New Bookmarks
Year 2003 Quarter 1:  January 1-March 31 Additions to Bob Jensen's Bookmarks
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

We're moving to the mountains on June 15, 2003 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/NHcottage/NHcottage.htm  
Update:  I added some winter scenes from our front window.  One of them is shown below.

 

FOR SALE:  Our nice San Antonio home
details (with pictures) at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen\house\HouseForSale.htm 

For earlier editions of New Bookmarks, go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm 

Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter --- Search Site.
This search engine may get you some hits from other professors at Trinity University included with Bob Jensen's documents, but this may be to your benefit.

For date and time, try The Aggie Digital Clock --- http://yugop.com/ver3/stuff/03/fla.html
Time anywhere in the world http://www.worldtimeserver.com/ 

Bob Jensen's Dance Card
Some of My Planned Workshops and Presentations --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations 

Dictionary, Thesaurus, and Language Other Goodies --- http://dictionary.reference.com/ 

Hline.jpg (568 bytes)

Choose a Date Below for Additions to the Bookmarks File

March 31, 2003         March 15, 2003     

February 28, 2003     February 12, 2003  

January 31, 2003       January 15, 2003    

   

 

March 31, 2003

 Bob Jensen's New Bookmarks on March 31, 2003
Bob Jensen at Trinity University 

I am not the anti-business activist Robert W. Jensen from the University of Texas.  I have been getting some hate mail messages to a Bob Jensen that should have been routed to a Robert W. Jensen in the Department of Journalism at the University of Texas --- http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/home.htm 
I am Robert E. Jensen, a professor of accounting at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX.

Quotes of the Week

Why does the United States always want to take more land?
When in England at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of empire building by George Bush. He answered by saying that, "Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return."
Forwarded by Barbara Hessel

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
Abba Eban.

The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.
Stanley Kubrick

Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it forgoes revenge, and dares to forgive an injury.
E.H. Chapin

The idea that people could use computers to amplify thought and communication, as tools for intellectual work and social activity, was not an invention of the mainstream computer industry or orthodox computer science, nor even homebrew computerists; their work was rooted in older, equally eccentric, equally visionary, work. You can't really guess where mind-amplifying technology is going unless you understand where it came from.
Tools for Thought by Howard Rheingold (a free book) --- http://www.rheingold.com/texts/tft/8.html 

Share what you know, it's like throwing stars into the night sky.
Mitch Albom, author of Tuesdays with Morrie

In the first week on the Web, the OCW site received more than 13 million visits from users, about 52 percent from outside of the United States. The OCW team also processed more than 2,000 e-mails in those first days, more than 75 percent of them supportive of the project. The remaining 25 percent were a mix of technical questions, inquiries about specific course offerings, and questions about content. Less than 2 percent of those e-mails were negative.
Anne H. Margulies (See below for her article on MIT's OpenCourseWare project)

The books that help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.
Theodore Parker as quoted by Mark Shapiro --- http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-03-14-03.htm 

True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.
Karl Popper

If You Want to Be a Writer--Be a Reader
Tina Blue --- http://tinablue.homestead.com/writerisreader.html 

Traditional training puts the emphasis on what someone does to employees; employees are regarded as passive recipients of ideas and information.  Learning, on the other hand, implies that employees actively participate in expanding their own skills. Moreover, with growing frequency, employees are learning from one another in a structured measurable way.  Learning needs to be continuous. Organizations face continual change of products, services, processes, markets, and competition, as well as technology. Since every one in the organization is caught up in change, everyone must participate in a learner centered environment. A learner centered environment is one in which when change is contemplated, when performance indicators decline or generally when things must improve ­ training is immediately recognized as a key component.
Ken Kell, "Achieving Measured Success through Competency Based Learning," June 1999 --- http://snurl.com/KenKell 
Bob Jensen's threads on competency-based education and training are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/competency.htm 

Its performance is the envy of executives and engineers around the world ... For techno-evangelists, Google is a marvel of Web brilliance ... For Wall Street, it may be the IPO that changes everything ( again ) ... But Google is also a case study in savvy management -- a company filled with cutting-edge ideas, rigorous accountability, and relentless attention to detail ... Here's a search for the growth secrets of one of the world's most exciting young companies -- a company from which every company can learn.
Keith H. Hammonds --- http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/69/google.html 
Bob Jensen's threads on searching are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm 

Last spring federal officials released the results of the 2001 National Assessment of Educational Progress. In U.S. history only eleven percent of high school seniors qualified as "proficient" or "advanced." Nearly sixty percent failed to score at the "basic" level.
Mark Shapiro --- http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-03-20-03.htm 

A Case for Writing (rather than purchasing) Options
The Money Tree by Ronald Groenke and Wade Keller. Now I must confess, the reason I started this is because the authors are subscribers to the newsletter, but it has turned out to be a interesting look at selling calls on stocks that you already own. It is written as a novel, yet is full of financial strategies and terms. I am still not 100% convinced that opportunity costs are completely considered but definitely worth the time! I will let you know more when I finish it.
From Jim Mahar, TheFinanceProfessor on March 24, 2002.  See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0967412811/finpapers/104-9378365-5272442 

The Social Security Board of Trustees has declared that the Social Security program is not sustainable over the long term. The 2003 Social Security Trustees Report does extend the projected solvency of the trust funds by one year.
From the AccountingWeb  http://www.accountingweb.com/item/97323 

In the 2003 Annual Report to Congress, the Trustees announced:

From Jim Mahar, TheFinanceProfessor on March 24, 2003

As many of you saw, St. Bonaventure went through some hard times in recent weeks. A player on the men’s basketball team was found to be ineligible and the team had to forfeit its games in the Atlantic 10. To make matters worse, the University president had signed off allowing him to play. Then in a moment of much pain, the team quit and decided to forfeit their last two games. Quickly Bonaventure went to the top story in ESPN and other sports networks.

While that made news, what has not made nearly as much news is the Bonaventure response to this story. The president resigned, the basketball coach, and assistant basketball coach, and the AD were placed on administrative leave. However, more than that, was the amazing speed at which the Bonaventure “community” came together and began working to make sure the same thing never happens again. It was actually quite inspiring. So to the many who wrote when the news was happening, thank you for your concern, but Bonaventure will survive and the basketball team will emerge stronger, at least better rounded, than ever.

The Perilous Fight:  Then and Now

From PBS:  The Perilous Fight: America's World War II in Color --- http://www.pbs.org/perilousfight/ 
(Includes the Battlefield, Psychology of War, The Home Front, Social Aspects, WW II Timeline, etc.)

Letters bring comfort to fighting men even as they witness unimaginable atrocities that forever change them. The war not only affects the mental state of those involved, but also changes the way that wars are fought and introduces the world's most frightening psychological weapon, the atomic bomb.

