The University of Michigan has been recognized as one of the first Chapters in the new Women in High Performance Computing (WHPC) Pilot Program. “The WHPC Chapter Pilot will enable us to reach an ever-increasing community of women, provide these women with the networks that we recognize are essential for them excelling in their career, and retaining them… Read More »
U-M engineering researchers have received more than $16.7 million from a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency initiative to push microelectronics beyond Moore’s Law—the transistor scaling that has allowed for 50 years of rapid progress in electronics. DARPA’s Electronics Resurgence Initiative is a $75 million effort to jumpstart innovation in the field. The funded projects at U-M include: An open-source… Read More »
In a recent blog post, the Office of Academic Innovation describes how it employed “pop-up” usability testing as a valuable means to collect student feedback for making improvements to the course page layout of its data visualization tool, Academic Reporting Tools 2.0. Unlike traditional forms of usability testing—such as one-on-one interviews, focus groups, etc.—“pop-up” tests are free… Read More »
While many universities have established programs to foster digital innovation, getting faculty to try out new technologies can be a challenge. A recent article in “Campus Technology” highlights the work of U-M’s Office of Academic Innovation as one of several academic technology leaders that encourage faculty to experiment and engage with emerging technologies and pedagogies. The story cites… Read More »
Engineering professor Sang-Hwan Kim won’t be surprised if UM-Dearborn soon becomes a center for human-centered design—an emerging field focused on the intersections of technology and human experience. His department is stacked with faculty specializing in ergonomics and human factors (a cousin of ergonomics). And come fall, the launch of a new Master of Science in Engineering degree program… Read More »
Philomena Meechan, LSA Language Resource Center, and Todd Austin, LSA Instructional Support Services, recently presented with Professor Alexander Knysh, U-M Near Eastern Studies, and faculty from St. Petersburg State University, Russia at the SUNY COIL conference in New York and at the UNICollaboration Conference in Kraków, Poland. Their presentation showcased how two Near Eastern Studies courses used a combination of… 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 »
Robin Brewer, an assistant professor in the U-M School of Information, leads an effort to introduce high school girls to technology through workshops that encourage them to create social impact through coding. Brave Initiatives, a Chicago-based non-profit, started offering weekend workshops in January, 2018 to young women at Hamtramck High School in Detroit. Brewer leads up this Detroit chapter… Read More »
Raven Lanier, a copyright specialist with the Office of Academic Innovation, answers a lot of questions about copyright and intellectual property (IP). IP issues can be particularly confusing when it comes to online courses. “It can seem overwhelming when you first get in, but IP issues don’t have to be overwhelming,” Lanier writes in a recent blog post… 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 »
Last month, the Department of Justice lost its suit to prevent AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner. In a recent article, Amanda Lotz, professor of media studies at U-M, predicts that these types of mergers will reshape the American media landscape, even more so because of the elimination of net neutrality. “The reason AT&T’s purchase of Time Warner is so… 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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »