In this HEPI debate paper on the media and higher education, Rosemary Bennett provides a commentary on the interaction of the two sectors and proposes ideas on how universities might best engage with journalists to promote themselves and their research. [Foreword by Adam Tickell.]

It is not so long ago that universities shunned words such as "public relations" and "marketing," preferring to describe staff working in these areas as information officers and even assistant registrars and with such staff drawn from a cadre of generalist administrators. If they really had to be specific, then an acceptable word was "publicity".…

Media Literacy Education has definitely come a long way. The author remembers mentioning Media Literacy at a Prix Jeunesse presentation in New York City in the early-mid 1990s-- all the participants looked at him as a weirdo and politely ignored his comment on the necessity for TV producers to include or at least reflect upon media…

Dar-Nimrod and Heine (2011) presented a masterfully broad review of the implications of genetic essentialism for understandings of human diversity. This commentary clarifies the reasons that essentialist thinking has problematic social consequences and links genetic forms of essentialism to those invoking neural essences. The mounting evidence…

People dislike the Common Core for several different reasons, and so it is important to disaggregate the sources of opposition and to assess and then to dispel some of the myths that have built up around it. It also is important to understand the unusual political alliances that have emerged in opposition to Common Core implementation and how they…

An analysis of the influence of the mass media on the moral state of Russian society discerns negative consequences of that influence, and sees the mass media (particularly television) as involved in the cultural degradation of the population. It argues in favor of state, social, and pedagogical controls to facilitate a more positive role of the…

One would expect email substantially to increase organisational productivity and efficiency. There is little empirical evidence of this since email use is such a complex tool that it would be well nigh impossible to attribute efficiency increases solely to email. There is anecdotal evidence of the positive aspects of email (Phillips, S.R. and…

In 2007, against a tragically ironic backdrop of National Poetry Month, April indeed was "the cruellest month" (Eliot 1922, I.1). The media spotlight during that time repositioned from Iraq and Afghanistan to Blacksburg, Virginia, where a stateside guerilla incursion at Virginia Tech would mark the single worst episode of school shooting…

Modern zoological gardens have invested substantial resources in technology to deliver environmental education concepts to visitors. Investment in these media reflects a currently unsubstantiated belief that visitors will both use and learn from these media alongside more traditional and less costly displays. This paper proposes a model that…

Historians of American education readily acknowledge that in the mid-19th century the German university and academic ideal rose in prominence among American academicians, who then worked diligently to replicate the German university model in the United States. During this same time, however, many more Americans were exposed to a different…

This paper is intended as a broad, conceptual and theoretical treatise on the aims of teaching art in the age of global digital media. To contextualize a set of general recommendations for art education technology pedagogy, I first provide an overview of the meteoric rise of on-line social networks, and consider questions about the nature and…

"Sound-Bite Saboteurs" examines the emergence of a multifaceted, multimedia culture that encourages the use of sound bites to silence one's opponents at the expense of democratic deliberation and debate. No simple partisan phenomenon or mere attempt to "spin" a particular issue, sound-bite sabotage is, the authors argue, a…

In this rebuttal to Linn's critique (see EJ802887), the authors state that, while Linn provides a thoughtful critique of the culture-centered approach by questioning its feasibility, he missed the idea that the very concept of effectiveness is brought under scrutiny by the culture-centered approach, with the focus being on examining the universal…

It's official: Online social networking is mainstream. Once the domain of teenagers and techno-geeks, sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter are rapidly gaining popularity with the multi-aged masses. Last year, in fact, Facebook reported its fastest growing demographic was those 25 years and older. There's no question that this new…

In this article, the author comments on the article by Dutta and Basnyat (see EJ802883) that provides an insightful and comprehensive critique of a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) entertainment-education program, The Radio Communication Program (RCP) in Nepal, which has been reported to be highly participatory. Despite…