The University of Vermont launched its redesigned responsive website a couple of weeks ago.

Tatjana Salcedo was among the first higher ed professionals to take the 4-week online course on responsive web design taught by eduStyle Founder, Stewart Foss..

Im always excited to learn about new RWD sites in higher ed, but its even more exciting when one of our alums does really great work (school pride, I guess .

Thats why I asked Tatjana a few questions about the project so we can all learn from her experience.

We published our first official mobile site (m.uvm.edu) on the Kurogo framework in the summer of 2011. The site featured a selection of popular syndicated content including news, calendar, course, video and map information. Almost immediately interest in including non-syndicated content emerged.

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- by Caitlin Fry - No Comments »

The New America Foundations Education Policy Program today released a comprehensive package of policy proposals that would provide an overhaul of federal financial aid. The report,Rebalancing Resources and Incentives in Federal Student Aid, calls for specific changes to grants, loans, tax benefits, college outreach programs and federal regulations to provide more direct aid to the lowest-income students while strengthening accountability for institutions of higher education to ensure that more students are able to earn affordable, high-quality credentials.

Rebalancing Resources and Incentives in Federal Student Aid argues the current federal financial aid system is no longer up to todays demands. Built in a different era, its haphazard evolution over the decades has made it inefficient and overly complicated.

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- by Sofia Robertson - No Comments »

A guide for helping students with weak Executive Function skills to learn efficiently and effectively

Students with weak Executive Function skills need strong support and specific strategies to help them learn in an efficient manner, demonstrate what they know, and manage the daily demands of school. This book shows teachers how to do exactly that, while also managing the ebb and flow of their broader classroom needs. From the author of the bestselling parenting book Late, Lost, and Unprepared, comes a compilation of the most practical tools and strategies, designed to be equally useful for children with EF problems as well as all other students in the general education classroom.

Rooted in solid research and classroom-tested experience, the book is organized to help teachers negotiate the very fluid challenges they face every day; educators will find strategies that improve their classroom “flow” and reduce the stress of struggling to teach students with EF weaknesses.

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- by Gabriella McLean - No Comments »

Do you know what digital analytics can do for you, your stakeholders, your visitors or your institution?

There is so (too?) much you need to know to understand what digital analytics can do

In higher education, we cant spend days working on analytics, so here is a quick list of 5 practical things that can be done with the help of digital analytics.

Im only including real web analytics solutions implemented by some of your higher ed colleagues who will explain how to do it next week at the 1st Higher Ed Analytics conference (Feb 6, 2013).

At Ithaca College, Colleen Clark has implemented a comprehensive campaign tracking plan to identify which social ads perform better than the others or which search keyword ads should NOT be discontinued despite apparently low click through rates. By segmenting campaign traffic, Colleen can find out very easily what the visitors brought by a given campaign do on Ithaca Colleges website.

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- by Sofia Robertson - No Comments »

A New Mexico newspaper is reporting that the state could be docked up to $93 million in federal special education funding because it made reductions to the program without U.S. Department of Education approval.

The state is facing a penalty because it did not follow a rule known in federal funding circles as “maintenance of effort.” Normally, states can only keep special education funding level or increase that funding from year to year. But in the depths of the recent recession, several states asked for permission to make temporary cuts because state revenues were falling off. The Education Department granted waivers in some cases, but those that did not get a waiver put their federal special education dollars at risk.

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- by Gabriella McLean - No Comments »

MG here. Today Ross tackles an age-old question. He writes:

What follows is an old story. I have too much work, specifically grading essays. It does not feel sustainable. I would like less work.

Between four sections of English IV and one section of Creative Writing, I teach 130 students. With 130 hundred students, taking 20 minutes to provide detailed, actionable feedback on each major writing assignment means about 43 hours of work.

Moreover, if spread this work out over a manageable-ish two weeks, my students are hemorrhaging investment in the assignment. This article in Wired explains why tightening the feedback loop matters so much here.

I assign major writing assignments at a rate of 2-3 per quarter, plus mandatory rewrites for students who dont meet a certain threshold.

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- by Gabriella McLean - No Comments »

Teachers across the state, including thousands in Shelby County, could have a job evaluation that better reflects their work, if a bill now in the draft stages passes this legislative session.

It would allow teachers in subjects not covered by state tests — music, art, philosophy to name a few — to use their principal’s observation of their classrooms for a larger portion of their evaluation.

Right now these teachers, including everyone who teachers kindergarten through third grade, take an average of their school’s test scores for the 35 percent of their review that state law says must be tied to student achievement. There are no standardized tests to measure their students’ performance.

The outcry has been loud and sustained because teachers say they are being ranked on data from students they may have never taught.

The Department of Education is drafting the bill. It

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- by Gabriella McLean - No Comments »