Live Weblog messages (at least while he lives) from a U.S. soldier headed for IRAQ
L.T. SMASH LIVE FROM THE SANDBOX

Due to the overwhelming traffic this site is receiving, we have decided to relocate it to another server. The address for the new site is http://www.lt-smash.US. Please update your bookmarks. We hope to forward lt-smash.COM to the new server at a future date. We apologize for any incovenience this may cause.

For other Weblogs by soldiers, see http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB104854599843896800,00.html?mod=todays%5Fus%5Fmarketplace%5Fhs 
"Web Logs Tell War Stories, Unfiltered and in Real Time," The Wall Street Journal, March 25, 2003

Curiously, unlike the military, traditional media outlets have been trying to quash their personnel's blogging efforts. Kevin Sites, a CNN correspondent in northern Iraq, had been posting photographs, short accounts and audio reports on his Web log until CNN pressured him to stop. 
For more information write to Matthew Rose at matthew.rose@wsj.com and Christopher Cooper at christopher.cooper@wsj.com

From the Scout Report

A Minute Longer: A Soldier's Tale --- http://www.rooba.net/will/

Forbes.com: Best War Blogs http://www.forbes.com/2003/03/20/cx_ah_0320warblogs.html

Let Slip the Blogs of War http://www.ojr.org/ojr/workplace/1017770789.php

The Home Front: Dispatches of Ernie Pyle http://www.private-art.com/scrapbook/pyle/gallery.html

Frontline: The War Behind Closed Doors --- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/ 

Reuters To Stream War Video News and financial data giant adds frontline footage from Iraq to its recently revamped Web site. http://www.internetnews.com/IAR/article.php/2117191 
I guess from an academic side the theory might be to make financial markets more efficient in reacting to war news.

Ann-Maragret's Spontaneous Tribute to Vietnam Vets --- 

The Tall Texan's Website (including the music) --- http://www.talltexian.com/ 

With mounting civilian fatalities in Iraq, a unique website is drawing thousands of hits and increased media attention. The site, Iraq Body Count, keeps a running total of civilian deaths (actually unauthenticated reports of deaths) in the Iraq war --- http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,58241,00.html  
One problem when military personnel fight disguised as civilians is the partitioning of actual civilians from the total population.  There is also an immense data interpretation problem when the Iraq military protects itself behind civilians or even kills civilians who run away.  The Iraq Body Count tries to keep track of reported deaths, but attributing cause in particular instances is a dubious effort.

Hi Andy,

Erika really fears any war.  She was a small child when she was a war refuge. She tells me that in those days she never heard of The Marshall Plan or the U.S. Constabulary.  She was just too young.

What she remembers is the kindness of the U.S. GIs. When she was very tiny, she recalls begging by the U.S. army bases in Munich. In those days there were separate bases for black soldiers and white soldiers. She has fond memories of being given food and clothing at both types of bases, but she also recalls that the black soldiers seemed to be a bit more generous. She was told that a black soldier who taught her how to chew bubble gum rather than swallow it was a huge soldier who said his name was Martin Luther King (Sr.). However, his name was never verified.  She like to think it really was him.

Erika would have answered this herself, but she does not yet do email.

Bob Jensen

-----Original Message----- 
From: FRIENDS [mailto:friends@usd308.com]  
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2003 11:53 AM 
To: Jensen, Robert Subject: Erika's experiences in WWII

We are doing a project for History Day on the U.S. Constabulary. These were the men that carried out the Marshall plan in Germany after WWII. We read Erika's letter about her aunt and familly in WWII. Would Erika have time to answer a few questions?

1. Were you or your family helped by the Constabulary men to rebuild your home or business? 2. Do you know young people(then) who were involved in the youth groups started by the Constabulary? 3. What are your feelings about the Marshall Plan and how it helped Germany to rebuild? Sincerely, 
Andy Clark

Part of Erika's story can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/erika/xmas00.htm 

My March 31, 2003 updates on the accounting and finance scandals can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud033103.htm
(The above document also includes updates on tax frauds, scams, identity theft, and similar updates.)

Bob Jensen gets "behind" on Andersen poetry ---  http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud033103.htm

FASB Project Schedules --- http://www.fasb.org/project/index.shtml 

From KPMG:  Revisiting Stock-Option Accounting --- http://www.fei.org/download/KPMGMarch03_6.pdf 
Bob Jensen's threads on this issue are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory/sfas123/jensen01.htm 

New
Fraudulent Dealer Tricks:  An Interactive DHTML Illustration ---  http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudDealerTricks.htm 
This includes a summary of ten unethical tricks of the trade by automobile dealers.

How FAS 133 Cost Sears $270 Million
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/caseans/000index.htm#Sears 

March 13, 2003 message from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU] 

Thought Bob and others may be intrigued about this link (to a Chinese mirror site for one of Bob's Web documents):

http://home.kimo.com.tw/pastudy/pais/cyber/e-book.htm  

Richard Campbell

The above Chinese mirror site was taken from http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm 

Wow Sharing Professor of the Week is Jim Mahar 

I highly recommend TheFinanceProfessor (an absolutely fabulous and totally free newsletter from a very smart finance professor) --- www.FinanceProfessor.com 

Goodbye to my two most prized American Accounting Association journals.
Wow Bummer of the Week ---- I vote NO!

There were so many long threads on this one that I transferred the material to a new document at 
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AAAjournals.htm 

Your every keystroke may be being logged and you do not even know it!

March 31, 2003 message from Jim McKinney [jim@MCKINNEYCPA.COM] 

The most recent issue of PC Magazine (April 22,2003) has an interesting article regarding spyware. I downloaded some shareware that was recommended and found several pieces of spyware running on my machine including one that logs my keystrokes. My son who has downloaded music sharing software found over forty running on his. Sorry I do not have a link to the article. The software that PC Magazine recommended was at http://www.spybot.safer-networking.de/   

Jim McKinney 
Howard University

Wow Risk and Capital Management Site of the Week --- A Great Newsletter and Case Studies for Education and Practice

This is what Professor Jim Mahar says about ERisk in the March 24, 2003 edition of TheFinanceProfessor (an absolutely fabulous and totally free newsletter from a very smart finance professor) --- www.FinanceProfessor.com 

Erisk.com. I simply love the site. I know it has been site of the week before, but it is so good, it earned it again. Try it, you’ll love the case studies and the newsletter! http://www.erisk.com

The ERisk Report is great, but it is rather expensive at $149 per year.  However, rather delayed summaries are free at http://www.erisk.com/Research/ERiskReport/report_Jul2002.asp#one 

ERisk --- http://www.erisk.com/ 

ERisk is the leading provider of strategic solutions for risk and capital management. We deliver a unique combination of world-class analytics for risk-based capital, strategic risk management expertise, risk transfer advice and risk information.

You can find out more about our products and services in the Overview section. On this page, you can find out more about the people and ideas that power our company.

