I'm in an online course right now that touches upon information literacy: the ability to access, sort through, and analyze information (particularly online). It is not a very in-depth course, and a lot of the recommendations it gives feel a little limited/dated, or just out of touch with current internet practices (e.g. trust .edu and .gov sites -- don't trust .com sites; use Britannica Online instead of Wikipedia). It also doesn't really account for things like memes, social media, or really much of the modern internet landscape.

I know we have a lot of very technically literate as well as informationally literate people here, and I'm curious: if you were tasked with creating a class to help people learn information literacy, including how to identify misinformation online, what would some of your key points or focuses be? How would you convey those to your students (whether those students are kids, adults, or both)?

My fiance is an artist who was laid off because he worked for a major employer in the entertainment industry that required him to be in contact with people.

So he's been unemployed for a long time now, but he has been trying to find work, but there isn't really anything available that uses his particular skills. So we invested in a digital art workstation (basically just bought a monitor with a digitizer built in to use a pen with) so that he could work on becoming an independant artist. But he's so bad at marketing and he spends so much time worrying about fine details that it takes him over a week to finish a single piece, so he hasn't had any success.

So if you combine this with a broken tooth that he hasn't been able to get taken care of because of a lapse in his dental insurance, he's not been in a good place.

I just bought a Mac and was looking for mac-native graphics programs (I sometimes work on marketing, so I need to do photo editing from time to time. Also I used to do photography as a hobby and want to get back into it), when I came across Serif's Affinity Designer Workbook. And I thought to myself that getting my fiance a training course in graphic design would allow him to shift gears into a segment where there is more work. It'll also give him a bit of a kick in the pants to get him moving and feeling better about himself.

I'm sure everyone knows there are millions of online training courses available right now, so I'm hoping someone might have any recommendations. I have some money saved up, so I don't mind paying a little bit extra if it'll result in better results. I'd prefer if it were a class that didn't rely on Adobe Illustrator if possible, but I know that it's the 'standard' and he'll probably have better luck if he has experience in it.

Whether it be for school, work, a hobby, or personal interest, what are you learning right now? How are you learning it and what prompted you to start learning? What are some things that surprised you about what you are learning? What advice would you give to someone who just started to learn about it?

Posted this over on r/highereducation, thought it might be interesting here.

I've been thinking a lot about this lately, especially in the context of "free college" proposals. Subsidizing private colleges and universities would be a political non-starter. I'm assuming the government would have a "teach-out" style plan to transition schools off federal dollars. Regardless, the impact would be massive. I've briefly glanced at financial aid and revenue data for one R1 school, and it seems federal money makes up a significant (20-30%) portion of annual operating revenue. While that doesn't seem like much at first, I suspect enrollment would drop significantly at many schools if there was the alternative of going to a public university for free. Several thoughts come to mind:

• What percent of schools would close or merge?

• What would be some of the most surprising schools to close?

• How quickly would schools close? Would they immediately shutter, close at the end of the transition period, or struggle on for a few years?

• What is the breakdown of institution types (R1/2 vs SLAC vs engineering schools)?

• What would be the impact on religiously-affiliated colleges, especially Catholic schools (there's already many little-known ones in the middle of nowhere)?

• Of the schools that survive, what sort of strategies would they employ to remain solvent (lean heavier on foreign students, reduce admissions standards, have mandatory work-study programs to reduce administrative costs, create alumni contracts akin to tithing, invest more in the financial sector/Wall Street)?

Edit: Whoops, I thought I posted this in ~misc. Oh well.

When learning something new, often available resources are lacking in some departments - whether they're missing information, poorly written, or tedious and dry. But occasionally, some content just stands out as above and beyond the rest, serving to not only make the learning process enjoyable but also to kindle interest in further exploration. What is that for you?

This could encompass everything from computer programming to literary criticism, and could be in the form of a website, book, video tutorial, or the like.