Michael Fienen | .eduGuru

Author Archives | Michael Fienen

Michael Fienen - who has written 46 posts on .eduGuru.

Michael joined Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, KS (NOT Pennsylvania, they spell it wrong anyway) in 2006 as the Web Marketing Manager. Don't worry, he doesn't know what that means either. Web development's role as a tool for interpersonal communication is a principle focus of his efforts to improve and enhance higher ed web commodities. He is an active supporter of the dotCMS community, accessibility advocate, freelance consultant, and general purpose geek who wears many hats. Read his complete bio.

Is There a Brain Drain Coming?

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

8 Comments

Just last night, it was announced that the State of Kansas would be making its fifth round of budget cuts (cutting higher ed back to 2006 levels), now equaling a full $1 billion in cuts from of what was originally supposed to be a $6 billion state operating budget. Kansas is small potatoes. Students recently [...]

Mobile Analytics Revisited (Have You Been Keeping Up?)

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

11 Comments

Mobile Analytics Revisited (Have You Been Keeping Up?)

This past March, I wrote a tutorial that described some techniques of measuring mobile traffic in Google Analytics. Believe it or not, you can’t just set that kind of stuff and forget it. In just the eight months since then, the topography of the mobile landscape has changed, and I wanted to share some changes [...]

Building Your Own Listening Post

Monday, October 19, 2009

5 Comments

The basic concept of the social web and Web 2.0 is one of conversations and user generated content. Engagement. Interaction. My focus today is on the former, with a dab of latter. Universities are much like other big brands, people talk about us in a lot of places, in a lot of ways, both good [...]

Review: MobileEducator iPhone Application and CMS

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

14 Comments

Last week I was contacted by @lisakribs about a new piece of software her company is developing called MobileEducator, designed for colleges and universities to enable low cost entry into the mobile arena. The software looked fairly neat, and I thought it might be something that plenty of our readers might see value in, [...]

The Great Keynote Meltdown of 2009

Friday, October 9, 2009

40 Comments

Update 01/11/2010: This post was nominated for the Edublog higher ed Most Influential Blog Post of 2009. Even though we didn’t win, I personally want to thank all of you that voted for us. Thank you for all of your support!

Student Workers in Higher Ed Web Offices Research Results

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

4 Comments

I hope that everyone is having or has had a great time at HighEdWeb 2009 this year! If you couldn’t make it, hopefully we’ll see you next year. For those who missed it or would like to refer back to it, I wanted to make the information related to my session on student [...]

Join Us for a Pre-HighEdWeb Saturday Night Tweetup

Friday, September 25, 2009

3 Comments

Hey everyone! Are you getting into Milwaukee a little bit early for HighEdWeb this year? Then be sure to join myself and Rachel for a Tweetup at Mo’s Irish Pub Saturday night at 8:00PM. We’ll gather in the hotel lobby of the Hilton about 10 minutes ahead of time and walk down to the pub [...]

Book Review: Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig

Thursday, September 24, 2009

5 Comments

Book Review: Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig

If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you might have caught on that I recently got into the book Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity by Lawrence Lessig, one of many that I’ve been meaning to check off my least of to-reads. Let me spoil the review by telling you not to [...]

The Online Education Game is Changing

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

15 Comments

The walled garden of higher education just took a volley from one dangerous cannon. It’s a cannon that might not knock the wall down this time, but there will certainly be successors that could. What I’m talking about is a place called StraighterLine.com. The short of it is that for $99 a month, you can [...]

Equal Pay for Equal Work

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

2 Comments

By this point, it’s no secret that most universities are experiencing some kind of budget pinch for the next year (or two, or three, or way more). It sucks, and for quite a number of reasons. Education is the cornerstone of an advanced society, and when government starts hacking away at it (I’m looking at [...]