Change: Now's our chance?

In a time such as this, when it's truly clear for once that things must change, you can't turn around without hearing loud calls for change and loud change-rakers.

Here are a couple thought-provoking "change we must" pieces from the week's higher ed news.

End the University as We Know It
Mark C. Taylor, chair of the department of religion at Columbia
April 27 New York Times

(and a reasonable response from Dean Dad at Inside Higher Ed)

In a Time of Crisis, Colleges Ought to Be Making History
Goldie Blumenstyk
May 1 Chronicle of Higher Education

Edutainment or Education?--Podcasting in Higher Education

Some educators wonder if we're lowering the bar by the use of podcasting, which is well known as a tool for listening to music by the Net Generation. I've wondered myself; but after trying it out and reading some of the current research, there are many reasons to pursue using podcasting in your course--online or onground.

Podcasting can make lessons in your course more relevant to today's student and thus promote more and better learning. Sharon Stoerger's Annoted Bibliography on Podcasting in Higher Education provides many examples, and she regularly updates it; the last update was October 9, 2006. To highlight the point about learning needing relevance, Stoerger quotes McDermott (in Murphy 1999:17)1:

"Learning is in the relationships between people. Learning is in the conditions that bring people together and organize a point of contact that allows for particular pieces of information to take on a relevance; without the points of contact, without the system of relevancies, there is not learning, and there is little memory."

If you need some resources to get you started or to expand your exploration of podcasting, the article in this link is it.