The ERisk Report --- http://www.erisk.com/about/about_company.asp?ct=n#report 

The ERisk Report is a concise monthly briefing for senior financial executives. Every month, contributors from ERisk's team of risk management experts address today's most pressing issues in strategic risk and capital management. Sign up today for your personal copy of this cutting-edge publication!

Vol 1.6: Measuring the return on risk management; leveraging the economic benefits of risk management

Vol 1.5: Putting the real value on customer relationships; rolling out risk management

Vol 1.4: Making risk more transparent; fed takes pulse of economic capital practices

Vol 1.3: Credit scoring: robots versus humans; James Lam's three lessons from Enron

Vol 1.2: Weathering credit losses; regulators line up behind economic capital

Vol 1.1: Revamping your credit ratings system; measuring bank profitability

The ERisk Portal --- http://www.erisk.com/portal/home.asp 
Resources for Enterprise Risk Management

ERisk today continues to successfully develop and install its analytics at client sites, conduct high-value consulting engagements, offer unbiased advice on risk transfer alternatives, and attract thousands of readers to the ERisk portal.

Bob Jensen's related sites are as follows:

Financial Instruments Derivatives and Risk Management --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/caseans/000index.htm 

Bob Jensen's Threads on Return on Business Valuation, Business Combinations, 
Investment (ROI), and Pro Forma Financial Reporting --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/roi.htm 

Accounting for Electronic Commerce, Including Controversies on Business Valuation, ROI, and Revenue Reporting --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce.htm 

Accounting Theory --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory.htm 

It's freezing in Stanford University!

PROVOST ANNOUNCES SALARY FREEZE: 
In a Feb. 26 letter to employees, Provost John Etchemendy said the projected $25 million budget shortfall for 2003-04 led to the "difficult decision" to freeze faculty and staff salaries for next year. The expected savings of up to $8 million will help avoid more extensive layoffs, he told the Faculty Senate March 6, adding that feedback since the notice went out has been overwhelmingly supportive. http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/report/news/2003/march5/salary-35.html 

British Columbia's History of Education Web site http://www.mala.bc.ca/homeroom/ 

Bob Jensen's education bookmarks are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm 

Wow Education Technology of the Week

From Syllabus News on March 25, 2003

New Products: SCORM Simulation Tool for eLearning Market

A simulation software company released what it called the first SCORM- compliant simulation software designed for the eLearning market. eHelp Corp. markets RoboHelp, a Flash-based simulation application that enables trainers to create simulations with quizzing and scoring capabilities. The simulations can be integrated with a learning management system, viewed on a Web site or intranet, burned on a CD, e- mailed to an end user or integrated into a Help system. RoboDemo can record the use of any application or on-screen activity, and creates a movie in Flash format with visible and audible mouse clicks. Simulations can be easily enhanced by adding rollover and transparent text captions and images, audio, interactive text fields and click boxes, eLearning-specific features like quizzing, scoring and branching, hyperlinks, and special effects.

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT (CRM) 

Ohio State University's Department of Athletics is using a CRM package from ForeSee Results as a tool for what it calls "online customer satisfaction management." The system helps isolate market factors that will most influence user satisfaction and loyalty, which helps OSU make high-impact, cost-effective content and design decisions. The software helps predict how satisfaction levels with various Web site elements will affect future behaviors such as the likelihood to purchase again or return to the site. It also provides real-time data on what Web site visitors are looking for so changes can take place almost immediately. The system incorporates the methodology of the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index.

Bob Jensen's threads on authoring software are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm 

Bob Jensen's threads on resources are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm#Resources 

Wow Aid for Student Writing and Research

McGraw-Hill Higher Education Launches Innovative Catalyst Writing and Research Tool Available in Handheld Format Companion to "A Writer's Resource" text also available Online and on CD-ROM --- http://www.creativepro.com/story/news/19060.html 

McGraw-Hill Higher Education, a leading provider of electronic and print learning solutions, today unveiled Catalyst: A Tool for Writing and Research, a unique technology-based tool that enhances students' composition and research skills.

Catalyst is thoroughly integrated with "A Writer's Resource," the leading student-centered text designed as a resource for achieving excellence in writing and learning. This powerful teaching and learning solution includes resources in Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) downloadable format, online, and on CD-ROM, including tools for learning, research, writing, and editing.

"Catalyst utilizes today's technologies to access proven writing, research and composition resources," said Ed Stanford, president of McGraw-Hill Higher Education. "With Catalyst, students now have instant support at their fingertips for writing assignments in composition class and all other subjects."

Major features of Catalyst include:

Catalyst is available free of charge with every copy of "A Writer's Resource" for online and/or PDA use. It may also be purchased separately on CD-ROM, which includes access to all online material, including the download for PDAs.

To view the online brochure for Catalyst, visit http://www.mhhe.com/wmg/catalyst. Catalyst will also be featured in an ongoing demonstration at the McGraw-Hill Higher Education exhibit at the 54th Annual Conference on College Composition and Communication, held at the Hilton Hotel in New York on March 20-22.

McGraw-Hill Higher Education is a leading global provider of educational materials and professional information targeted at the higher education market. It is part of McGraw-Hill Education, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, a global information services provider meeting worldwide needs in financial services, education and business-to-business information through leading brands such as Standard & Poor's and BusinessWeek. Founded in 1888, the Corporation has more than 350 offices in 33 countries. Sales in 2002 were $4.8 billion. Additional information is available at www.mcgraw-hill.com.

Bob Jensen's threads on resources are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm#Resources 

Wow Technology of the Week

Looking for a new notebook? You'd be remiss if you didn't at least consider one of the new tablet PCs. Now that they've been on the market for a few months, they've matured—sort of. We've put nine systems—the best of the bunch—through some pretty intensive testing and even lived with them day and night. So what did we find? Well, for certain tasks they're great; for others ... Let's just say they're not for everyone. Still, these are all far more useful than past doomed tablet efforts, including the Eo, Gridpad and Momenta. And if you've got one, we've compiled 50 of our favorite tablet tips gleaned from our extensive testing.
"What's New Now," by Jim Louderback, Ziff Davis on March 25, 2003

Some Winners and Losers to Date in Online MBA Programs

"Universities Exporting M.B.A. Programs via the Internet," by Otto Pohl, The New York Times, March 26, 2003 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/26/nyregion/26MBA.html 

LONDON — If Jeremy Hallett had his way, he would be sitting on a leafy university campus in the United States with plenty of time to contemplate the theories of business.

Instead, he spends hectic lunch hours and long evenings in his office cubicle here, earning his M.B.A.

"It's not a perfect world," he says with a shrug.

Driven by the mantra of globalization and enabled by Internet-based technologies, M.B.A. programs in the United States are expanding rapidly into new markets overseas. The schools are looking for full-time, on-campus students seeking an international M.B.A. degree as well as part-timers like Mr. Hallett, who want to learn from afar while they continue working.

Some of the universities are virtual, offering American degrees via the Internet. Mr. Hallett, a London-based senior vice president at Thomson Financial, is earning his M.B.A. from Cardean University, a newly created entity that exists only in cyberspace and markets a course package created by other institutions, including Stanford, Columbia and the University of Chicago.

For Mr. Hallett, it was the availability of these prestigious schools on his computer screen that persuaded him to enroll. "These schools are recognized around the world," he said. "This degree will be truly international."

The M.B.A. is an American creation. More than 100,000 students are enrolled in M.B.A. programs in the United States, and now tens of thousands more are enrolled overseas. Even the threat of global recession has not diminished its popularity, as unemployed workers sharpen their job skills.

The biggest growth opportunity today for American online universities is inside the United States, but the schools are also looking to carry the prestige of American education overseas.

"We're serving a global market," said Andrew Rosenfield, the founder and chairman of Cardean University. A third of Cardean's students are outside the United States, and he expects the proportion to grow significantly over time.

"The United States certainly has no monopoly on running successful businesses," he says, adding that business students have to get their training somewhere.

Traditional campus-based programs are looking to train them as well. Columbia formed a partnership with the London Business School, and the Stern School of Business at New York University recently inaugurated the Trium M.B.A. degree with the London School of Economics and H.E.C. Paris. Thunderbird, an M.B.A. program in Arizona that bills itself as the oldest international M.B.A. program in the world, established its own satellite campus in France last fall.

These programs are designed to appeal to executives who want globally recognized names on their résumés.

Lawrence Naested, an American Express executive in London, is enrolled in the Trium program, studying in places like Hong Kong, Paris, Brazil, and New York. "This is far and away superior to a traditional M.B.A. program," he says. "Mixing with different backgrounds and nationalities far outweighs spending a year in a book."

Even schools that are very careful about diluting their brand names are looking for new growth opportunities. The Harvard Business School is keeping its campus-based education sacrosanct while offering noncredit Harvard-branded education to managers who can tap into a database for answers to specific questions. Instead of teaching what may be needed one day, they offer continuous assistance to managers confronted with real-life situations.

"We're moving from just-in-case education to just-in-time education," says Jonathon D. Levy, vice-president of online learning solutions at Harvard Business School Publishing, a subsidiary of the Harvard Business School.

This wealth of new business models centered on education has caught the eye of investors. "Very solid returns, solid profits, and good cash flow," says Richard Close, a vice president of SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, summing up why he feels for-profit post-secondary education is a great investment opportunity. "Online, you can leverage that success even more."

Most of the online universities are hoping to emulate the success of the University of Phoenix, whose growth is one of the most remarkable stories in for-profit academia. The university, with 140,000 students, has become the largest university in the country in terms of enrollment. About 60,000 of those students attend classes online and 4,000 are overseas. The stock of Apollo Group, which owns the university, has kept pace, rising 500 percent since January 2000.

There have also been plenty of failures. Many online programs founded during the Internet boom did little but hemorrhage money. Pensare, an online M.B.A. company using Duke courses, has been scrapped. Quisic, an online program developed with the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, was closed.last year, and SUNY Buffalo had an online M.B.A. program that lasted only 18 months.

Administrators of campus-based programs believe the failure of many online programs highlights the importance of extensive classroom time and personal interaction. And while few of those involved with online degrees dispute the superiority of full-time, face-to-face learning, they point to the much larger market of those who would like an education but cannot quit their jobs or travel to a campus.

Unlike elite campus-based programs, which offer exclusivity along with the degree, the online programs accept anyone with a good credit history and a reasonable likelihood of finishing the program. The online programs are expensive — Cardean's M.B.A. costs $24,000 — but that is still much less than a program like Trium, which costs $92,000.

The success of the American M.B.A. overseas already has some foreign schools marketing themselves as alternatives. "We reflect an Anglo-American way of doing business," says Mark Fenton-O'Creevy, the director of the British Open University Business School master's program.

Continued in the article.

Bob Jensen's distance education threads are listed at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm 

Betraying the College Dream: How Disconnected K-12 and Postsecondary Education Systems Undermine Student Aspirations [.pdf] http://www.stanford.edu/group/bridgeproject/betrayingthecollegedream.pdf 

MIT OpenCourseWare (Open Knowledge Initiative OKI and DSpace) Shares Lessons from Pilot Project.

"Open Access to World-Class Knowledge," by Anne H. Margulies, Syllabus, March 2003, pp. 16-18 --- http://www.syllabus.com/article.asp?id=7360 

A student in Johannesburg, South Africa. An educator in Wiesbaden, Germany. Ethiopian refugees trying to finish an engineering education cut short by civil war. These are just a few of the people who have tapped the potential of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's OpenCourseWare (OCW) project, a two-year-old effort to make available original course materials from all five of MIT's schools to students around the world.

Started by an MIT faculty committee charged with providing guidance on how MIT should position itself in the distance and eLearning environment, the OCW project supports the university's interest in contributing to the "shared intellectual commons" in higher education. "OpenCourseWare combines two things: traditional openness and outreach, and the democratizing influence of American education, with the ability of the Web to make vast amounts of information instantly available," says MIT President Charles M. Vest.

On Sept. 30, 2002, the pilot site of OCW was launched. It offers users the opportunity to see and use course materials from 50 MIT subjects, representing 20 individual academic disciplines and MIT's schools of Architecture, Science, Engineering, the Sloan School of Management, and the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.

In the first week on the Web, the OCW site received more than 13 million visits from users, about 52 percent from outside of the United States. The OCW team also processed more than 2,000 e-mails in those first days, more than 75 percent of them supportive of the project. The remaining 25 percent were a mix of technical questions, inquiries about specific course offerings, and questions about content. Less than 2 percent of those e-mails were negative.

Govert van Drimmelen, a university student in Johannesburg, South Africa, found the video lectures of MIT Professor Gil Strang, in Course 18.06: Linear Algebra, compelling. "I have watched some of the video lectures from mathematics course 18.06. The lectures are wonderful and having these available over the Internet from South Africa is a great privilege," Van Drimmelen wrote the OCW team by e-mail. "Please continue with this excellent project and accept my sincere thanks for the efforts. Making the quality education of MIT more broadly available will be a valued contribution to global education."

Dorothee Gaile, an educator and trainer of teachers in Wiesbaden, Germany, wrote that as OCW continued to add more subjects, it would become a remarkable resource for educators around the world. "As a teacher of English at both high school and University of Applied Science level in Germany, I very much appreciate having free access to the tremendous amount of knowledge MIT is currently putting on the Web. Congratulations on this idea and a warm thank you."

