University System News:
www.walb.com
Fight Albany Blight and ASU partner to reduce litter
http://www.walb.com/story/37728763/fight-albany-blight-and-asu-partner-to-reduce-litter
By Whitney Shelton, Reporter
ALBANY, GA (WALB) – If you drove along Radium Springs road near Albany State University Wednesday afternoon you probably noticed litter pickup efforts. This is all part of a brand new partnership between the city and ASU Athletics. More than 80 students filled garbage bags of unwanted litter along Radium Springs Road, right across the street from the ASU campus. The partnership will benefit both ASU and Fight Albany Blight. The students are encouraged to get public service hours and the city is in need of groups and organizations to assist with blight remediation. Organizers described it as a win-win situation.
Higher Education News:
www.jbhe.com
Researchers Find Instructor Bias Creeps into Online Education
Researchers Find Instructor Bias Creeps into Online Education
It has been conjectured that online college courses could serve to level the playing field, eliminate racial biases, and not produce lower expectations for students from underrepresented groups because instructors would be unaware of the race or ethnicity of their students. But a new working paper released by the Center for Education Policy Analysis at Stanford University in California, finds that bias also creeps into online education programs. The researchers created fake accounts for students in 124 massive open online courses (MOOCs). The names associated with the accounts were designed to give a strong indication that students were either White, Black, Indian, or Chinese. These fictional students submitted online posts or questions to the instructors. The researchers found that instructors in these MOOCs responded to about 7 percent of all inquiries posted. But for the fictional accounts designed to give the impression the student was a White male, the instructors responded 12 percent of the time.
www.chronicle.com
Can Higher Education Make Silicon Valley More Ethical?
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Can-Higher-Education-Make/242824?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=be1d1ddeb56a4e649bf436aa91c85f0a&elq=07bed99bf3844f469d2cedb8b8b6e4e0&elqaid=18191&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=8119
By Nell Gluckman
The internet and the technology companies powering it have shown their dark side recently. Racism and sexism have flourished, mostly unchecked, on social media. Algorithms used by Facebook and Twitter have been blamed for the spread of fake news. And as phones, cars, and household devices scoop up their users’ data, the expectation of privacy has practically evaporated. Under each of those phenomena lie ethical quandaries. Is technological development outpacing our ability to tease out its implications? If so, is higher education responsible for the problem? Jim Malazita, an assistant professor of science and technology studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, believes higher education has played a role. He thinks there’s something about how the STEM disciplines are taught — science, technology, engineering, and mathematics — that discourages students from considering ethical questions as they learn the skills they need to work for big technology companies. But if colleges and universities are contributing to the problem, then they can also help fix it.