Five for Monday

[This article first appeared in the October issue of the N-TEN newsletter.] Only 10 years ago, social networks were built quite differently. We might pump a few hands at conferences, place a few phone calls or meet people for lunch. A labor-intensive way of expanding the little black book, to…

It’s not a question of if it will happen, but when. For me, I lost all my data about two weeks ago when my hard drive melted down. I very nearly lost it all, and had to rebuild quite a bit of data. Thankfully, I have a network of little…

At the Special Libraries Association conference in Denver, CO, last June, I heard the term “competitive intelligence” uttered more than “Who’s giving away the free cookies?” CI, as it’s called, is not exactly in James Bond’s arena, but even he would agree it’s helpful to know what the competition is…

A fascinating report from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation indicates that more educators are finally catching on to online learning. The study indicates that “Online enrollments have been growing substantially faster than overall higher education enrollments.†To wit: Almost 3.5 million students were taking at least one online course during the…

Even small universities can reach large student audiences through online learning programs. Take, for example, the University of Illinois, which has an exemplary online learning program and wants to reach 10,000 new online students by next year, according to a report this week by NPR. Nowadays, many colleges require students…