And Timothy Choe, a volunteer with an organization called Project Detour in Africa, immediately recognized OCW's potential in developing countries: "I recently spent time with a group of Ethiopian refugees, living in Kenya, who will benefit greatly from this initiative. They are students in Project Detour, an effort initiated to encourage their continuing education while living in a country where they are not granted access to the educational system. Many are Ethiopian-trained engineers, whose academic pursuits were cut short by political turmoil. Just thought you might appreciate another example of how this initiative will benefit the world's community of knowledge seekers."

In people like these, OCW found its intended audience—educators from around the world who can adapt the course materials and learning objects embedded in online lecture notes into their own pedagogy, and self-learners who will be able to draw on the materials for self-study or supplementary use.

"I read about your initiative in the NY Times online and have to say this is one of the most exciting applications of the Internet to date," wrote Charles Bello. Based in Nigeria, Bello is the Web master for www.clickafrique.com, an African Web portal. "I look forward to taking advantage of this opportunity to ‘take a dip' in MIT's enormous reservoir of human intellect."

Building a Sustainable Platform
For the pilot phase, the pages were built using what Cecilia d'Oliveira, OCW's Technology Director, calls "brute-force HTML." Using Web content editors such as Macromedia Inc.'s DreamWeaver, a team of programmers from MIT and consulting firm Sapient Corp. built and designed the first 32 subjects. Over the course of summer 2002, templates were developed, sign-off was secured from faculty, and the site was prepared for the pilot release.

With course materials from 18 more subjects added to the site in December 2002, the total number of HTML pages supporting the initial 50 subjects rose to more than 2,000, together with more than 10,000 supporting files including PDFs of lecture notes, images, and video simulations.

The production model used for the pilot is not scalable for what by 2007 is estimated to be more than 2,000 individual MIT subjects published. Indeed, the OCW goals are not going to be achieved overnight: An aggressive timeline calls for about 500 subjects to be published by September 2003, and then 500 each year there after until the course materials from virtually all of MIT's subjects—undergraduate and graduate—are available to the world.

This first year of the OCW pilot is called the "Discover/ Build" mode, where the focus is on developing the technology, process, and organization to sustain OCW over the long term as an organization. Over the course of the next two years, the team hopes to be able to provide the entire curriculum track for certain MIT subject areas.

The project will take a big leap forward in April 2003 with the implementation of a content management system, which will manage the Web pages and embed learning objects. The content management system will also:

Tracking copyright status will be vital to the long-term success of OCW. During the pilot phase, we assembled a "SWAT team" of attorneys, graphic artists, researchers, and photo image specialists who were charged with obtaining copyright and intellectual property clearances for all the charts, quotes, images, and other items that were embedded in the lecture notes that MIT professors had been using for years.

It was an arduous process, but it has paid off. There has not been a single copyright or intellectual property infringement claim filed against OCW. The copyright permissions process was slow and labor-intensive, but I am confident we have developed a strong set of alternative strategies for acquisition of copyrighted content as the project moves toward publishing hundreds of courses in the coming years.

Reaction at Home
The faculty experience with OCW has been positive. Many professors who were once skeptics are now ready to participate. The project is particularly useful for courses involving intersecting disciplines. For example, while faculty often do not have time to explore the research of peers who might be right down the hall, one faculty member, Paul Sclavounos, has been contacted by another researcher at MIT who wants to explore cross-disciplinary work.

Where did that professor discover Sclavounos' work? On the site for Sclavounos' ocean engineering subject, Course 13.022: Surface Waves and their Interaction With Floating Bodies.

"This initiative is particularly valuable for courses covering emerging new areas of knowledge, as well as intersecting disciplines," says Jonathan A. King, an MIT professor of molecular biology. "Having spent many years developing a course on protein folding that served the needs of biochemists, chemists, chemical engineers, and computational biologists, I am delighted that this work will be made available to a far broader audience."

Shigeru Miyagawa, an MIT professor of linguistics, serves on the OCW Faculty Advisory Board and has two subjects on the current site: Course 24.946: Linguistic Theory and the Japanese Language and CMS.930/21F.034: Media, Education, and the Marketplace, a cross-listed course that explores a broad range of issues on new media and learning.

"OCW reflects the idea that, as scholars and teachers, we wish to share freely the knowledge we generate through our research and teaching," Miyagawa explains. "While MIT may be better known for our research, with OCW, we wish to showcase the quality of our teaching."

The OCW team hopes this will be the first of many open courseware initiatives. "This is about something bigger than MIT," states president Vest. "I hope other universities will see us as educational leaders in this arena, and we very much hope that OpenCourseWare will draw other universities to do the same. We would be delighted if—over time—we have a World Wide Web of knowledge that raises the quality of learning—and ultimately, the quality of life—around the globe."

MIT OpenCourseWare --- http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html 
Find individual course listings on the following MIT OCW Department pages, or view a complete course list.
     Aeronautics & Astronautics
     Anthropology NEW
     Biology
     Chemical Engineering
     Chemistry
     Civil & Environmental Engineering
     Comparative Media Studies NEW
     Earth, Atmospheric, & Planetary Sciences
     Economics
     Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
     Engineering Systems Division
     History NEW
     Linguistics & Philosophy
     Literature NEW
     Materials Science & Engineering NEW
     Mathematics
     Mechanical Engineering
     Nuclear Engineering NEW
     Ocean Engineering
     Physics
     Political Science
     Sloan School of Management
     Urban Studies & Planning

Bob Jensen's threads on free sharing of courseware from MIT, Stanford, and other colleges and universities are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI 

The AT&T Learning Network Community Guide http://www.att.com/communityguide/index.html 

Welcome to the AT&T Learning Network Community Guide. AT&T developed this Guide as part of its ongoing effort to help communities take advantage of the many benefits of information technology. As part of that effort, AT&T funded a variety of organizations to develop public community access centers for community members who do not have other means to connect to the Internet. This Guide is intended to be a companion document for those centers and other technology access centers around the country. Whether you’re involved in running a community access center or you’re a community member interested in learning the uses and benefits of the Internet, this Guide will help get you started. If you’re a community member looking for ways to begin planning your own access center, you’ll find tips on how to “kickstart” that effort.

Community access centers take many forms and take place in many sites within the community where people gather to communicate with and learn from one another. You may find Internet access points in a library, a church or a senior citizen-center. Perhaps your children attend a summer camp that has an area where they can learn about and use these technology resources. Many organizations, like the NAACP and the National Urban League, provide many types of services for community members and are now branching out to bring the reach of the Internet to their centers as well. The point is that there are many organizations, many types of centers and many opportunities to “get connected”— often from places that may have seemed unlikely in the past.

 Bob Jensen's threads on online education and training alternatives are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm 

Question
How does an "archive" differ from a "journal" in some contexts?

Answer
Philosophy of Science (Emerging) Archive ---  http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/ 

Although this topic is not nearly as popular in courses and in research publications as it was several decades ago, it is nice having an archive available. Actually this is a preprint archive which makes it more focused upon emerging studies.  

