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techwatch - EDUCAUSE.edu
tech watch Information Technology in the News SCHOOLS ADDED TO ARMY’S DISTANCE-EDUCATION PROGRAM ■ Founded in January 2001, eArmyU, the U.S. Army’s distance-education program, is adding a dozen institutions to its current roster of twenty participating colleges and universities. Nearly 31,000 men and women at more than twenty army bases in the United States and abroad are currently enrolled in the program. Due to increased demand and popularity, enrollment is expected to rise to 80,000 by 2005. Sixty-eight degree programs will be added to the existing one hundred programs with the involvement of the new participating institutions, including Watertown, N.Y.–based Jefferson Community College, where about one-third of the current students are soldiers. Jill Kidwell, a partner at IBM Business Consulting Services, which is contracted by the army to operate eArmyU, said the demand for the program is “astounding” and that the expansion of eArmyU will address “not only a growing enrollment, but also demands for different kinds of courses.” (Chronicle of Higher Education, <http://chronicle.com/free/20 03/01/ 2003012802t.htm>) CHEATING WITH CELL PHONES ■ Officials from the University of Maryland confirmed that six students have admitted to using cell phones to cheat on an accounting exam, and another six students were implicated. The university had set up a sting in which answers to test questions were posted on the Internet as soon as the test began. Mixed in with correct answers, however, were several bogus answers. The students involved in the cheating had friends look up the answers online after the test began and then send those answers by cell-phone text messages to students taking the test. Officials then looked to see who had included the bogus answers on their exams. An official from the university said he has seen 4 EDUCAUSE r e v i e w March/April 2003 instances of cheating but never from so many students at once. In a similar scandal at Hitotsubashi University in Japan, twenty-six students flunked after using their cell phones to cheat. (Wired News, <http://www.wired.com/news/school/ 0,1383,57484,00.html>) WESTERN GOVERNORS CALL FOR ONLINE TEACHER TRAINING ■ The Western Governors Association (WGA), which represents the nineteen states west of the Mississippi River, has adopted a resolution calling for a program to allow teachers to be trained entirely through distance learning. The governors also adopted a resolution calling for the colleges and universities in their states to work together to develop a new computer language, which they called “curriculum markup language,” for the distancelearning project. The western states are especially affected by the teacher shortage, and the WGA sees online education as one part of a solution to that problem. Officials from Western Governors University, an online school, proposed standardized courses and requirements so that students in one state could be certified easily in others. (United Press International, <http://www.nandotimes.com/ technology/story/667448p-4989114c. html> [registration required]) OPEN UNIVERSITY PARTNERS WITH NEW SCHOOL UNIVERSITY ■ British-based Open University and New School University in New York have announced a partnership designed to promote each institution’s programs overseas. Both schools focus on adult education, and each is interested in expanding into new markets. Open University has made several unsuccessful attempts to enter the American market, including the U.S. Open University, which closed last summer. In the new partnership, the two institutions will e -publishing ACADEMICS PUSH FOR FREE ONLINE ACCESS TO JOURNALS ince the advent of the Internet, many academics have complained about the practice of charging for online access to scientific journals, as is done by many high-profile publications, including Science and Nature. Now, a $9 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation will support a new organization that will publish two new online journals, one on biology and the other on medicine, which will be entirely free. The Public Library of Science will be led by Dr. Harold E. Varmus, a Nobel laureate in medicine and president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Varmus, one of the critics of charging for online access to scientific articles, said, “The written record is the lifeblood of science.” Dr. Donald Kennedy, the editor of Science, defended the subscriptions, however, noting that the publication’s standards and costs are high. He said that the number of downloads of articles relative to the subscription fee indicates that each article is being accessed for just a few cents each. (New York Times, <http://www.nytimes. com/2002/12/17/science/17JOUR. html> [registration required]) S market each other’s distance-education courses, develop new courses, and offer a joint management certification program. An official from New School University called the partnership a “natural fit.” (Chronicle of Higher Education, <http:// chronicle.com/free/2003/01/2003012801t. htm>) © 2003 EDUCAUSE tech LATEST DISTRIBUTEDCOMPUTING PROJECT: SMALLPOX CURE ■ A group