Chronicle of Higher Education Audio: Tech Therapy

In a new book, College (Un)bound, Jeffrey Selingo, The Chronicle?s editor-at-large, argues that parents and prospective students should ask tougher questions about the quality of teaching and student services when picking a college, suggesting that colleges are not being responsive enough to today?s changing students. He talks with the Tech Therapy team about what his advice means for college administrators and professors.

The latest discussions of MOOCs and other online courses often leave out consideration of minority students and the obstacles they might face in gaining access to technology, argues Corey Davis, director of online learning at Our Lady of the Lake University, in Texas. He challenges the Tech Therapy team and others to tell more-diverse stories as they consider the recent online boom.

Academic journals don?t happen by magic, and even online editions are expensive to produce in ways that scholars may not realize. That?s the argument by two scholarly publishers, Fred Dylla (right), executive director at the American Institute of Physics, and Brian D. Scanlan (left), president of Thieme Publishers. The two give their response to comments by our guest from last month?s show, a scholar argued that in an online world journals should publish scholarly journals free online.

David Parry, an assistant professor of emerging media and communications at the University of Texas at Dallas, argues that scholars have an obligation to publish their research in journals that make free copies available online. The Tech Therapy team talks with him about how the debate over open access to research is heating up in recent months, and issues an invitation to journal publishers to give their view on next month's podcast.

Scott Carlson and Warren Arbogast talk about secure information technology and how college leaders can make their computer networks more secure by working to change campus culture.

With so many messages coming in, many on campus are feeling a sense of overload. The Tech Therapy team talks with Brett Foster, an associate professor of English at Wheaton College, about his experiment in keeping his inbox to zero each day.

Jim Groom, director of teaching and learning technologies at the University of Mary Washington, describes the university?s new effort to offer every student and professor an online domain name to use as a lifelong Web presence. An he explains why he thinks the plan teaches an important lesson in digital citizenship.

Scott Carlson, a senior reporter at The Chronicle, talks about a new series on reinventing colleges, as the Tech Therapy team celebrates their 100th episode. Mr. Carlson was the original host of the show and now covers the business of higher education.

Wearable computers may be coming to campus sooner than you think. Google recently announced ?Project Glass,? a pair of glasses that contains a computer display and camera so that wearers can see text messages, directions, or other information right in their field of vision, and some say it is a sign of a coming age of ?augmented reality? devices. The Tech Therapy team talked with Amber Case, a self-described cyborg anthropologist, about what the technology could mean for colleges.

Erin Knight now leads the Open Badges Project that lets anyone issue an online stamp certifying that a student has mastered a skill or concept. She tells the Tech Therapy team about how she went from leading a center for next generation teaching at the University of California at Berkeley to joining an upstart effort to transform assessment through the idea of online badges.

George Siemens, who leads Athabasca University?s Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute, makes the case for why colleges should experiment with inviting tens of thousands of students to participate in their courses free online. Since the Tech Therapy team first conducted the interview last year, the model has caught on with many well-known universities.

College leaders just keep demanding more out of their technology, and that's created challenges for presidents and CIO's. How are they coping? The Tech Therapy team checks in with a couple of administrators on the front lines.

The Tech Therapy team talks to this open-source pioneer about how it happend and the future of open source in higher education

A number of experiments are using new kinds of data, such as how many times a student has clicked on an e-textbook or logged in to a class Web page, to measure and guide learning in new ways. That could improve the student experience, but it could also end up dumbing down college, argues Gardner Campbell, director of professional development and innovative initiatives at Virginia Tech.

Purdue University is working with professors to build quick-hit software programs to help meet particular needs of, say, a forensics professor or an instructor teaching sign language. The Tech Therapy team talked with Kyle D. Bowen, Purdue?s director of informatics, who argues that colleges should build their own educational software rather than relying on companies to produce it.