds and be as effective as somebody using more participatory methods. The participation and “active learning” that is necessary for true understanding and application may not happen in the classroom, but the lecture is just one piece of a much larger ecosystem of the college campus. An effective lecture can inspire deep late night conversations with peers, mad runs to the library for more information, and significant intellectual throwdowns in the minds of our students.

–Michael Wesch, Professor of Anthropology, Kansas State University, in an email message to The Chronicle editor Jeff Selingo, shared in Wesch’s blog, Digital Technology With Professor Wesch. Wesch was a hit the last time SCUP visited Chicago, at SCUP–42, when he closed “Shaping the Academic Landscape: Integrated Solutions, with a rousing presentation. 

 ^{Go directly to the original of the resource described below.}

This is good for a basic understanding, but what we most wanted to share—in case you don’t click and go read it—is a concept that we just finally understood: Flipped Learning uses technology before and after class, to support the engagement of learners and faculty in the rare and valuable face to face moments we call “class time". There are other interesting concepts in this piece, as well: