About INFOBITS
Infobits is an electronic service of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ITS Teaching and Learning's Center for Instructional Technology. Each month the CIT's Information Resources Consultant monitors and selects from a number of information and instructional technology sources that come to her attention and provides brief notes for electronic dissemination to educators.
Faculty Guide to Cyber-Plagiarism
Cycle of Improved Practice Website
Virtual Experience vs. Conventional Teaching
Cooperation Between Corporations And Academe in IT Education
2001 Campus Desktop Computing Survey
Networking on the Network
The Technology Source Moves to Michigan Virtual University
Recommended Reading
FACULTY GUIDE TO CYBER-PLAGIARISM
The University of Alberta Libraries has launched a new website "A Faculty Guide to Cyber-Plagiarism" to help faculty prevent, detect, and report plagiarism. "'Cyber-plagiarism' is the term used to describe the process by which students either copy ideas found on the Web without giving proper attribution, or the process by which students download research papers from the Web, in whole or in part, and submit the paper as original work. The phenomenon of cyber-plagiarism is affecting Universities around the globe." The guide includes links to free and for-fee plagiarism detection services. You can access the guide at http://www.library.ualberta.ca/guides/plagiarism/
Also of interest:
"Forget About Policing Plagiarism. Just Teach" (The Chronicle of Higher Education, vol. 48, issue 12, November 16, 2001, p. B24) by Rebecca Moore Howard, associate professor of writing and rhetoric, and director of the writing program, at Syracuse University.
Howard argues that "[i]n our stampede to fight what The New York Times calls a 'plague' of plagiarism, we risk becoming the enemies rather than the mentors of our students; we are replacing the student-teacher relationship with the criminal-police relationship. Further, by thinking of plagiarism as a unitary act rather than a collection of disparate activities, we risk categorizing all of our students as criminals. Worst of all, we risk not recognizing that our own pedagogy needs reform. Big reform." The article is online to CHE subscribers at http://chronicle.com/weekly/v48/i12/12b02401.htm
CYCLE OF IMPROVED PRACTICE WEBSITE
The Centre for Curriculum, Transfer and Technology (C2T2) promotes excellence in post-secondary education and training to educators in British Columbia, Canada. Their website, "Cycle of Improved Practice: Putting Resources into the Hands of Educators," was launched to provide resources for planning, implementing, revising, and evaluating educational technology. The site contains over 130 articles, research reports, websites, and mini case studies for post-secondary educators who wish to make better use of educational technology. Materials are arranged in four levels of user experience: novice, intermediate, advanced, and expert. You can search the Cycle of Improved Practice at http://www.c2t2.ca/cycle/
For more information, contact: Amanda Harby, Manager, Educational Technology; tel: 250-413-4468 or 250-413-4403; email: aharby@c2t2.ca; Web: http://www.c2t2.ca/
VIRTUAL EXPERIENCE VS. CONVENTIONAL TEACHING
In his cautionary article, "Computer Mediated School Education and the Web" (First Monday, vol. 6, no. 11, November 2001), Glenn Russell (Faculty of Education, Peninsula Campus of Monash University, Frankston, Victoria, Australia) discusses "the substitution of virtual experience for reality, the blurring of appearance and reality, the growth of cultural imperialism, and the central role of the teacher in the educational process." He stresses that it is the teacher, not the technology, that can make a difference in students' learning. The article is online at http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_11/russell/index.html
First Monday [ISSN: 1396-0466] is an online, peer-reviewed journal whose aim is to publish original articles about the Internet and the global information infrastructure. It is published in cooperation with the University Library, University of Illinois at Chicago. For more information, contact: First Monday, c/o Edward Valauskas, Chief Editor, PO Box 87636, Chicago IL 60680-0636 USA; email: ejv@uic.edu; Web: http://firstmonday.dk/
Two more articles also of interest:
"A Virtual Revolution: Trends in the Expansion of Distance Education" (USDLA Journal, vol. 15, no. 11, November 2001) by Thomas J. Kriger, American Federation of Teachers
"The expansion of distance education (DE) is leading a virtual revolution in American higher education. The question is whether or not that revolution will improve the quality of education students receive. Based on a review of the latest trends in organizing distance education, this report finds that distance education can be a great asset as long as academic decision-making is placed in the hands of teaching professionals. However, serious problems arise if DE is organized primarily around corporate models of marketing and command-and-control management." The article is available at http://www.usdla.org/ED_magazine/illuminactive/NOV01_Issue/article02.html
USDLA Journal is the official refereed publication of the United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA) published monthly online. The journal documents the latest developments in the field of distance learning, both research and practice, with up-to-date, provocative, and thoughtful articles. Back issues are available at http://www.usdla.org/ED_magazine/16_ed_magazine_past.htm
"An Overview of Progress and Problems in Educational Technology" (Interactive Educational Multimedia, no. 3, October 2001, pp. 27-37) by J. Michael Spector, Syracuse University
"This paper presents an overview of progress and problems in educational technology and argues that educational program management must be integrally linked with technology and theory in order for significant progress in learning and instruction to occur on a global scale." The paper is available at http://www.ub.es/multimedia/iem/ (under "Monographic Articles") or http://www.ub.es/multimedia/iem/down/c3/Educational_Technology.pdf