A journal publishes material that has passed scrutiny by referees and has been edited by the editorial staff to bring it to the journal standards. The archive does not referee postings and does not edit them. The archive merely filters minimally to assure relevance to philosophy of science.

The first accredited competency-based and online university in the United States is Western Governors University (WGU) --- http://www.wgu.edu/wgu/index.html 

As noted in The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 21, 2003, Page A34, WGU is opening an online college that allows teachers to earn compentency-based certificates online.  There are also business and IT undergraduate degrees as well as various other certification programs.

A noteworthy competency-based program in accountancy is the Chartered Accountancy School of Business (CA) covering the Western Provinces and Northern Territories in Canada --- http://www.casb.com/ 
This is a two-year post-graduate program between the undergraduate accounting degree and the uniform CA examination.  All CASB students take online "modules" while being employed full time in firms and/or government.

The CA School of Business gives you graduate style business education combining practical business experience with an innovative approach to learning. As a student you will learn the business basics that underpin the CA designation in an individually paced environment.

CASB's unique focus is on building the skills you will require to become an effective CA. It isn't about memorizing arcane details or cramming for exams. It's about being able to do what you need to do to be successful in the business world.

Our program follows the business life cycle from start-up to IPO so you learn about issues facing companies of all sizes and develop skills in managing the transitions that accompany business success and growth. The first module focuses on a small business. In the second, the business incorporates. In the third, you learn about mergers, acquisitions and international operations. Then you're introduced to controllership and the world of non-profits. Finally, you'll explore strategic management issues and take a company public.

Each module uses ten-weeks of on-line materials and an interactive workshop to build skills in research, analysis, problem solving, interpretation, forecasting, leadership, and innovation. Modules build competencies in organizational effectiveness, control and risk management; finance; performance measurement; taxation; information technology, including e-Business; and assurance. Students then choose one of these competencies for modules 7 and 8.

CASB will help you develop and apply practical business tools. And you'll get to put your new skills to work right away. While at CASB, you complete 36 months of paid work experience in an approved training office where you will put your CASB knowledge to use with a wide variety of different client companies. The modules take 24 months to complete and are studied while working. This allows for breaks for work or personal reasons.

CASB graduates are business-ready CAs, equipped with skills and experience relevant to today's global business environment.

Want to learn more? Meet a CA Student or take the Steps to Becoming a CA.

Bob Jensen's threads on competency-based education and training are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/competency.htm 

Thank Goodness!  Distance Education Students Shy Away From Diploma Mills

From Syllabus News on March 21, 2003

Value Tops in Survey of Distance Grad School Prospects

In a recent survey, one-third of a group of prospective graduate students said "reputation of program" would be the most important factor to them in choosing a distance learning grad school program. The Distance Graduate School survey was conducted by the University of Texas TeleCampus, the support center for online degrees within the UT System, and GradSchools.com. More than 11,500 students participated. The survey sponsors said the results showed that students shy away from "degree mills" and consider content and program value more important than delivery method. The finding was further supported by the fact that 19 percent of the respondents said a "high degree of interactivity between professors and students" was their most important criteria for choosing a distance graduate school. Affordability ranked as the third most important criteria in selecting a graduate program.

New Products: Assessment Tool Eases Remote Test-Taking

Testing and assessment software supplier Questionmark released Perception to Go (P2G), which enables remote test takers to synchronize from their PCs to their Web servers. Test takers can pull down new assessments scheduled by an administrator, disconnect from the network and then answer questions, receive feedback offline, and merge results back to their Web servers when they reconnect. Many universities already deliver examinations via the Internet. The synchronization module will enable users to download data in advance, only going back online to upload results, which will reduce the load on the Web server. The company says the tool will enable schools to conduct large assessments without having to run servers that would lie idle at other times, saving on transmission costs, and eliminating network latency that might affect the timing of high-stakes exams.

"XML in Higher Education," by Frank Coyle, Syllabus, March 2003, pp. 22-25 --- http://www.syllabus.com/article.asp?id=7361 

 SMIL (prnounced "smile"): Multimedia Rides the XML Wave

SMIL (pronounced "smile") is an acronym for Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language, an XML-based dialect for describing the layout and synchronization of multimedia applications.

For educators, SMIL opens the door to sophisticated multimedia development. With minimal effort, SMIL makes it possible for authors to:

As illustrated in the figure below, individual multimedia components can be stored either on a user's PC or delivered from a Web server. SMIL presentations may play in a browser with a SMIL plug-in or in a standalone player such as RealOne or QuickTime that reside on consumer devices and are independent of browsers. Because SMIL documents are text files, SMIL files can be customized on a server manually with a text editor or by using a script, such as AppleScript or PERL, or through the use of XML transformation tools such as XSLT. What's exciting for the aspiring multimedia author is that anything that can generate text can create a SMIL document.

Continued in the article.

Bob Jensen's threads on XML and SMIL are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm#TimelineXML/SMIL 

Hello Katarzyna,

You message has two parts. One is whether there are inherent biases is using student behavior as a surrogate for behavior of persons in "real life" such as business decision makers. The other aspect of your message concerns the safety and well being of students in research studies.

The Surrogate Issue I have an old document on this issue entitled "Do students respond in the same manner as professionals in behavioral experiments?" http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/cultures/student1.htm 

The Safety and Liability Issue Universities in the United States are very sensitive about research that can lead to lawsuits. The U.S. is the most litigious nation in the world. Parties are quick to sue for damages, and students can be damaged by some types of research. One of the best examples, is the well-known research study of Phil Zimbardo at Stanford University --- http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/august22/prison2-822.html 

Virtually all universities in the U.S. now have policies that no research can be undertaken using human subjects prior to that research being approved by a committee of experts on the dangers of research to human subjects. I think that similar safeguards are also placed upon animal studies in general.

An example of the process is provided by the University of Minnesota --- http://www.irb.umn.edu/ 

I hope this helps.

Bob Jensen

-----Original Message----- 
From: KJPM@gmx.de [mailto:KJPM@gmx.de]  
Sent: Sunday, March 30, 2003 9:59 AM 
To: Jensen, Robert Subject: students as subjects

Dear Sir, 
I am a students from frankfurt, studying economics. For my university I have to write about the use of students as subjects in different researches. I have to find out the advantages and the disadvantages of the use of students. Searching in the internet I found your webside and I was wondering if you could give me some advice in references to this topic. Do you know some qualified papers? Sorry for my bad englisch. 

