I recently ran across an old PBS News Hour video on digital badging that was a great summary of the business case for using digital badges in higher education. Basically, the reason we should move towards digital badges is to help our students differentiate their skills from other graduates with the same degree. The video […]
Ruminations from David Sean Sweeney
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Hitchen’s Razor
Hitchens’s razor is an epistemological razor asserting that the burden of proof regarding the truthfulness of a claim lies with the one who makes the claim, and if this burden is not met, the claim is unfounded, and its opponents need not argue further in order to dismiss it.
The Future of Work
Recently, I read a report from the Association of American Colleges & Universities on the future of work and higher education’s place in it. The report titled Fulfilling the American Dream: Liberal Education and the Future of Work “summarizes selected findings from two parallel national surveys—one of 501 business executives at private sector and nonprofit organizations and another […]
Educational Marketing
I was reading an article (THECB, 2018) the other day on the 60x30TX Initiative. This initiative, by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, seeks to bring the percentage of adults with some form of higher education (defined as an associates degree or above) up to 60% by the year 2030. What caught my eye was […]
Tradition! Tradition!
I took two Uber rides today while I was in Washington, D.C. for a conference. It seems obvious that the Uber model of transportation is superior to traditional taxi service. Think about process. With Uber, I make my location, destination, even my identity known to the service provider, whose name and mug I know, not […]
The New Academic Economy
A number of initiatives and circumstances have aligned to push the topic of microcredentialing to the surface in the higher education space. Specifically, disruption in traditional undergraduate degree expectations, greater need to demonstrate skills to employers, and heightened control and privacy concerns. Let’s take each of these topics in turn. Disruption in Traditional Undergraduate Degree […]
Canvas Catches Blackboard
This article from Inside Higher Ed reports that Canvas has surpassed Blackboard as the leading learning management system in American colleges and universities, based upon the number of installations. Michael Feldstein from MindWires Consulting states that this is a “stunning development.” Really? My colleagues have been saying for a number of years that Canvas is […]
Cooking As a Family
I was intrigued by this Forbes article about the costs of cooking at home vs. ordering out or using a menu planning service. It turns out that dialing Dominoes is roughly 5 times as expensive as making homemade pizza and 3 times as expensive as using a meal planning service. The article points out that […]