Interactive Educational Multimedia [ISSN 1576-4990] is published by ICE - Universitat de Barcelona, Passeig de la Vall d'Hebron, 171, 08035 Barcelona Spain. Current and back issues are available on the web at http://www.ub.es/multimedia/iem/
COOPERATION BETWEEN CORPORATIONS AND ACADEME IN IT EDUCATION
In "How to Take Over the Classroom" (CIO, November 1, 2001) Jason Compton writes that "CIOs love to point the finger at academics and claim they're not producing the kind of graduate who can become a seamlessly productive employee from day one," and he discusses ways to respond to this problem. He presents cases showing how cooperation between universities and corporations is possible: "In some cases, companies are going into the classroom and taking over curricula. In other cases, teachers are taking sabbaticals in the real world so that when they return to the classroom they have more up-to-date skills." The article is on the web at http://www.cio.com/archive/110101/classroom.html
CIO is published twice a month by CXO Media Inc., 492 Old Connecticut Path, Framingham, MA 01701 USA; Web: http://www.cxo.com/
Back issues are available online at http://www.cio.com/
Print subscriptions are free to qualified readers in the U.S. and Canada. Subscription information is available at http://www.cio.com/CIO/ciosub.html
2001 CAMPUS DESKTOP COMPUTING SURVEY
This is the twelfth year that Kenneth C. Green, the founder and director of the Campus Computing Project and a visiting scholar at the Center for Educational Studies at Claremont Graduate University, has conducted a national survey of desktop (personal computers and workstations) computing and information technology in American higher education institutions. The survey enables colleges and universities to compare their academic computing capabilities with similar institutions. The data also show current patterns and future trends that can assist campus administrators in planning for technology innovations and growth. This year's survey respondents identified "assisting faculty integrate technology into instruction" as the single most important IT issue confronting their campuses; they rank "providing adequate user support" as the second most important. The survey also reveals declines in both academic and administrative technology budgets.
A summary of the report, "The 2001 National Survey of Information Technology in U.S. Higher Education
eCommerce Comes Slowly to the Campus," is available online at http://www.campuscomputing.net/
The complete report costs $37.00 (US) and can be ordered online at the same website. Summaries of reports from earlier years are also available online.
For many years Phil Agre, associate professor in the UCLA Department of Information Studies, has studied and written about how the Internet affects users and how users shape the Internet. He believes that a "great deal of effort is going into technical means for finding information on the net, but hardly anybody has been helping newcomers figure out where the net fits in the larger picture of their own careers." In his paper "Networking on the Network" Agre seeks to remedy this situation for people (primarily graduate students) in academic and research communities. Topics covered include constructive uses of electronic communication, using the Net to build a professional identity, and networks and job-hunting. Agre's paper is online at http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/network.html
Phil Agre also edits the Red Rock Eater News Service mailing list. Most of the messages concern the social and political aspects of computing and networking. For more subscription information and links to archived messages, see http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/rre.html
THE TECHNOLOGY SOURCE MOVES TO MICHIGAN VIRTUAL UNIVERSITY
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has transferred ownership of The Technology Source to the Michigan Virtual University. James L. Morrison, Professor of Educational Leadership in the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Education, has agreed to remain as editor-in-chief and MVU has agreed to continue publishing The Technology Source as a free service to the educational community.
The purpose of The Technology Source is to provide thoughtful, illuminating articles that will assist educators as they face the challenge of integrating information technology tools into teaching and into managing educational organizations. Issues include commentaries, case studies, reports on faculty and staff development, articles on the virtual university, and links to higher-education websites. You can read the November/December issue of The Technology Source at http://ts.mivu.org/default.asp?show=issue&id=45
"Recommended Reading" lists items that have been recommended to me or that Infobits readers have found particularly interesting and/or useful, including books, articles, and websites published by Infobits subscribers. Send your recommendations to kotlas@email.unc.edu for possible inclusion in this column.
The Gratis Economy: Privately Provided Public Goods
by Infobits subscriber András Kelen
Budapest: Central European University Press, 2001; ISBN: 963-9241-22-9
"A work in the relatively new field of economic sociology, this highly unconventional book deals with the logics of toll-free services and generalises the notion of voluntary work toward encompassing everything that can be obtained free of charge in the world. . . . The Gratis Economy will be of interest to professors and students of applied economics and business schools, sociologists, to the e-business community, marketing practitioners, webspinners, infonauts, netizens, software developers and decision-makers of electronic media."
For more information see http://come.to/Gratis-Economy/