Best regards 
Katarzyna Walkiewicz

FindWhat.com Launches ROI Tool AdAnalyzer helps marketers calculate post-click sales from paid-search programs. http://www.internetnews.com/IAR/article.php/2114531 

Bob Jensen's ROI threads are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/roi.htm 

Blackboard Versus WebCT

**********************************
The WebCT site has the following PR document --- http://www.webct.com/service/ViewContent?contentID=15301032 

Ithaca College switches to WebCT to power Web-based learning

Institution replaces Blackboard to get better customer service, flexible education alternatives


LYNNFIELD, Mass., March 17, 2003 - Ithaca College, a private institution with an enrollment of 6,200 students in upstate New York, has selected the WebCT Campus Edition course management system as the foundation of its e-learning program going forward. Citing WebCT's superior flexibility, service and professionalism, the school is switching from the Blackboard course management system it has used for three years.

"As we were getting ready to take our online learning offerings to the next level, we knew we had to make a switch to a true partner," said David Weil, Ithaca's associate director of academic computing and client services. "WebCT's technology provides us with the flexibility and quality that we need, and in our experience, their people are the most professional and responsive in the industry."

Ithaca faculty members, who are consulted on all major e-learning decisions, ratified the switch after a hands-on introduction to WebCT Campus Edition. Unlike competing systems, WebCT lets faculty present content to students when, where and how they choose, and it provides superior content management and assessment features.

Approximately 550 Ithaca College courses feature online components, including most of the courses in the School of Business. Physical therapy students also use Web-based learning extensively during their clinical experience in their junior and senior years. WebCT is helping Ithaca deploy all of its online courses on WebCT Campus Edition, which will go live this fall.

"Ithaca College is typical of a lot of new customers we're encountering," said Carol Vallone, WebCT president and CEO. "They're committed to advancing their e-learning programs but feel alone in that endeavor or restricted by their technology. The entire WebCT team is behind Ithaca College and is deeply invested in its e-learning success."

 Ithaca College
A comprehensive college that since its founding in 1892 has recognized the value of combining theory and performance, Ithaca provides a rigorous education blending liberal arts and professional programs of study. Ithaca College strives to become the standard of excellence for residential comprehensive colleges, fostering intellect, creativity, and character in an active, student-centered learning community. Ithaca offers over 100 degree programs through its five schools - Business, Communications, Health Sciences and Human Performance, Humanities and Sciences, and Music - and its Division of Interdisciplinary Studies.

About WebCT
WebCT is the world's leading provider of integrated e-learning systems for higher education. Over 2,600 colleges and universities in over 80 countries worldwide are using WebCT's products and services to transform the educational experience of their students. Consortia in 24 American states, four Canadian provinces, two Australian territories, the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities and the Consortium of Distance Education have licensed WebCT for their member institutions, making it the de facto standard in higher education. For more information, please visit www.webct.com.

 ********************************

University of Missouri Comparison of BlackBoard and WebCT Course Management Platforms --- http://etatmo.missouri.edu/courses/resources/comparison.htm 

BlackBoard and WebCT are two different course management platforms that each offer distinct advantages. Together, they complement each other; while BlackBoard offers less customization than WebCT, many faculty members have found Blackboard to be an easier-to-learn platform.

On the other hand, WebCT’s higher level of complexity affords it more sophistication for “power users” who need additional features. Whether faculty need a simple, easy-to-learn interface or need more sophisticated tools, one of these two platforms should suit most circumstances. Designed to help faculty choose the system that better suits his or her needs, the chart below highlights the main similarities and differences between the two platforms.

Note the comparison table at http://etatmo.missouri.edu/courses/resources/comparison.htm  

*********************************

An older document that provides some comparison links is at http://www.westga.edu/~distance/webct/facultymanual/whywebct.htm 

*********************************

March 18, 2003 reply by Ganesh M. Pandit [profgmp@hotmail.com] 

I have used both WebCT and Blackboard. WebCT is filled with several features that are useful; but at the same time it is step-driven where you have go through one step at a time which can be very annoying, especially if you are in a hurry. It is powerful, yet at times very cumbersome to use.

Blackboard may not have as many features as WebCT does; but it is somewhat easier to use as compared to WebCT.

Ganesh M. Pandit

March 18, 2003 reply from David R. Fordham [fordhadr@JMU.EDU] 

Bob, 

I have not personally experienced WebCT. However, JMU did an extensive test of both WebCT and Blackboard, and to make a long story short, we now use Blackboard exclusively, and everyone who participated in the comparison felt it was a no-brainer choice.

The technical support people especially felt that Blackboard offered superior vendor service, was more attentive to requests for upgraded features, and offers better response time on problems and questions.

The faculty, however, reported that Blackboard was much more robust, intuitive, extremely easy to learn (both for faculty and for students), and contained more useful features, served up in quicker time.

Some drawbacks to Blackboard that I have discovered, based on the way I personally use it:

The on-line gradebook spreadsheet view takes a LONG time to serve up from the server. But everything else is quick-as-a-wink response time.

Setting up student groups can take a long time if you have 30 groups of 3 or 4 students each. It is a “checklist” approach for each group, rather than a drag-and-drop operation which would go faster.

Posting PDF files, PowerPoint slides, and other specialized content takes a little more effort than the import-then-drag-and-drop-to-link approach used by FrontPage. But nevertheless, unless you do multiple uploads per class day, it is not exceptionally time-consuming. And I have no idea how WebCT does it, but I can’t imagine it would be so much better as to overcome the other factors.

Blackboard interfaces with our registrar’s PeopleSoft registration system seamlessly. Every semester, my entire class appears magically, complete with email addresses, in my Blackboard courses. It is password protected, with flexible access for guests, so you can post copyrighted materials. I used the communication features extensively from home while the university was closed due to snow. My students love it. I love it. The huge majority of the faculty here (that use it) love it.

WebCT got a lukewarm response here from faculty and students. Tech support gave it a thumbs down.

This comparison took place about a year ago. Since then, we’ve upgraded Blackboard twice, and each upgrade has gone off without a hitch… no retraining, no loss of data, no problems at all.

Hope this helps.
David R. Fordham
PBGH Faculty Fellow
James Madison University

March 18, 2003 reply from David R. Fordham [fordhadr@JMU.EDU] 

Bob, 

if the goal is distance learning, consider a product called "CENTRA".

We use both Blackboard and Centra here at JMU.

Blackboard is a "student resources" tool. Blackboard allows posting of material, links, group communication, forums, quick email, announcements, on-line exams, grade posting, etc. and allows students to quickly (and safely!) submit electronic submissions/spreadsheets/documents to the professor in a way far superior than email attachments.

Centra is what we use for "real-time synchronous" class meetings on-line, and even "replay later" asynchronous class presentations and responses. It is where the on-line courses meet.

These are two every different products, for very different purposes.

WebCT sounds like it may be trying to blend the two purposes. However, when WebCT was reviewed here, it was marketed as a competitor to Blackboard, and at the time, it lost. I have no idea how it would fare if it were competing with Centra.

