Articles, Papers, and Reports

Flip video devices are small, inexpensive, digital camcorders. For about the price of a low-end digital camera, the Flip offers up to an hour of video from an easy-to-use, self-contained device. Because of its simplicity and affordability, the Flip allows virtually anyone to be a producer of video content. For educators, these small camcorders facilitate visual learning, which is frequently more engaging than other kinds of instruction and can transcend language barriers. A video artifact can be a highly effective tool for assessment, and the Flip camcorders offer easy access to this medium.

The "7 Things You Should Know About..." series from the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) provides concise information on emerging learning technologies. Each brief focuses on a single technology and describes what it is, where it is going, and why it matters to teaching and learning. Use these briefs for a no-jargon, quick overview of a topic and share them with time-pressed colleagues.

In addition to the "7 Things You Should Know About…" briefs, you may find other ELI resources useful in addressing teaching, learning, and technology issues at your institution. To learn more, please visit the ELI Resources page.

A change in policy for how libraries can use and share online catalog data is causing a backlash among open-access proponents and some librarians.

Faculty members complain constantly about plagiarism and trade stories about strategies to combat it. Loye Young thought he had a solution. On his syllabus at Texas A&M International University this fall, he wrote: “No form of dishonesty is acceptable. I will promptly and publicly fail and humiliate anyone caught lying, cheating, or stealing. That includes academic dishonesty, copyright violations, software piracy, or any other form of dishonesty.”

The National Survey of Student Engagement — an annual report providing comparative data on student experiences at four-year institutions nationwide — is entering its 10th year. Now that the survey is reaching what some consider a critical mass of participants, this year’s report finds that variations in educational quality are more prevalent within institutions than among them. As a result, NSSE officials argue that holistic assessments, such as theirs, provide a more accurate comparison than do those using institution-wide averages.

Created by the FTC to reduce the risk of identity theft and consumer fraud, FACTA proposes to enforce the full destruction of consumer information by businesses.

On October 16, 2007, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) approved final rules implementing the affiliate marketing restrictions and identity theft prevention requirements from the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (FACTA). The Federal Trade Commission issued similar rules on October 23, 2007, and the other federal banking agencies and the Securities and Exchange Commission are expected to follow suit in the near future.

This ECAR research bulletin focuses on what it takes to reposition, reengineer, rebuild, and redevelop an existing university-wide website and structure it for ongoing manageability. It covers website governance, policy, management, and implementation of a content management system for the web. In specific, it is about how Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, undertook a project to bring its website in line with the broadest spectrum of institutional strategic directions.

Citation for this work: Malavazos, Antonia, and Toby D. Sitko. “Website Redevelopment: A Big Job with a Big Payoff.” (Research Bulletin, Issue 23). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2008, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

The final weeks of 2007 saw a flurry of regulatory activity by the federal banking regulatory agencies and the Federal Trade Commission.  These issuances, whether in the form of final rules and guidelines or proposed rules or guidelines, all address aspects of identity theft prevention and consumer data privacy protection.

Reprinted from the February 2008 issue of the Privacy & Data Security Law Journal.

To some academics, clickers are a great new technology, allowing professors to measure instantly whether students in a large class are grasping new concepts (or are even in class). To others, clickers represent a depersonalizing influence.

EDUCAUSE President, Diana G. Oblinger, discusses the future of EDUCAUSE Quarterly.