Category Archives: Campus News

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U-M NCID: Changing STEM to encourage minority students

By | July 23, 2018
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woman holding laptop standing next to server rack

  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 named a top disability-friendly online university

By | July 20, 2018
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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 »

‘Smart’ online courses closing the gender gap

By | July 19, 2018
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"Devices displaying online learning"

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 »

Work remains for digital badges in college admissions

By | July 19, 2018
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screen capture of Mozilla Backpack user page

The use of digital credentials in college admissions holds the promise of helping universities assemble a class of more diverse and prepared students, but more work needs to be done to make them useful across higher education. To understand the potential for using digital badges for admissions and what is needed to get colleges and universities to a… Read More »

Winners of MOOC dropout prediction challenge

By | July 18, 2018
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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 »

Origin Stories showcases M-Write

By | July 18, 2018
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What happens when an English faculty and a Chemistry faculty partner to create a writing-to-learn program? You get M-Write. Listen to the latest episode in the Origin Stories podcast as English professor Anne Ruggles Gere, director of the Sweetland Writing Center, and Ginger Schultz, assistant professor of chemistry, discuss how they came together, from disparate fields, to create the… Read More »

ITS hosts summer interns from Wolverine Pathways program

By | July 17, 2018
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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 »

Pendse: Collaboration, diversity & innovation key to successful IT strategy

By | July 4, 2018
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A headshot of Ravi Pendse, U-M VPIT-CIO

In a short interview with “EducationTIMES,” U-M’s newly appointed VPIT-CIO Ravi Pendse discusses his new role and his vision for the future. “I see a teacher in every person I interact with,” says Pendse when asked how he would draw upon his past experience as a collaborative university leader. “So, I expect to listen, learn, adapt, and collaboratively lead. If… Read More »

U-M researchers create world’s smallest computer

By | July 4, 2018
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"Device next to a grain of rice"

A team of researchers from U-M have created a computing device that is 0.3 mm, many times smaller than a grain of rice. That beats IBM’s March claim of creating the world’s smallest computer. However, unlike most existing devices—which retain their programming and data even when they are not externally powered—these new microdevices from IBM and now Michigan lose all… Read More »

DeMonner & Whyte recognized for leadership at IMS Global Learning Institute

By | June 29, 2018
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Sean DeMonner, ITS executive director of Teaching and Learning (TL), and Anthony Whyte, ITS-TL IT program manager, each received leadership awards at the 2018 IMS Global Learning Impact Leadership Institute held in Baltimore in May. DeMonner was recognized for leadership in higher education, while Whyte received his fourth consecutive IMS leadership award for his work leading the Caliper… Read More »

What’s the deal with Bitcoin?

By | June 27, 2018
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woman holding large gold coin, surrounded by merchandise

A Bitcoin boom could make millionaires, but a bust could just as easily destroy the cryptocurrency. So what exactly is Bitcoin and how does it work? LSA researcher Lynette Shaw provides insights about new forms of digital currency—and what actually makes something worth anything. According to Shaw, an assistant professor in the Center for the Study of Complex Systems,… Read More »

Blockbuster MOOCs support teaching and learning efforts

By | June 25, 2018
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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 »

Report finds sexual harassment policies in academia lacking

By | June 22, 2018
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group of women with backs turned

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 »

Crowdsourcing in milliseconds

By | June 22, 2018
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Walter Lasecki, assistant professor in the College of Engineering and in the School of Information, has co-authored a paper introducing the “look-ahead approach,” a hybrid intelligence workflow that enables instantaneous crowdsourcing systems that can return crowd responses within milliseconds. According to the published paper, “Bolt: Instantaneous Crowdsourcing via Just-in-Time Training:” …real-time crowdsourcing has made it possible to solve… Read More »

Lampe elected to ACM SIGCHI Executive Committee

By | June 21, 2018
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Cliff Lampe at TedEx talk

Cliff Lampe, U-M School of Information associate professor, was elected Executive Vice President of the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (ACM SIGCHI), a significant honor. In his wide-ranging research on social and technical structures of large-scale technology-mediated communications, Lampe has worked with Facebook, Wikipedia, Slashdot, and Everything2. He also has helped create multiple social… Read More »

Dearborn ITS team wins staff award

By | June 21, 2018
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members of the winning ELB team

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 »

U-M researchers strive to keep confidential data safe

By | June 15, 2018
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3d text 'data' with closed chain on the background of hexadecimal data.

“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 »

AI program detects malnutrition in children

By | June 14, 2018
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"A UNICEF staff member measures the perimeter of an acute malnourished child’s arm in Doolow, Somalia"

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 »