‘iParenting’ technology is discouraging a generation from growing up, psychologist warns. Jon Marcus reports

Aaron Camillo, a student entering his second year at the University of South Carolina, checks his mobile phone as he leaves class.

His mother, Mr Camillo explained, is among his Facebook friends, “and every time I change my status she posts on my wall to see if I’m OK”. Other students in the hallway laugh and nod in recognition.

University administrators and faculty are less amused. For them, Mr Camillo’s mother is an example of a worldwide phenomenon that is causing unprecedented problems in the short term, and threatens long-term harm by forestalling young people’s adulthoods.

This argument is set out in full in a forthcoming book, a phrase from which is sure to give the trend a name: “iParenting”.

Take a generation of well-educated, highly motivated parents, say the authors, who have fewer children later in life. Charge students cripplingly high fees for university tuition, even as job prospects grow dimmer, in a world parents perceive to be rife with danger.

Then add mobile phones, email and social networking to the mix.

Read the full story in Times Higher Education. Purchase the book, published August 2010.

A web project may help to shake up the academy and academic publishing. Paul Jump reports

Two history professors are hoping to shake up the academy and academic publishing with a project that in a single week has generated more than enough “crowd-sourced” content for a new book on academia.

Dan Cohen and Tom Scheinfeldt, directors of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, Virginia, launched a website, “Hacking the Academy”, on 21 May. They gave users seven days to submit articles, blogs, videos and comments on topics relating to the academy.

Professor Cohen said he and Professor Scheinfeldt planned to compile the best submissions in a book, to be published by the University of Michigan Press, for the benefit of members of the academy who are less comfortable with digital media.

But he admitted that the one-week submission deadline was intended to be provocative and express academics’ frustration with the “calcified” structures of the academy in the digital age, such as the “years and years” it could take presses to publish edited volumes.

Read full story in Times Higher Education.

The code of practice said: “Social-networking sites must not be used as a platform for airing dissatisfaction or criticism of the university, its staff, students or facilities.”

However, it was taken down after provoking a barrage of criticism online.

One of several critical postings on Facebook says: “Once again the University of Leeds excellently demonstrates that it is a bastion of free speech, liberty and rational enquiry.”

Read full story in Times Higher Education.

Universities’ lack of new-media savvy can leave reputations exposed, but popularity was never wholly within their control

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the fruit-bat paper saga (and there are plenty), one thing’s for sure: University College Cork secured itself a huge PR disaster when it found itself at the centre of a media storm last week as an internal HR matter quickly spun out of control.

A surreal combination of alleged sexual harassment, fruit-bat fellatio, the right to dignity at work and academic freedom sent newspapers, blogs and social-networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook into overdrive. In the midst of this frenzy, the constituent institution of the National University of Ireland appeared paralysed.

Read full story in Times Higher Education.

Zoë Corbyn reports from Washington DC on journal publishers’ plans to get a piece of the mobile action

Imagine being on the bus with a smartphone browsing your favourite journal, or at home, downloading papers to an e-reader for a spot of bedtime reading.

Journal publishers in science, technology and medicine are hoping that this could soon be normal behaviour as they strive to improve their offerings to readers with mobile devices.

Their eagerness to embrace this brave new world was on display last week at an annual conference in Washington DC, when delegates gathered to share information on emerging trends in scholarly publishing, evolving technologies and business models.

The conference, organised by the publishing services company Allen Press, was titled Scholarly Publishing: Boldly Going Where No Journal Has Gone Before.

“The internet, as we all know, has brought about profound changes in every stage of the scholarly communication process, greatly accelerating the pace of change,” the conference blurb says. “For (science, technology and medicine) journal publishers, this means new opportunities, new markets and new business models. It also means that familiar paradigms are disappearing. Those who cannot adapt to the new ones may not survive.”

Read full story in the Times Higher Education.

Read full story in Times Higher Education.

Hannah Fearn on the bottom-line benefits of transferring IT functions to Google and Microsoft

Universities are increasingly farming out their computing services to the likes of Google and Microsoft as a way of reducing costs.

Rob Bristow, programme manager at the Joint Information Systems Committee, said that universities traditionally have been reluctant to outsource their complex and unique IT services to external companies.

“Outsourcing is a bit of a dirty word in some quarters,” he said. “There have been mixed experiences of it and given universities’ peculiar IT needs … it has not been something they have looked at.”

But the development of so-called cloud computing, together with the need to cut costs, seems to have changed some minds in the sector.

Cloud computing – which is based on remote servers delivering applications and services to any internet-enabled device – removes the need for expensive and power-hungry servers on campus.

But perhaps more importantly, many such services are being offered to universities free of charge.

Read full story in Times Higher Education.

Online lectures are no substitute for face-to-face contact, argues UCU. Melanie Newman reports

Pre-recorded lectures: a means of providing “flexible learning” to students juggling other commitments or a way to phase out face-to-face contact time on the quiet?

Bournemouth University is encouraging staff to record lectures and upload the videos to the university website as part of a pilot project.

Managers say the system helps the university to avoid lectures being cancelled if academics are sick, attending conferences or away doing research, and that they are helpful to disabled, international and mature students with other commitments.

But the University and College Union has raised concerns that the online offerings will replace some face-to-face sessions.

Major concerns have been raised about the impact of the Digital Economy Bill on universities, which fear it is likely to result in a “bureaucratic burden and muddle”.

A central aim of the Bill, which is currently before the House of Lords, is to tackle online copyright infringement – something that Toby Bainton, secretary of the Society of College, National and University Libraries, said “everybody supports”.

However, there are fears that universities, which will be held responsible for the activities of their students, could be unduly affected by the proposals.

Mr Bainton said it appeared that “the position of higher education has not been clearly thought through”, adding that the sector “already has good systems in place that ought to be recognised and worked with”.”

Read full story.

“To maintain the UK’s position in distance learning, we have to focus on education, not technology, argues Helen Lentell

Distance learning in higher education is enjoying a propitious moment, despite – perhaps even because of – the hard times facing the sector.

At last week’s Learning and Technology World Forum in London, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that the UK could become a “global education superpower”, with e-learning as one of its fastest-growing exports.

E-learning could also solve problems at home: as pressure continues to mount on the academy’s resources, flexible distance learning may become an increasingly attractive solution.

First Secretary Lord Mandelson no doubt had this in mind when announcing the creation of an online distance learning task force last year, backed by a £20 million matched-funding scheme to support centres of excellence. The terms of reference for this group focus on exploring ways of using online distance learning to attract more domestic and international students and increase collaboration between universities and colleges.”

Read the full story.