Indian College Now Has Blackout Hour - Forces Students Out of their Rooms to Socialize

The Indian Institute of Technology, in an attempt to make students more social and less depressed, has instituted a blackout hour.

Once every day the lights in hostel dorms (where students stay) are shut off, and students are expected to go out into the common area.

Movement Growing: Fixing Things Instead of Buying New Ones

An example getting some attention right now is MIT graduate student, Peter Mui, who 8 years ago started a sort of club for fixing things.

They're called Fixit Clinics. They started out at MIT but spread over the country (there are 100s now), teaching people who want to learn how to fix things like toasters, tripods, kettles, and just about anything else ... rather than throwing them away and buying new ones.

One of the reasons the clinics are happening is because there aren't really repair shops in North America anymore. No one really fixes things.

How to Succeed, According to the National Science Foundation

They did a study of studies (of 61 success studies) and their conclusion was that 3 things come up again and again. The subjects of the studies were students, but the findings can be extended outside of academia:

First, students succeed more if they have a sense that they fit or belong in their college. They tend to be "socially integrated."

Second, they succeed more if they embrace the idea that they will improve as they go along -- something the researchers refer to as a "growth mindset."

Third, if students can see a future desired end, and link that with what they are doing, students succeed more often.

Study

Google Cares Less and Less About College

Google's head of ops was interviewed by the Times this week, and, although the company used to look for GPAs and brand name schools (as well as good answers in Google's famous weird-question interviews), now they look less at top college creds, or even graduation.

What is Google looking for now? A couple of specific things in addition to the regular general things: One is "intellectual humility," where people can take a step back and accept a coworkers superior idea, and learn from it. There is an element of "failing well" in this.

The other is "general cognitive ability." Ie, instead of the credentials earned in a structured university, a person is able to learn new things when they set themselves to it. Google has "structured behavior interviews" that test for this, and the company tests their tests to make sure they're predictive.

First State to Offer Free College for Almost All Adults

Tennessee is the first state in the country to offer community college free for almost all adults.

The state already had free community college for all graduating students, but now it has extended this to pretty much everyone. And the state lets attendees do it part time if they want, since many people work while attending.

People Are Adding 'Badges' to Their Resumes Now

They're called digital badges. Or micro credentials.

Because a resume stating a person graduated from any college with a 4 year degree doesn't mean much to employers now, they're looking for new ways to demonstrate hirability.

The badges are for specific things, like critical thinking, good oral communication, creative problem solving, collaborating, reliance, and unnumbered other skills a person could work toward acquiring.

Colleges are considering having students aim at badges that represent things they want to be good at, and then giving them the badges if they earn them.

The badges are hosted online with the relevant metadata, including the body of work done by the student and the assessment done of his or her work.

Grads Graduating Without Learning Any Critical Thinking Skills

On the test that measures critical thinking, some colleges actually had scores lower for grads than for freshmen, although other schools showed pretty good improvements.

'Critical thinking' refers to certain skills: Being able to understand the value of an argument based on the validity of facts involved, forming a conclusion about veracity based on available information, as well as being able to form cohesive arguments, are included.

The tests, called CLA+, started less than 20 years ago. Their purpose was to assess what really took place in a student's learning over their 4-6 years at college, rather than testing the domain-specific facts and other information memorized in classes.

An example of a test question would be a challenge to a student to form an argument for or against purchasing a particular model of business plane for the company they work for, when that model had recently been reported in the news after being in a crash. The student is provided with written material about the plane to inform their argument, such as newspaper articles about the accident, federal reports on the type of engine and its known issues, charts on the planes performance, magazines with reviews of the plane and other similar models. The student has to "prepare a memo that addresses several questions, including what data support or refute the claim that the type of wing on the model of plane leads to more in-flight breakups, what other factors might have contributed to the accident and should be taken into account, and your overall recommendation about whether or not the company should purchase the plane."

With these tests, it's not a matter of just looking at the numbers, like 1,100 out of 1,600 versus 1,200 out of 1,600. People also look at a student's position compared to others who took the same test.

When Wall Street Journal looked at test results recently. though, they looked at how many students were in the "below basic skills" level. While some colleges saw improvements, -- numbers like 40% for freshmen to less than 10% for grads -- a lot of others only saw changes of a few percent, including a couple of schools where the grad score was lower than the freshman.

What does the CLA+ test?

'City Stay' Lets Students Study with Immigrant Families in the US

A new study experience option has started, called "city stay," which is in some ways similar to "study abroad."

City Stay is the name of a program run by Minnehaha Academy, a private school in Minneapolis. When students enrol in a city stay, they are placed in immigrant homes for a week and have a chance to learn a foreign culture without ever getting on a plane.

Minnehaha's "City Stay" project has about 60 students and 20 host families so far. So far, It is an unpaid project run by founder Julie Knopp.