Online University Opens in West Bank

An American online university started by an Israeli entrepreneur has opened an operations centre in the West Bank, writes DD Guttenplan for The New York Times. Shai Reshef, the founder of University of the People, a non-profit institution that offers free online education to students in more than 120 countries, said his agreement with ASAL Technologies, a Palestinian software and information technology services company based in Ramallah, was just the first stage of a plan to move the university's entire back office to the West Bank.
University of the People uses specially adapted open course materials to offer courses in business administration and computer science. "Those are the skills most likely to help our students find jobs," said Reshef, an entrepreneur who started and sold two for-profit education companies before putting $3 million of his own money into his new venture.
Based on a peer-to-peer learning model in which students teach one another, the university has also recruited volunteer mentors from Brigham Young, Columbia, Harvard, Insead, New York University and Yale. Tuition is free.
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0201, 11 December 2011

Virtual University to boost Islamic Science

Wagdy Sawahel
Two institutions and a prize, all aimed at boosting scientific research in the Muslim world, have been announced by the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The 57 member states agreed to establish the Islamic Virtual University, the Islamic Universities Business Network, and a prize for academic research papers.
The institutions were announced during the 5th session of the General Conference of the Federation of the Universities of the Islamic World (FUIW) held in Baku, Republic of Azerbaijan FROM 12-14 May.
The virtual university will offer higher education degrees in science and technology through partnerships among the federation's members and other leading universities. Besides developing training and educational programmes, it is hoped that the university will also catalyse educational reform and collaboration within the Islamic world.
The business network will focus on promoting the commercialisation of technology and on developing innovation-based businesses. It will offer training programmes and help better communicate science from university and research institutes to interested parties in the public and private sector.
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0126, 30 May 2010

The Future of the Internet

The latest in a series of expert studies, The Future of the Internet IV, has revealed “fascinating new perspectives on the way the internet is affecting human intelligence and the ways that information is being shared and rendered”, according to the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University and the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. The web-based survey obtained opinions from nearly 900 internet stakeholders including prominent scientists, business leaders, consultants, writers and technology developers.
The web-based survey gathered opinions from prominent scientists, business leaders, consultants, writers and technology developers. It is the fourth in a series of Internet expert studies conducted by the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University and the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. In this report, we cover experts' thoughts on the following issues:
•Will Google make us stupid?
•Will the internet enhance or detract from reading, writing, and rendering of knowledge?
•Is the next wave of innovation in technology, gadgets, and applications pretty clear now, or will the most interesting developments between now and 2020 come “out of the blue”?
•Will the end-to-end principle of the internet still prevail in 10 years, or will there be more control of access to information?
•Will it be possible to be anonymous online or not by the end of the decade?
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0113, 28 February 2010

Who Owns IP, University or Researcher?

The question whether a university or its employees own the intellectual property in inventions is not a new one. It has been around for a long time, has been the subject of many disputes and judicial decisions, and with the increasing commerc ialisation of universities, the involvement of several institutions in one project and the hunger for research funds and venture capital, it is not going to become any easier.
To some extent, a recent decision by the Federal Court of Australia in the University of Western Australia v Gray provides some guidance on the issues involved; if it does not provide an automatic answer to all cases where the question arises, it at least gives a clear guide to individuals and institutions as to what they should not do and what they should try to do to protect their positions.
In short: do not rely on implied terms being read into a contract of employment and do make sure that as far as possible, a written contract of employment sets out precisely the rights and duties of institutions and employees and who will be entitled to intellectual property in inventions and other products of the work of the researcher.
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0096 11 October 2009

E-research to Revolutionise Humanities

An online tool to be designed by a researcher at the University of Western Australia will enable a scholar in a remote part of the globe, or even an astronaut with some free time, to access the world's rare medieval vellum manuscripts and carry out in-depth investigations with just a few clicks.Dr Toby Burrows, Digital Services Director of the ARC Network for Early European Research, hopes the day will soon come when a humanities scholar will also be able to explore a whole body of data to conduct intensive research without having to leave his or her desk. "While many scientists have access to massive worldwide e-research datasets, the humanities have lagged behind - until now," Burrows said. He has been awarded funding to help him continue his work in improving the effectiveness and applicability of e-research in the humanities. His project is in collaboration with the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Sheffield, which, like UWA, is a member of the 16-strong research-intensive Worldwide Universities Network."Humanities scholars have been using computers for 60 years," Burrows said. "A Jesuit priest, Father Roberto Busa, was the first to digitise medieval texts, copying the works of Thomas Aquinas into a computer in a way not dissimilar to the early monks who painstakingly copied the Bible word by word." Now there are large numbers of humanities resources available in digital form. "Almost every English book published between 1473 and 1800 has now been digitised, for example, but this does not add up to e-research in the scientific sense," he said."We need to add new layers to this. The sources of data need to be joined up, to enable researchers to pose large-scale questions across the whole corpus of material. The best way forward involves the use of Semantic Web technologies: uniquely identifying objects, people and concepts, constructing graphs to describe and navigate the relationship between them; and linking them to all kinds of relevant digital data."The Humanities Research Institute at Sheffield uses text-mining software to identify, extract and encode personal names found in more than 190,000 digitised pages of The Old Bailey Proceedings Online. "Sheffield is one of the leaders in this field," said Burrows. "Designed and conceptualised properly, e-research holds out great promise for the humanities."
Source: University World News, Issue No: 0087 02 August 2009

On-line Forum Prior to World Conference

In the run-up to next week’s Unesco World Conference on Higher Education*, a series of regional meetings refined the themes to internationalism, regionalism and globalisation, as well as equity, access and quality and, finally, learning, research and innovation. Officials regarded the consultative process as highly productive but they also wanted to broaden the debate while ensuring the discussions reached the broadest consensus on practical solutions proposed. As part of this process, Unesco organised a three-week online internet forum ahead of the conference so the issues raised could be fed into conference debates.
Georges Haddad, Director of Unesco's Higher Education Division, said: "The objective of this forum was to contribute to the work of the conference by broadening and sharpening the debate on the future of higher education with a view to extending it beyond the conference itself - opening the windows to new thoughts, ideas and solutions that will inform policy making at system and institutional levels and empower the younger generation of thinkers and higher education leaders."
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0082 28 June 2009

Facebook Students Underachieve in Exams

An American study has found that students who spend their time adding friends, chatting and 'poking' others on the website may devote as little as one hour a week to their academic work, writes Urmee Khan in The Telegraph. The study by Ohio State University showed that students who used Facebook had a "significantly" lower grade point average than those who did not.
The study questioned 219 undergraduates and graduates about their study practices and general internet use, as well as their specific use of Facebook. They found that 65% of Facebook users accessed their account daily, usually checking it several times to see if they had received new messages. The amount of time spent on Facebook at each login varied from just a few minutes to more than an hour.
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0072 19 April 2009

New Masters in Social Networking

Britain’s Birmingham City University is to offer a masters degree teaching students about social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Bebo, reports The Telegraph. The one-year masters in social media will also explain how to set up blogs and publish podcasts.
The £4,400 course, which will start next year, will consider social networking sites as communications and marketing tools. It was advertised through a makeshift video on the university's website.
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0070 05 April 2009