Since then, research has shown that outsourcing this development to other programs (for instance, generic study skills workshops) or other departments in the university (such as academic support units or the library), is ineffective due to the contextual and discipline-specific nature of academic skills (Gunn, Hearne & Sibthorpe, 2011).

OER’s potential impact is greatest at the individual level – in the lives of faculty, teachers and students, especially those from underserved backgrounds or who have different learning needs and styles.

Direct Incentives. The second component to this approach could involve directly incentivizing institutions to establish their own pathways for students to complete a degree without textbook costs. With funding from philanthropy and government, a grant competition could be created where institutions propose plans for establishing their own zero-textbook-cost degrees and apply for funding to support their efforts.

Dr Easton believes the "consensus-based" approach employed by Wikipedia might actually make the website's most popular articles less subjective than the introductions found elsewhere. But, she adds, like any information source, it can only be put to good use when it's in the hands of a discerning and critical student.

“the sum of all human knowledge”

Two years after the project was started, in 2003, a IBM study found that "vandalism is usually repaired extremely quickly—so quickly that most users will never see its effects" and concluded that Wikipedia had "surprisingly effective self-healing capabilities".[5][6] The inclusion of false or fabricated content has, at times, lasted for years on Wikipedia due to its voluntaristic editorial oversight.

American University librarians tell The Post that they even hosted a few panels on media literacy and are in the process of developing an online tool for teaching these literacy skills.

Although the number of female engineers today has greatly improved since the early 1980s, when only 5.8% of engineers in the U.S. were women, it’s still surprisingly low. Currently, only 14% of engineers are women, according to theCongressional Joint Economic Committee.

“In the U.S., about 18 percent to 20 percent of engineering students are now women, an improvement over the abysmal numbers of 25 years ago,” says Joanne McGrath Cohoon, an associate professor in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society at the University of Virginia, where 31% of undergraduate engineering students are female.

The researcher contacted the University of Witwatersrand (WITS), Pretoria and Cape Town (UCT) to obtain comparative statistics. At WITS, information received from the university’s web site (wits, 9 February 2009) indicated the following complement of academic staff within the Faculty of Engineering, 99 males and 8 females. Hence, female staff represent 7.47% of the total population. At the University of Pretoria, information sourced from the faculty web site (up, 10 February 2009), indicates the following, 94 males and 10 females. Hence, women academic staff represent 11% of the total academic population. The University of Cape Town indicated a slight increase with regards to their female complement of academic staff in their Faculty of Engineering. The staff complement consisted of 91 males and 30 females. Females constituted 33% of the total complement. Information was obtained from the faculty office and personal communication with Mrs Zahrah Matthews, Human Resources Officer (personal communication: 12 February 2009).

However, the more advanced the level of study, the fewer the number of female enrolments. The report indicated that only 7% of Doctoral graduations were in Engineering (SARG 2004:10). The report also found that women academic staff were significantly over-represented in the Social Sciences and Humanities and under-represented in the Sciences and Engineering. Only 14% of research staff in Engineering Faculties were women. That is only 33 women within a total population of 230 researchers (SARG 2004:12).

Arab Spring.

It is important for students to recognize that although technology gives us a lot of power, it also restricts us in many ways, and we need to question how the affordances of technology modify our communication and our behavior.

After students have the skill to use multiple platforms, I allow them the choice of which platform to use for the support they need, but I make sure they ask questions. When is it best to do a Google search versus ask a question on Twitter? Why would students tweet to a particular hashtag or person versus another? When they tweet to people from another country in another time zone, what kind of context do they need to consider? What should they add, remove, or modify in order to communicate better?