Universities utilizing social sites

It's time to start the recruitment drive for next year and Canadian Universities are finding the social networking sites to be a good place to start. “We are on Facebook because our incoming students kept asking us, ‘Why are you not on Facebook?' ” explained Bailey Daniels, assistant director of MBA recruitment and admissions at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, in this Globe and Mail story. Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick has existing students who work closely with the school's admissions staff and besides operating a Facebook group, there are student-produced YouTube videos and blogs, all commissioned and paid for by the university.

This is quite possibly the best quote from the article: “The ongoing challenge for any university is that there is a massive generation gap between the people that do recruiting and the people you are recruiting,” said Rob Steiner, assistant vice-president of strategic communications at the University of Toronto. “Every recruiting team and every marketing team is trying to find a way to stay on top of this stuff.”

Holodeck technology a reality in Edmonton?

Researchers at the University of Alberta's computer science department have partnered with Hewlett-Packard, and Edmonton's TRLabs, and are working on 3-D virtual reality technology that they say resembles the holodeck on the Enterprise or Voyager. The application is meant to be more of a high definition video conference than the virtual holiday's enjoyed by the crew of Voyager, but the researchers say the technology "will be so realistic users will be able to see an eye twitch or a bead of sweat". So much for racking up the air miles on the company's dime... CBC story here.

Black hole

According to the Globe and Mail, 90 Dalhousie University students in Halifax, N.S. have been disciplined for cheating. The students gained access to answers to a series of on-line assignments hosted by a protected website which is part of the online courseware created through Blackboard Learning Systems software. The university was tipped off by two fellow students. The thing that amazes me is the magnitude of the cheating... while I'm sure first year Chemistry is a popular course choice for anyone in sciences, I'd still like to know how many students take the course in a semester?