Elpida Makriyanni has a new post asking whether India can be a leader in open education. From the post:
Despite these challenges, India has one of the largest higher education systems in the world, with 311 universities, 15,600 colleges and 2.5 million graduates on an annual basis. In addition, universities in India are increasingly embracing online learning as a means to enhance access to quality higher education opportunities.
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Tagged: e-learning, higher education, ocw, oer, online learning, open content, Open Education, open learning
Jim Fruchterman has a new post on why he loves open educational resources. From the post:
Before you go all worried on me, I want to assure you that MIT is not going to go out of business anytime soon. Or the big textbook publishers. But, for those people who can’t afford these educational resources opportunities (or get into MIT, for that matter), these options create a new floor for what every person on this planet can have for free.
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Tagged: e-learning, higher education, ocw, oer, online learning, Open Education, open learning, openness
Doug Holton has a new post in which he explores various tools and programming languages that have been used for education applications. Holton considers what the next best tool might be. From the post:
Since Oracle bought out Sun, and there is no support nor any planned support for java on the android and iphone platforms, it appears the only open source alternative for the future of RIA apps may be HTML5.
Commentary by Stephen Downes.
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Tagged: commons, e-learning, higher education, K-12, online learning, open source, openness
Cameron Neylon has written a post on the problems of peer review. From the post:
Whatever value it might have we largely throw away. Few journals make referee’s reports available, virtually none track the changes made in response to referee’s comments enabling a reader to make their own judgement as to whether a paper was improved or made worse. Referees get no public credit for good work, and no public opprobrium for poor or even malicious work. And in most cases a paper rejected from one journal starts completely afresh when submitted to a new journal, the work of the previous referees simply thrown out of the window.
Commentary and link provided by Glyn Moody.
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Tagged: higher education, journal, library, research
Carolina Rossini has published an article on open educational resources in Brazil. From the abstract:
The government also plays a major role in the markets, with taxpayer monies the largest single investor in scientific and professional books for higher education in Brazil. This role of “single investor” plays out in multiple areas which give origin to the textbooks: since unlike most countries, the federal and state public Universities in Brazil are free 69, the payment of salaries for employees and professors come from the University budget (and this from the government) and a great number of scholarships, including for master and doctoral level, are provided.
Thanks to Pumpkin Yang for the link.
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Tagged: higher education, ocw, oer, open content, open learning, openness, policy
eLobbyist VA has tweeted about legislation in the state of Virginia authorizing the creation of an Open Education Curriculum Board. From the summary:
The purpose of the Board is to designate qualifying entities as Open Education Consortiums and set the standards for submission of education materials and subsequent licensing of educational curriculum developed by the Consortiums.
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Tagged: commons, ocw, oer, Open Education, open textbook, open textbooks, policy
The Chronicle of Higher Education: Wired Campus is reporting that the U.S. Department of Justice has announced its opposition to the revised Google Book settlement. The Department of Justice notes that the revised settlement is better than the original. From the post:
But it [the Department of Justice] said that “the United States has reluctantly concluded that use of the class-action mechanism in the manner proposed by the [Amended Settlement Agreement] is a bridge too far.” It also said that anti-trust concerns persist over pricing arrangements and a Google monopoly.
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Tagged: google, Google's Settlement, policy, public domain
Briar Burley is reporting that the Open University is eliminating a program in which shopping at the store TESCO helped customers reduce fees for enrolling at the Open University. From the post:
Existing students writing on the site and in the OU’s online community pages complain that they had budgeted for their courses and now face a struggle to meet fees.
Thanks to Jon Rosewell for the link.
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Tagged: e-learning, higher education, online learning, Open Education, sustainability
Timothy Vollmer writes about a professor at the University of Michigan who remixed a textbook on the Python programming language in 11 days. From the post:
The book, Python for Informatics: Exploring Information, is currently being used in his winter semester Networked Computing course. The textbook is based on the openly licensed book Think Python: How to Think like a Computer Scientist by Allen B. Downey.
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Tagged: commons, oer, open content, Open Education, open textbook, open textbooks
Karen Fasimpaur has a new post lamenting the focus on textbooks instead of curriculum as a whole. From the post:
There are many dynamics that affect learning in a classroom. Textbooks are not the most important of these. Teachers and the learning process they create and nurture have everything to do with how students learn.
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Tagged: K-12, Open Education, open textbook, open textbooks
