For tech-savvy educators looking to connect with students, social media have a powerful allure: Not only are sites such as Facebook and Twitter inherently designed for discussion and the exchange of ideas, but most students are already immersed in the technology. While these sites have their critics, social media's potential for collaboration is…

The term "open education" has been in use at least since the 1920s, when it emerged as an educational experiment in the Soviet Union. But since the spread of the internet in the late 20th century, open education has come to be inextricably associated with information technology. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Open Educational Resources…

Students at Tompkins Cortland Community College (commonly known as TC3) in upstate New York can use mobile phones to check their grades and course schedules, sign up for text alerts about class cancellations, and view a campus weather cam. They can even view their debit card account balances--all courtesy of the TC3 Mobile portal. The students at…

Like fine wines, Web 2.0 technologies get better with age. Gone are the days of the pointless chat room; this is the era of social networking juggernauts such as Facebook, MySpace, and Friendster. Services offered by these firms are helpful in facilitating connections among users in every industry and of every age. In higher education, however, a…

Not that many years back, portals were nothing more than splash pages from which users could click on links to navigate a school's web-based resources. Today, however, they are much more: single sign-on gateways that easily enable users to do everything from pay tuition and view transcripts, to purchase parking permits, and sell used books. Still,…

This article explores different approaches that facilitate online collaboration. The newest efforts in collaboration revolve around wikis. These websites allow visitors to add, remove, edit, and change content directly online. Another fairly affordable approach involves open source, a programming language that is, in many ways, collaborative…

Are colleges and universities doing enough to take advantage of Web 2.0 and social networking tools in their recruitment and retention efforts? "Not even close," says Sam Richard, a 23-year-old junior in the College of Public Programs at Arizona State University in Phoenix. Richard is one of six students in ASU's Student Ambassadors for…

This article features the 14 winners of the 2008 Campus Technology Innovators. This article offers an insider's view of the winners' campus technology initiatives, their project leads, and vendor partners jointly recognized for a unique ability to advance teaching, learning, administration, and operation on North American college and university…