What might the climate crisis mean for higher education’s future? I’m writing this post very much in the present, as parts of the United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean are reeling from multiple, literally extraordinary hurricanes.  Helene trashed several American states, which haven’t fully recovered.  Milton is storming into Florida now, where debris left over from Helene adds potential projectile threats to the looming disaster. Disaster piles on disaster. The

As we approach the second anniversary of ChatGPT’s release in November, I want to reflect on its impact. Created by OpenAI, ChatGPT revolutionized user interaction with AI by making conversations feel natural. The model’s extensive training data enables it to generate human-like responses, a major leap in natural language processing. This jump forward means we now have a powerful generative AI, capable of creating language independently. This technological advancement sparked

Earlier this fall, Dr. Minna Ng sat down with me to discuss her thoughts about generative AI and teaching. This is the first in a series of posts in which Learning Innovation and Lifetime Education will speak to instructors across the university to capture their insight into this emerging trend in teaching and learning. Thank you, Dr. Ng, for your time. Minna Ng teaches and advises undergraduate students in the

As part of National Cybersecurity Awareness month in October, MSU is launching a highly requested, university-wide cybersecurity awareness training program. This multi-phased initiative is designed to equip our community with the knowledge and resources to identify cyberthreats and protect both individual and university data.  An initial pilot phase was launched in September to MSU IT and the Office of Research and Innovation staff. 

Climate fiction is literature in any medium which explores how climate change might transform the world, and how humans respond.  It’s a powerful and, I think, essential genre for our century. I’m writing about climate fiction* today because an educator and colleague asked me to.  Joshua Kim is Director of Online Programs and Strategy at Dartmouth College. He’s also an Inside Higher Ed columnist who is – by far –

Week in and week out, there are a litany of stories that, if I were paying attention to education technology, would prompt me to say “I told you so.” Why look, just in the last few days: coding bootcamps, pretty shady; Udemy, very shady. Google Notebook LLM in the classroom, totally and completely fucked up. But the industry's cheerleaders keep cheering. I’ve spent the last few years trying my best

How are American colleges and universities responding to institutional pressures? Today I’ll share exemplary stories from the past two months. (I’ve been blogging this theme for months now (March 1, March 20, March 28, April, May, June, July), partly as evidence for some points in the book I’m writing.) 1 Closing colleges and universities Let’s start with a big picture observation. The total number of American higher education institutions shrank by 2%, “from 5,918 in

Michigan State University Interim Executive Vice President for Administration Thomas Glasmacher announced that he will recommend Rich Czarnecki to the MSU Board of Trustees for the position of chief information officer, or CIO, at the board’s Oct. 25 meeting. For the full story, please visit MSU Today.

In the rapidly evolving landscape of higher education, the concepts of presence, belonging, and compassion have gained significant attention, particularly in creative fields. A recent CEO seminar organized by David White and Chris Rowell, featuring speakers Vikki Hill and Liz Bunting, explored these ideas in depth. The discussion focused on how to foster a sense of belonging and presence in education, especially during a time when online learning has become

Register for all sessions on the Educational Technology events calendar. Removing Barriers to Learning: Improve D2L Course Usability and Accessibility with Ally Online October 15, 2024, 11:00am – 12:00pm, Virtual D2L Brightspace is a powerful learning management system; however, the wide range of content types and user activities can produce accessibility roadblocks for some users. We’ll cover how to identify and remediate accessibility issues associated with your course content using