Author Archives: Samantha DeRosia, ITS Communications
Have you ever wondered how to efficiently manage and and share a collection of more than 15,000 research videos? “With MiVideo, of course!” says Melinda Kraft, ITS Teaching and Learning service manager. MiVideo is the university’s streaming media service, powered by Kaltura, and is approved for use with certain types of sensitive data. “It’s a great option for… Read More »
Every summer, ITS provides students with internship opportunities. This year, ITS is hosting 25 interns: 20 are new, two are high school students, and three are returning from last year. They come from U-M, Wayne State, Eastern, and others schools. The program runs for 14 weeks, from May 7 to August 10. This program is in its fourth… Read More »
A new study has shown that people feel online harassment is deserved when the person commits an offense, even though the common consensus is that on principle, harassing is not appropriate. U-M researchers at the School of Information discovered that bystander intervention could change this perception. These researchers recruited participants from Twitter and Amazon Mechanical Turk and… Read More »
The National Center for Institutional Diversity is taking a multi-pronged approach through research and scholarship to increase underrepresented minority students in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). The NCID, which is housed in LSA, is leading this effort because STEM fields remain mostly homogenous despite programs designed to support students of underrepresented minorities. The center is creating… Read More »
U-M Ann Arbor has been named one of America’s top disability-friendly online universities. The 2018 Best and Most Affordable Online Colleges for Students with Disabilities are ranked on thoroughness of resources, Universal Design for Learning training, availability of distance learning accommodations and variety of services provided. The list was published by SR Education Group. “It is nice be… Read More »
School of Information researchers Christopher Brooks, Joshua Gardner, and Kaifeng Cheng, presented findings at the London Festival of Learning that showed that replacing images of men with women in online courses encouraged female students to engage more with the course. These researchers are also working toward supporting the development of online courses with tailored content for the learners. The U-M research team conducted… Read More »
Kyle Schulz, data scientist, Yuanru Tan, learning design and accessibility fellow, and Rebecca Quintana, learning experience designer, won the Academic Innovation at Michigan (AIM) Analytics Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Dropout Prediction Challenge. The team members were given a random subset of learner data from the first four weeks of courses and the challenge was to predict a… Read More »
Wolverine Pathways is an academic program that began in 2015. Up to 60 6th grade and 9th grade students are selected from Detroit, Southfield Public, or Ypsilanti Community school districts. Once these students are admitted into the program, they participate in fall, winter, and summer sessions each year through their senior year of high school. The program offers… Read More »
Some “blockbuster” massive open online courses (MOOCs) generate large revenues for universities, which then often distribute the funds in a variety of ways. U-M typically gives a third of its revenue from MOOCs to central administration, a third to the department offering the course, and a third to the professors teaching it. Charles Severance, a clinical associate professor in the School… Read More »
Lilia M. Cortina, Timothy R.B. Johnson, and Anna Kirkland are U-M professors who participated on a 21-person committee to change the culture around sexual harassment policies in academia. The report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine finds that academic institutions can do more to prevent sexual harassment, especially in historically male-dominated STEM fields. According to… Read More »
A team from Dearborn’s Information Technology Services were among more than 75 staff members honored with Chancellor’s Staff Recognition Awards. Rex Chang, Chundao Che, Emily Hamilton, Sherie Modelski, and Jerry Van Couwenberghe from the Facilities ELB Hub won the exceptional team award. The award recognized their work with the Engineering Lab Building construction and renovation. The team led the effort… Read More »
On July 23 and 24, the second Gameful Summer Institute is hosting an event intended for higher education faculty, K-12 teachers, instructional designers, and education technology administrators who will learn how to encourage student ownership of learning. “Anyone who watches someone play video games or board games or compete in athletic competitions knows that games are great at… Read More »
“Virtually all human activity in the modern world creates digital traces. It is our responsibility to ensure that the resulting data is protected and managed responsibly,” said Margaret Levenstein, director of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research at the U-M Institute for Social Research. Levenstein is leading a project team working to create a “System of… Read More »
A Kenya-based company, Kimetrica, has developed a new AI program called Methods for Extremely Rapid Observation of Nutritional status (MERON), that might have the ability to identify malnutrition from a photo, which makes it easier to assess nutrition problems in volatile regions. Andrew Jones, a public health nutritionist at U-M, says he can see the role for technologies… Read More »
Julie Hollenbeck, radiation therapy program director, shared the benefits and significance of UM-Flint’s recent purchase of leading-edge simulation equipment in a Q&A with the Flint’s Communications and Marketing team. Out of 85 programs in the U.S., 23 have a Virtual Environment Radiotherapy Trainer (VERT) for its students. UM-Flint us the only program in Michigan to purchase the system. This… Read More »
Coursera for Michigan includes more than 65 courses and 14 teach-outs, with more being offered each month. These resources are useful for those who want more business experience in a new field or more training within their own field. James DeVaney, associate vice provost for academic innovation, states that with offering this service U-M is “able… Read More »
Helen C. Kales, a U-M professor of psychiatry, leads the Program for Positive Aging (PPA) that is working to create innovative options for dementia caregivers, providing reliable information and training, developing support and online tools, and studying to improve self-care. Kales, with the PPA and Johns Hopkins University collaborators developed a web-based support tool called the WeCareAdvisor. The… Read More »
Mingyan Liu, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, was awarded the Distinguished University Innovator Award for her work in helping develop a new approach to enhance cybersecurity. She and her colleagues achieved this by using technology that predicts with up to 90 percent accuracy the likelihood that a company will be exploited by cyber criminals within the next… Read More »
The National Poll on Healthy Aging determined that about half of people 50 to 80 years of age have an online account for their health care, and people over age 65 were less likely to use a computer in regards to their health information than those between 50 and 60 years old. U-M’s Sarah J. Clark, M.P.H., co-associate… Read More »
Recent studies have shown that the use of cellphones has been beneficial and detrimental to summer camps for both the campers and the staff. “As a society, we spend a tremendous amount of time on screens and with digital media, but we don’t understand the full impact that it is having on children,” states lead author Ashley DeHudy, M.D.,… Read More »