Daily Bookmarks 03/27/2009

  • Want to improve diversity at a college without spending a lot of money? Drop the requirement for SAT or ACT as part of admissions.

    tags: education, highered, standardizedtests, diversity

    • These models suggest that any move away from the SAT or ACT in competitive colleges results in significant gains in ethnic and economic diversity. But the gains are greater for colleges that drop testing entirely, as opposed to just making it optional.
    • The findings appear to confirm what SAT critics have said for years: that reliance on the SAT in college admissions favors applicants who are white and/or wealthier than other applicants.
  • Great summary of research points on our perceptions of media with implications for using media effectively for learning. For example, audio quality matters a lot, but video quality can be low and still effective. Large, wide screens are preferred over higher quality images on smaller screens.

    tags: learning, e-learning, research, multimedia, audio, video, images

    • 35 psychological studies into the human reaction to media all point towards the simple proposition that people react towards media socially even though, at a conscious level, they believe it is not reasonable to do so. They can’t help it. In short, people think that computers are people, which makes e-learning work.
    • As long as a media technology is consistent with social and physical rules, we will accept it. Read that last part again, ‘as long as a media technology is consistent with social and physical rules’. If the media technology fails to conform to these human expectations – we will very much not accept it.
  • I’ve resisted Twitter, and it’s nice to see some balance in the discussion. Even if you love Twitter, check out the videos for some laughs.

    tags: humor, twitter

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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