Harsh economic realities mean trouble for college leaders. But where administrators perceive an impending crisis, investors increasingly see opportunity. In recent years, venture capitalists have poured millions into education-technology start-ups, trying to cash in on a market they see as ripe for a digital makeover. And lately, those wagers have…

Since MIT and Harvard started edX, their joint experiment with free online courses, the venture has attracted enormous attention for opening the ivory tower to the world. But in the process, the world will become part of an expensive and ambitious experiment testing some of the most interesting--and difficult--questions in digital education. Can…

While e-mail remains the official method of communication on most campuses, colleges are expanding their presence in the virtual world, trying to reach students where they hang out. But without careful planning, that can lead to a scattershot approach as new platforms keep popping up and students' attention becomes increasingly dispersed. The…

It is no secret that educators are teaching a generation that is more stressed out, debt-ridden, depressed, anxious, impulsive, scholastically amoral, self-entitled, bored, and apathetic than perhaps any other since Aristotle sauntered through the Lyceum. But what "really" worries the author is students' preoccupation with social media. Their need…

Sebastian Thrun gave up tenure at Stanford University after 160,000 students signed up for his free online version of the course "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence." The experience completely changed his perspective on education, he said, so he ditched teaching at Stanford and launched the private Web site Udacity, which offers…

As documented by multiple NEA studies ("Reading at Risk," 2004; "To Read or Not to Read," 2007), reading has become devalued in American life, on sale in the clearance bin along with notions of greatness, classic works and ideas, and Western civilization itself. Trying to teach fine literature, writes the author, has become the struggle of how to…

The job of literary archivist is changing as paper manuscripts yield to laptops, Blackberry's, and Facebook content, and digital preservation lets scholars learn more about authors' creative process than ever before. Personal computers and external storage devices have been around for more than a quarter-century, but only now, as the famous…

Colleges share many things on Twitter, but one topic can be risky to broach: the reading habits of library patrons. Patrons' privacy is precious to most librarians. Yet new Web services thrive on collecting and sharing the very information that has long been protected. This points to an emerging tension as libraries embrace digital services.…

One can hardly mention higher education today without hearing the word "innovation," or its understudies "change," "reinvention," "transformation." Last summer the National Governors Association opened its meeting with a plenary session on higher education, innovation, and economic growth. But there is nothing funny about the need for innovation…

Documents from the Army during World War II arrived with the censor's approval stamp, certifying that no harm would come to the nation if those depictions of life at the front fell into enemy hands. That was the censorship of another time. Everyone understood why it was important and knew that the government needed to control the communication…

Senior scholars, the A-list of academic publishing, seem to submit fewer unsolicited manuscripts to traditional humanities journals than they used to. The journal has become, with very few exceptions, the place where junior and midlevel scholars are placing their work. Technology and changing habits have called into question the nature of the…

College leaders usually brag about their tech-filled "smart" classrooms, but a dean at Southern Methodist University is proudly removing computers from lecture halls. Jose A. Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts, has challenged his colleagues to "teach naked"--by which he means, "sans" machines. More than any thing else, Mr. Bowen wants…

Recording class sessions so students can view them online is becoming routine on many campuses. But all that taping can lead to "uh-oh moments," such as when a professor's joke about the college dean ends up on YouTube, or a private comment to a student after class is inadvertently broadcast. Some lecture bloopers caught on tape are…

Most users have no more knowledge of what their computer or code is actually doing than most automobile owners have of their carburetor or catalytic converter. Nor is any such knowledge necessarily needed. But for academics, driven by an increasing emphasis on the materiality of new media--that is, the social, cultural, and economic factors…

There is no doubt that as technology continues to change, the generation of students will change also. The best preparation, then, is to train one's own mind to think digitally so that one can best create policies, programs, and interactions that enable a student to connect the two worlds in ways that are productive, satisfying, and meaningful.…