Educational CyberPlayGround ®

Digital Diploma Mills

IAT INFOBITS December 1997 No. 54

DIGITAL DIPLOMA MILLS

In "Digital Diploma Mills: The Automation of Higher Education" (October 1997) David F. Noble argues that recent events at two large North American universities "signal dramatically that we have entered a new era in higher education, one which is rapidly drawing the halls of academe into the age of automation. ... UCLA has spawned its own for-profit company, headed by a former UCLA vice chancellor, to peddle online education (the Home Education Network). ... in Toronto, meanwhile, the full-time faculty of York University ... ended an historic two-month strike having secured for the first time anywhere formal contractual protection against precisely the kind of administrative action being taken by UCLA."
While faculty concerned about their future employment might be expected to react unfavorably to inroads by outside commercial outsourcing providers, there are indications that students at both UCLA and York were less than enthusiastic as well. For example, the student handbook distributed annually to all students by the York Federation of Students contained a warning about the "dangers of online education."

FIRST MONDAY: PEER-REVIEWED INTERNET JOURNAL

FIRST MONDAY is a peer-reviewed journal on the Internet whose aim is to publish original articles about the Internet and the global information infrastructure. First Monday will "follow the political and regulatory regimes affecting the Internet, examine the use of the Internet on a global scale, . . . analyze research and development of Internet software and hardware, study the use of Internet in specific communities, report on standards, and discuss the content of the Internet." The editorial board includes Edward J. Valauskas, founder and principal of Internet Mechanics, a technology consulting group advising schools, libraries, government agencies, and corporations on telecommunications, computing, and the Internet; and Esther Dyson, chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a member of the U.S. National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council.

First Monday is available at no cost on the Web at

http://www.firstmonday.dk/

First Monday is published by Munksgaard International Publishers Ltd.,

Pernille Hammelso, Journal Manager, Noerre Soegade 35, P.O. Box 2148,DK-1016 Copenhagen K Denmark.

For information on submitting papers, contact Edward Valauskas, Chief

Editor; email: valauskas@firstmonday.dk

DYNAMIC PHILOSOPHY ENCYCLOPEDIA

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [ISSN 1095-5054], published by the Stanford University Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI), is the first dynamic scholarly encyclopedia designed so that the authors of articles can update their subject matter as needed. Each online entry is maintained and kept up to date by an expert or group of experts in the field, making the publication responsive to new research. An entry is evaluated by an editorial board whenever it comes online or is significantly modified. Over 100 scholars have contributed so far, and the project leaders expect to have most of the encyclopedia completed within five years. The encyclopedia is available on the Web at http://plato.stanford.edu/

The Web site also includes a paper describing the creation and maintenance of dynamic encyclopedias. "A Solution to the Problem of Updating Encyclopedias" by Eric M. Hammer and Edward N. Zalta is available at http://plato.stanford.edu/solution/solution.html

For more information on the encyclopedia, contact
Edward N. Zalta,Principal Editor; email: editors@plato.stanford.edu;

Web: http://mally.stanford.edu/zalta.html

For more information on CSLI, contact the Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University,
Ventura 20, 220 Panama Street, Stanford, CA
94305-4115 USA; tel: 650-723-3084;
email: csli@csli.stanford.edu;
Web: http://www-csli.stanford.edu/csli/index.shtml

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