The organizers encourage submissions that approach this theme from a variety of perspectives under three major topic tracks:
Education & Workforce Development
Information Technology
Innovation & Entrepreneurship
The aim of the Fifth 21st Century Academic Forum Conference at Harvard is to encourage and facilitate research initiatives that address the future of education, the workforce, and life at large. Our conferences are attended by a global audience of academic researchers, practitioners, policy makers and others interested in addressing important issues affecting education and public policy.
The scholar-centric nature of the questionnaire ensures that potential changes in research and teaching inform our thinking, not only about academic libraries and scholarly publishing, but about changes in the educational enterprise more broadly.
My note:
By showcasing the diminishing role of physical presence and the increasing research using online methods, this study clearly proves that the 4/5 years debate if the reference librarians must sit on that desk (and answer the most popular question “where is the bathroom”) is futile.
What the study does not show, since it is conducted in its traditional (conservative) form, is that the library is NOT only the traditional library, where faculty and student search for information (being that in its physical appearance or in online access), but the library entails services, very close to the ones offered by IMS.
I see a discrepancy between literature (where libraries compel much more proactive approach regarding services) and the structure of this survey, which focuses on the traditional (conservative) role of the library as a gatekeeper to online resources [only]. Besides entrenching in 90’s practices of information literacy and/or “dressing up” old-fashioned information literacy with the new cloths of “digital literacy”as I witness at my workplace, the faculty must have been surveyed on the skills in metaliteacies, which the library can [must] provide, as per literature.
history as a field in transition. It is characterized by a vast expansion of new sources, widely adopted research practices and communication mechanisms shaped by new technologies, and a small but growing subset of scholars utilizing new methodologies to ask questions or share findings in fresh, unique ways.
It is proposed that a college’s program could fall short in ONE state and lose the right to offer TEACH grants to distance students in ANY state. That might work if every state used the same criteria, but that’s not required. The “Discussion of Costs, Benefits, and Transfers” is a baffling attempt at measuring activity for which there is no good data.
Truth and Power, the final episode of which airs tonight on Pivot. Directed by Brian Knappenberger.
Knappenberger, who directed the feature-length documentary The Internet’s Own Boy, about the late Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz.
Social Media Has Helped Activists Reclaim the Narrative
it’s not just activists who are benefiting from new technologies. Knappenberger spends nearly half the series carefully explaining the myriad ways governments and corporations use digital tools to surveil social movements. From examining the cell-phone tracking technologies used by law enforcement to uncovering how repressive regimes work with American tech companies to thwart social movements, the series offers up a smart meditation on the threat of digital surveillance on political dissent
It’s a problem Knappenberger illustrates in the “Activists or Terrorists” episode, where he unpacks how “Ag-gag” laws were passed under pressure from corporate lobbying and have made it illegal to film or photograph inside any animal farm without consent of the facility’s owner.
“Prisoners for Sale,” the seventh episode, explores the story of two inmates-turned-journalists who started an independent publication to document systemic failures of the prison industrial complex.
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More on technology and civil disobedience in this IMS blog
It’s become increasingly common for hackers to sell compromised streaming accounts for services like Netflix, HBO, and Spotify on the dark web — a section of the internet only accessible from a special web browser. These account passwords are often recovered from phishing attempts, a hacking method that involves tricking someone into giving up their account info to what appears to be a legit source.
The college rolled textbook costs into tuition the same way costs associated with athletic fields, libraries,
and classroom equipment are rolled into tuition.
Berg, M., & Seeber, B. (2016). Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy. University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division.
“Distractedness and fragmentation characterize contemporary academic life”
A number of factors. Over the last two decades, we’ve seen increases in class sizes, the casualization of academic labour, administrative bloating, the shift toward quantification of our time and our output. Pressures to publish, new technology, the downloading of tasks and the confusion it creates – these all have led to a situation where we spend less time talking face-to-face with each other and more time multitasking. There seems to be less sense of community and collegiality.