Advancing knowledge and practice wherever people interact with information and technology

Morgan G. Ames, assistant adjunct professor at the School of Information, explores the rise and fall of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project in her new book, The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop Per Child. Over the course of the book, Ames examines the utopian visions that fueled the project and its failures in understanding the role of technology in education.

Assistant Professor Zachary Pardos and his team have developed a machine learning approach that promises to help more community college students position themselves to transfer and succeed at four-year colleges and universities. 

Along the way, they’ve discovered that considering course enrollment patterns—or the classes that students take before, along with, and after a particular course—can help provide a more complete picture of what courses should “count” when students transfer.