Changing Higher Education

The Information Age is producing massive changes in the methods and approaches we use to educate ourselves. Our university system is derived from models developed in the middle of the 19th century. They need to change. How they change will be a topic of discussion at the next Idea Club. You can follow some of the ideas at Path to Sustainable, written by Richard Gayle, a board member for the Foundation.

One Response to “Changing Higher Education”

1. Jeff James Says:
   November 23rd, 2009 at 8:25 pm

   I’m sorry to have missed your higher education meeting tonight. I’m sure it will be an interesting discussion and I had hoped to contribute on the topic.

   I would like to mention a digital research tool I’ve been using recently and ask a couple of questions.

   The tool I have been using is the Zotero plug-in for Firefox, which combines and improves on the functionality of web bookmarking and Endnote. Zotero is an open-source tool that collects info from sources like books, periodicals, web sites, etc, and saves the content both locally and in the ‘cloud’ allowing for synchronization between computers at varying locations and automated backup of collected material. This one component of the tool is similar to existing tools that automatically synchronize bookmarks, i.e. between home and work PC’s. However, for research of any kind this tool has considerably more functionality as it allows the user, with a single click) to capture as little (e.g. only website address) or as much (e.g. complete snapshot of site, links, added user notations, etc) of a website or individual book or periodical entries from various library sites. The user can then organize, annotate and view all this information on-line or off-line. The plug-in integrates with MS Office and Open Office to generate citations that are formatted appropriately for many publications, scholarly and otherwise. I am a scientist using the tool for self-study and my job search so I have not used the citation manager functionality much but I find the tool extremely useful. More at http://www.zotero.org/.

   Finally, a topic related to higher ed in that it sheds light on researching the state of research in Washington state. The WBBA (www.washbio.org) is running a series of talks on global health which recently included the presentation of a new study on several large organizations in Washington doing work on that topic. The study involved commercial entities and educational institutions including the UW, WSU and Fred Hutch. And, it looked at the research professionals, project locations, disciplines, topic of study, project goals, etc within and across these organizations. Not surprisingly the study uncovered considerable information about overlapping efforts and previously unrecognized efforts. Also, the study shed light on the considerable and interconnected nature of Washington education, global health, biotech and pharma sectors. No specific comment from me on the topic, I just wanted to point out that others are looking at related topics and your members may be interested.

   Will your discussion tonight will be posted in a forum that I can access?

   Thanks,
   Jeff

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