Posts Tagged: Merrimack College

These Students Could Save Higher Education in New England

This photograph from Gov. Charlie Baker’s State of the Commonwealth address last month shows more than just happy college students in their sweatshirts. These students, from Northern Essex Community College and Merrimack College, are part of cohorts of students who have graduated from “early college” programs (with up to a year’s college credit) and successfully matriculated into a two- or...

Real Tweets, Fake News … and More from the NEJHE Beat …

Tweeting is getting a bad name under President Trump. But let me implore you to pay attention to NEBHE’s Twitter feed @nebhe. You won't see any posts at 2:30 a.m. But it’s about the closest thing we have to a news service on New England higher education and the many areas it affects. In that way, it reminds me of why NEJHE was once called Connection. It was a bit too generic a name, but it nic...

The Death of Teaching … and Birth of Learning

Forget disruption. This is the age of chaos in higher education. First MOOCs. Now Sweet Briar. Seemingly every day brings a new moment where we must confront the reality that we no longer know how to control nor predict what higher education will become. And with this lack of control comes a flailing for next steps, any steps, in an attempt to secure our future. We suggest that there is a way t...

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...