Monthly Archives: July 2009

More on Kuali

Posted on July 11, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Recently, OEN posted on open source options in education administration, including a program called Kuali. InsideHigherEd now has an article that goes into greater detail about Kuali, which is an open source finance management system for higher education. From the article:

Kuali was founded as a nonprofit in 2004 — the name is a Malaysian word for a small wok, consistent with the group’s idea that it is creating tools that can be used for many purposes. The basic idea is applying open source to the administrative side of operating systems, with consortium members contributing their expertise and helping one another with the creation of tools, fixing problems, adding new applications and so forth.

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Obama Nominates NIH Director

Posted on July 9, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Gavin Baker at Open Access News is pointing to a White House press release that announces Francis Collins as Director of the National Institutes of Health. According to Baker, Collins supported open data as part of the Human Genome Project. From Baker’s commentary:

…simply having a permanent director at NIH will enable the agency to better explain its public access policy — such as defending against the Conyers bill and supporting FRPAA.

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Florida and West Virginia Changes in Textbook Policy

Posted on July 9, 2009 by | 1 Comment

Both Florida and West Virginia are changing policy surrounding textbooks. In Florida, a new law mandates that instructors make their list of required books available a month in advance of classes. In West Virginia, the Board of Education is considering mandating interactive electronic materials with each textbook. From the article on West Virginia’s changes:

If the board approves the new textbook adoption policy, the state would require that the primary instructional material in each classroom – what is now known simply as the “main textbook” – would have to come with an interactive component.

That component is defined as “resources that provide users the ability to select, control, manipulate, and/or contribute content to increase the learning experience.”

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Matkin Reappointed as Treasurer in OpenCourseWare Consortium

Posted on July 9, 2009 by | Leave a comment

A Media-Newswire press release is announcing that Gary Matkin has been reappointed as Treasurer for the OpenCourseWare Consortium. Matkin’s duties including preparing the OCWC’s budget and reporting to the board. From the press release:

OCW was inspired by the belief that it will advance human knowledge, creativity and social welfare. The movement is based on the notion that knowledge and education should be open and freely shared,” explained Matkin. “I am honored to be reappointed as treasurer of the OCWC and proud to be a part of the open educational resources community.”

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Wired Magazine Editor Argues For Free Lectures

Posted on July 8, 2009 by | Leave a comment

The Chronicle of Higher Education: Wired Campus has a new post on Chris Anderson’s (editor of Wired magazine) assertion that lectures should be freely available online. Anderson presents fairly typical arguments in favor of OCW and OER, such as benefits to instructors and institutions. The comments from some critical of open education are helpful in understanding differing viewpoints. Readers are cautioned about Anderson’s new book, which is surrounded by plagiarism concerns. From the blog post:

Though Mr. Anderson is hardly the first person to praise free lectures online, he fits it into a broader argument that such radical pricing of information is pretty much inevitable. His theory is that the Internet makes information so easy to distribute (and to pirate) that the best business response is to make it free and find some ancillary service to sell instead.

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Examining Harvard’s Open Access Policy

Posted on July 8, 2009 by | 1 Comment

Richard Poynder has a new blog post examining Harvard’s open access policy. Poynder points out that Harvard’s policy isn’t really a mandate, because authors can opt out for any publication and few take the initiative to self-archive. From the blog post:

In short, the Harvard policy is not what it appears, or at least it is not what it is represented as. Despite frequent claims to the contrary, for instance, Harvard does not have an OA mandate. After all, if any FAS researcher can obtain an automatic waiver, and there is no requirement to deposit, there is no sense in which the policy could be described as compulsory, and thus mandatory.

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College Textbook Renting Increasingly Popular

Posted on July 8, 2009 by | 1 Comment

The Chronicle of Higher Education: Wired Campus has a new post on textbook rental companies. The Chronicle points to the new site, Chegg, as an example. From the post:

In addition to Chegg, several other companies sell, rent, and buy textbooks as an alternative to dealing with the college bookstore, and some colleges have also started to rent books to students to try to save them money.

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30 Reasons for Openness

Posted on July 7, 2009 by | 1 Comment

Curtis Bonk has a feature article in eLearn magazine on openness. Bonk shares ten reasons for sharing from the perspective of institutions, instructors, and course designers as well as why potential learners might use OER. From the article:

…it is extremely difficult to deny the importance of OER and OCW at the institutional and organizational level. Administrators of higher education and training personal in corporate settings would be foolish not to consider it. However, the motivation to share educational content is also a highly personal and individually enriching matter. Not surprisingly, instructors, tutors, and course designers have specific reasons that they share their content. Many of them simply want to communicate with their colleagues. Other educators have an internal need to test the edges of technology. Still others desire to attract new students or help the ones that they have complete their courses.

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Quality Concerns as Open University Faces Budget Cuts

Posted on July 7, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Hannah Fearn at Times Higher Education is reporting on concerns about academic quality at the Open University as a result of budget cuts. In particular, the multiple science degrees currently offered are being cut down to one. From the article:

It [briefing paper outlining the cuts] says that the science department must also have in place a contingency plan for a further 10 per cent cut in 2010 “linked to the widely held view that the Government will reduce funding to the UK higher education sector (including the OU) because of the need to reduce public spending”

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Georgetown OpenCourseWare Pilot Announced

Posted on July 7, 2009 by | Leave a comment

The Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship blog announced the launch of a Georgetown OCW pilot at the end of last month. About five courses are available, and the site appears to be running on the eduCommons platform. From the announcement:

The small group of Georgetown OCW pilot courses currently available includes courses in the following departments: Computer Science, English, the School of Foreign Service, and Communication, Culture, & Technology.

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