Visualising Politecnico di Milano's School of Design
"Politecnico di Milano, in order to present the School of Design in its own stand at Salone del Mobile 2013, asked DensityDesign to realize a 4 mt x 2 mt poster showing the structure and the efficiency of the School of Design system at Politecnico. The visualization is a picture of the 2010 / 2011 academic year. We began with the visualization of the figures related to students.
On the left side you can start following the students path from the admission test to their bachelor degree, which is connected to data related to the type of contract one year after graduation (data referred to a 2010 survey).
We decided to integrate the visualization with information related to credits distribution. Every circle is a course of study and shows its typology of exams (theoretical courses, labs, etc.) with related C.F.U. (university course credits). Inside it is shown the average of earned credits by students every year. In the right side you can see the same data related to master degree.
We also visualized how many teachers each department gives to the school of design.
The poster has been completed with information about PhDs, technical and research labs and the number of students for each school of Politecnico.
The poster was realized in one week by Gabriele Calvi and Sara De Donno with the supervision of Michele Mauri."
(Sara De Donno, 24 April 2013, Density Design)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Monsters University: Pixar parody of college recruitment ads
"This is delightful: a campaign by Pixar for its upcoming film Monsters University that spoofs those wonderfully cheesy college-recruitment ads that air during NCAA sporting events. The spot below, which ran during this week's Rose Bowl telecast, promotes the movie's eponymous institution and imitates the source material perfectly, from the tagline ('Image you at MU') to the awkwardly saccharine student testimonials. The whole spot is nicely paced ahead of the amusing reveal halfway through. (The realism of the animation helps a ton, too, and is its own best marketing for the film.) The website, monstersuniversity.com/edu, is quite brilliantly done as well. The 'Student Policies' section is particularly inspired. On the issue of 'Basic Monster Respect,' it offers this advice: 'All monsters are unique - by heritage, number of appendages, or simply number of eyes - and all monsters deserve respect.' Pets, it should be noted, are not allowed on campus, 'with the exception of seeing-eye snakes.'"
(Tim Nudd, 03 January 2013, Adweek)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
University students face a constant stream of questionnaires designed to assess the standard of their courses
"I'm more bothered by the underlying assumptions about what makes good university teaching that lie behind many of these surveys. You can see them particularly clearly in the National Student Survey, and the reams of student feedback it publishes online - explicitly, so it says, to help prospective students choose a good course, and to help universities 'enhance the student learning experience'. ...
OK, I can see how at first sight that might seem obvious. Who, after all, wants to see their kids go off to university, at great expense, for a diet of dis-satisfaction? But, from where I sit, dissatisfaction and discomfort have their own, important, role to play in a good university education. We're aiming to push our students to think differently, to move out of their intellectual comfort zone, to read and discuss texts that are almost too hard for them to manage. It is, and it's meant to be, destabilizing.
At the same time, we're urging them never to be satisfied with the arguments they are presented with, never to take things on trust, always to challenge, always to see the weak points, or to want to push the argument further. Then along comes the National Survey, treats them as consumers, and asks them if they're satisfied."
(Mary Beard, BBC News, 2 December 2012)
CONTRIBUTOR
Phil NoddingSHARE
Do online courses spell the end for the traditional university?
"The future that [Sebastian] Thrun believes in, that has excited him more than self-driving cars, or sci-fi-style gadgets, is education. Specifically, massive online education free to all. The music industry, publishing, transportation, retail - they've all experienced the great technological disruption. Now, says Thrun, it's education's turn.
'It's going to change. There is no doubt about it.' Specifically, Thrun believes, higher education is going to change. He has launched Udacity, an online university, and wants to provide mass high quality education for the world. For students in developing countries who can't get it any other way, or for students in the first world, who can but may choose not to. Pay thousands of pounds a year for your education? Or get it free online?"
(Carole Cadwalladr, Sunday 11 November 2012, The Guardian)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Emerging Trends in LMS / Ed Tech Market
"For the past decade, the LMS market has evolved from providing tools that were purchased at the departmental level to enterprise-class systems purchased at the institutional or even system-wide level. However, since about 2004 the market has been fairly consistent, dominated by Blackboard corporate strategy.
Blackboard went public in 2004, signaling a real market worth of investors' attention. In 2005 – 2006, the market was dominated by Blackboard's acquisition of WebCT, the number 2 player in LMS, resulting in a somewhat extended Department of Justice approval cycle. Starting in 2006, Blackboard was awarded the infamous '138 patent and subsequently filed suit against Desire2Learn, the new number 2 player in LMS. About this same time, open source started to become a viable alternative to proprietary systems in general, and Blackboard in particular, in the form of Moodle and Sakai. From 2006 – 2009, open source became fully established for campus-wide or system-wide LMS deployments. In late 2009, Desire2Learn successfully fended off Blackboard patent lawsuits, ultimately resulting in all 38 claims being ruled invalid by a US Court of Appeals. On the heels of these efforts in 2009, Blackboard purchased Angel, taking another competitor out of the market."
(Phil Hill, 4 August 2011, e-Literatee-Literate)
Fig.1 "LMS Market Share", [http://www.deltainitiative.com/higher-education/lms-strategy]
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