David R. Fordham 
PBGH Faculty Fellow 
James Madison University

The Centra home page is at http://www.centra.com/ 

March 18, 2003 reply from Robert C. Holmes [rcholmesgcc@HOTMAIL.COM] 

No experience with Blackboard but I am continually frustrated with the inability to do any kind of formatting in e-mail, quiz questions and other areas of WebCT. How do you discuss Journal Entries if you can't even put a tab in your answer?

Robert C. Holmes

May 17, 2003 reply from Vidya Ananthanarayanan vidya@trinity.edu 

With reference to customization, WebCT ships with a library of icons, banners, and symbols that can be used to create the look and feel of the course. BB does something similar but it only applies to the buttons on the navigation panel. WebCT also allows designers to change page background colors, set font specifications and the like for basic customizability. The tech-savvy designer can create their own images and upload those to the site. So there's a range of sophistication available based on the designers comfort and familiarity.

Hope this helps.

Vidya

 

Bob Jensen's threads on the history of course authoring and course management systems can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm 

Bob Jensen's threads on Blackboard are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Blackboard.htm 

The Irascible Professor, March 14, 2003 --- http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-03-14-03.htm 

Commentary of the Day - March 14, 2003: I Don't Know HOW to Read This Book! Guest commentary by Tina Blue.

Over the past few years, I have found that more and more students in my freshman-sophomore English classes at the University of Kansas are completely unable to keep up with their college reading assignments.

I quit teaching "Introduction to Fiction" five years ago because the students could not handle the course readings, even though I had reduced the reading list by about 30 percent. I switched to teaching "Introduction to Poetry." At least in that class I can read each poem aloud to them before we begin to discuss it. Obviously I can't read a 500-page novel out loud at the beginning of every class period.

In my English 101 class I now spend a fair amount of time teaching my students how to read their textbooks. One semester a young man, almost in tears, held up his thick geology textbook and said, "My professor doesn't even lecture on what's in the book. He lectures on other stuff and expects us to read the book on our own. But I don't even know HOW to read this book!"

A lot of them tell me they never read their textbooks in high school or middle school, because they didn't have to. They could usually get A's or B's without doing the readings. Their teachers went over the textbook material in lectures, passed out lecture notes and study guides for tests, and gave easy extra-credit assignments to help them raise their grades if they still did badly on exams.

Continued in the article.

Tina Blue is a lecturer in English at the University of Kansas. She also publishes the Teacher, Teacher web page --- http://www.teacherblue.homestead.com/index.html 

Question"
What is the Stonewall Rebellion?"

Answer
See the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Encyclopedia http://www.glbtq.com/ 
(Includes biographical, literature, art, and photograph items.)  There also is a discussion forum.

Bob Jensen's glossary bookmarks are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob3.htm#08051Glossaries 

Women of Our Time http://www.npg.si.edu/cexh/woot/index.htm 

Girl Power http://www.girlpower.gov/ 

Sharing Professor of the Week --- Tina Blue --- http://www.teacherblue.homestead.com/index.html  

"For Poets--and Readers of Poetry," by Tina Blue --- http://tinablue.homestead.com/articleindex.html 

An introduction to the elements of poetry and to the techniques of poetic interpretation, for those who love to read and write poetry, but who sometimes find it intimidating or hard to understand.

March 9, 2003 message from Gerald Trites [gtrites@stfx.ca] 

Hi Bob,

Here's a link that might interest you. It's www.cica.ca/itac . This is a "redirected" link for the Information Technology Advisory Committee of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants, which has been set up to facilitate access to the Committee's work. The Committee studies various issues related to the impact of technology on the profession, and accordingly has issued studies, white papers and other documents on IT controls, Web Reporting, XBRL, etc. Several of the documents are available for free download from this site.

In your new location, won't you have satellite TV? We live out in the "boonies", where there is no cable, but have access to a satellite service provided by Bell Canada, which includes pretty much everything cable companies offer, including high speed internet. They just launched a second satellite and now are going to offer video on demand as well. There are over 200 channels.

Jerry

Gerald Trites, FCA Professor of Accounting and Information Systems St Francis Xavier University Antigonish, Nova Scotia Tel. 902-867-5410, Fax 902-867-3352, Study 902-386-2832, Cell 902-867-0977 Website - http://www.stfx.ca/people/gtrites 

Bob Jensen's threads on electronic commerce accounting are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce.htm 

Bob Jensen's threads on XBRL are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm 

From Syllabus News on March 18, 2003

Faculty Best Practices: What are Colleagues Doing?

Discuss key issues and hot topics with the experts and your colleagues in the Syllabus Forums at www.syllabus.com/forum . David Brown of Wake Forest University leads a forum on faculty best practices and how to use technology to improve teaching and learning. How are you using asynchronous discussions? What tips do you have for others? Weigh in with your thoughts and questions and see what solutions your colleagues might have.

http://info.101com.com/default.asp?id=529 

From Syllabus News on March 14, 2003

eCollege, Houghton Mifflin Strike Content Sharing Accord

Course management system developer eCollege formed a partnership with publisher Houghton Mifflin Inc. to provide eCollege's customers access to Houghton Mifflin's online supplements for introductory courses in business, humanities, mathematics, science, social science, student success, and world languages. The titles will be available via the eCollege AU+ course management system, and will enable faculty to use the platform’s self-authoring and course development tools to improve their online courses. "It's important that faculty members have access to the kind of resources they need to best engage and challenge their students, and we believe the Houghton Mifflin content can ideally support them in this effort," said Oakleigh Thorne, chairman and CEO of eCollege.

Bob Jensen's threads on the history of course authoring systems can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm 

LEARNING SYSTEMS -- Syracuse University has adopted Blackboard Learning System for campuswide use in supporting face-to-face classes. This spring, in the final phase of a pilot program before going to the enterprise, Syracuse has 100 faculty teaching 153 courses to more than 3,000 students using Blackboard. The school said it is making the move because of Blackboard’s ability to scale from 3,000 to 18,000 users, as well as its support of open standards and its ability to integrate with its PeopleSoft student information system.

Bob Jensen's threads on Blackboard are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/blackboard.htm 

March 19, 2003 message from Mark McConkey [mark@u101.com] 

I came across your site while searching for education links. We'd like to invite you to add U 101 College Search to your collection of links at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm  (or anywhere else that you thought suitable). U 101 is a directory of over 3000 college, community college and university websites in the US and Canada, organized by state/province.

Here's the information:

TITLE: U 101 College Search URL: http://U101.com/  (please note that we prefer to omit the www. bit) Description: Directory of college, community college, and university websites in the US and Canada. Lists over 3000 schools by state or province.

If you prefer, feel free to link to any page within the site, as well.

We'd be honored if you considered our website as a useful link for your visitors!

Regards from Manitoba, Canada,

Mark McConkey
Assistant to the Editor mark@u101.com 

Bob Jensen's bookmarks on this topic are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#DirectoriesGeneral