of universities and public and private organizations has announced a new distributed-computing project to try to find a cure for smallpox. Project participants include Oxford University, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, IBM, United Devices, Accelrys, and the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. Recent fears about smallpox as a tool for terrorists have led President Bush to call for vaccinating millions of health-care workers, firefighters, police officers, and military personnel. The smallpox vaccination, however, carries a risk of infection. The goal of the new project is to narrow the list of substances that might prove effective as a cure for smallpox after infection. As with other distributed-computing projects, volunteers will download a screen saver that gives the project access to unused processing power. The project needs a few million computer users to download the screen saver and donate their extra processing power to the molecular modeling and screening of possible compounds. (New York Times, <http://www.nytimes. com/2003/02/05/health/05SMAL.html> [registration required]) COLUMBIA CLOSES FATHOM ■ Columbia University has announced that because of continued unprofitability, the Fathom online-learning venture will be shut down. Fathom was created about two years ago as a for-profit company to develop Web-based courses and sell them to the public. Fathom attracted a number of high-profile partners for development of content, including the American Film Institute, the Cambridge University Press, the London School of Economics and Political Science, the New York Public Library, RAND, the University of Chicago, and the University of Michigan system. Though officials at Co- watch LAWMAKERS TRY TO LIMIT SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS AS I.D. esponding to the growing incidence and risk of identity theft, California Assemblyman Joseph Simitian has introduced a bill in the state legislature that would limit the use of Social Security numbers as identification. The bill would prohibit employers from using Social Security numbers “for any purpose other than taxes” and would prohibit universities from putting the numbers on student IDs. Another bill in California would put strict limits on how and where government agencies could use and post Social Security numbers. Chris Hoofnagle, of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said that a number of incidents of identity theft have prompted several colleges, universities, and other state governments to question having Social Security numbers available in relatively prominent places where they can easily be obtained. (Wired News, <http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,57395,00.html>) R lumbia would not release investment totals for Fathom, the university in 2001 reportedly funded Fathom with $14.9 million and recouped only $700,000, in fees and sales revenue. Robert Kasdin, senior executive vice-president at Columbia, said of the decision to dissolve Fathom: “The university is going to be better served if we focus [resources] on the campus-based initiatives.” (Chronicle of Higher Education, <http://chronicle.com/ free/2003/01/2003010701t.htm>) NEW PLAGIARISM SERVICE FOR BRITISH UNIVERSITIES ■ The Plagiarism Advisory Service, based at the University of Northumbria, is a new electronic plagiarism-detection service available to all British colleges and universities. Papers are returned four hours after being submitted to the service and are color-coded to indicate the level of matching to documents available on the Internet. Red indicates that more than 75 percent of the text has been copied, blue means less than 10 percent, and other colors are spread in between. Instructors also see which Web site(s) the copied content comes from. (Ananova, Legal Issues <http://www.ananova.com/news/story/ sm_737513.html>) MIT CHOOSES SIX UNIVERSITIES TO WORK ON DSPACE PROGRAM ■ In November 2002, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) released DSpace, an open-source, academic archiving program that was funded by a grant from Hewlett-Packard. Since its release, DSpace has become extremely popular, offering researchers a simple tool to archive academic materials in a searchable repository. DSpace has been downloaded by about 2,000 organizations since its release, but as officials from MIT have noted, it does not come with explicit instructions. MIT has chosen Columbia University, Cornell University, Ohio State University, the University of Rochester, the University of Toronto, and the University of Washington to become the DSpace Federation, which will test the software and offer suggestions about how to improve it. The DSpace Federation is supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. (Chronicle of Higher Education, <http://chronicle.com/free/ 2003/01/2003013001t.htm>) “techwatch” is a sampler of items from Edupage, EDUCAUSE’s three-times-a-week electronic digest of information technology news. To subscribe to Edupage, send a message to <listserv@listserv.educause.edu> and in the body of the message type “SUBSCRIBE Edupage YourFirstName YourLastName.” 6 EDUCAUSE r e v i e w March/April 2003