Last chance to read microfiche before the world ends at 6 pm tonight

Greetings, If the world ends at 6 pm tonight, today may be your last chance to read microfiche (in this world, at least). So come on in. The GGU University Library is open until 5 pm today, giving you plenty of time after we close to get ready for the rapture.

Remember we are here for you forever --or at least until the world ends.

Online course should always include proctored exams

Thankfully, GGU CyberCampus does this as SOP. To understand it's importance (and to read some startling admissions from students) see the post in the Chronicle of Higher Education's Wired Campus on proctored exams for online students.

Then there is the question of cheating. Ms. Wachenheim’s study did not gather any direct evidence, but she reports anecdotally that students have told her how they work in groups to compile huge caches of the publishers’ test-bank questions. She quotes one student as saying, “We may not learn the material, but we are guaranteed an A.”

One wonders how much they would learn if they expended the same amount of effort reading the course material as they do on avoiding reading the course material?

Managing your online reputation

Faculty and anyone else who regularly publishes (or would like to some day): be mindful of your online reputation.

An article in Nature News, Best face forward, explains how not just to keep track of your online presence, but to take more control over it.

Most interesting is the mention of a private company that will do this for you:

Online Reputation Manager, headquartered near Rochester, New York, is a company that uses search-engine optimization strategies to repair the online image of clients who have been besieged with unfavourable press.

Here's a new sub-field within Public Relations I hadn't heard of before. Know any other similar companies? Please let us know in the comments.

Five gadgets that will be dead in 5 years

Courtesy of Prof. Bob Fulkerth:

Five gadgets that will be dead in 5 years. From MSNBC's Gadgetbox blog.