Posts Tagged: Dan W. Butin

Learning in the Clouds?

Engaged learning—the type that happens outside textbooks and beyond the four walls of the classroom—moves beyond right and wrong answers to grappling with the uncertainties and contradictions of a complex world. My iPhone backs up to the “cloud.” GoogleDocs is all about “cloud computing.” And Facebook, well, forget the clouds; it’s as ubiquitous as the sky. But learning? Really...

Does Community Engagement Have a Place in a Placeless University?

NEJHE on Models that Will Change Higher Ed Forever It will be truly ironic if the most impersonal technology of all ends up saving the most personal kind of teaching and learning in higher education. I speak about the dramatic rise of online learning and MOOCs. Everyone, it seems, is talking about and questioning the relevance and “value proposition” of higher education. From Thomas Frie...

I Am Not a Machine

An education dean reflects on MOOCs … I am not a machine. This makes my college students happy. Though, to be honest, they assume as much since I walk into the classroom, make some small talk and launch into my lecture. After a few minutes, I may stop, ask for questions, prompt some discussion and perhaps tell a few bad jokes. Which should prove once and for all that I am human and fallibl...