Greg Grossmeier at Creative Commons has a new post on the book The Art of Community. The book offers guidance in building online communities. The book is licensed CC BY-NC-SA through O’Reilly Publishing. From the post:
The Art of Community isn’t just written for current or would-be community managers. It outlines and discusses all of the issues that are pertinent to simply working with a dispersed community of contributors.
The University of the People has issued a press release announcing collaboration with Yale Information Service Project (Yale ISP). The collaboration will result in additional research, which was only vaguely stated in the press release, presumably concerning the university’s operations. From the press release:
Jack Balkin, Yale ISP Director and Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School, serves on the Advisory Committee of University of the People. He said the global initiative combines two important ideas: “The first is that digital networks and social software platforms allow people to produce valuable information goods at an increasingly low cost. The second is that affordable education is a crucial ingredient for human development and human freedom. Harnessing new technologies to deliver low-cost education to people around the world is a daring venture. It is also the kind of experiment that everyone should want to succeed.”
Posted in Open Education
Tagged e-learning, higher education, online learning, Open Education, research
Simmi Aujla at The Chronicle of Higher Education: Wired Campus has a new article on a JISC report indicating that free e-books do not hurt print sales. The results are being questioned by Macmillan publishing company. From the article:
According to the report, sales for the titles fell by 18.7 percent from 2006 to 2007, before the study began. From 2007 to 2008, after the study began, sales for the same titles fell 13.7 percent.
Posted in Open Education
Tagged e-learning, higher education, open textbook, open textbooks, openness
The website Sunday’s Zaman has a new article on OpenCourseWare in Turkey. The article states that although 200 courses are available, that number is below what was projected. The Turkish OpenCourseWare Consortium is surveying lecturers to find out how to increase participation. From the article:
Professor Doğan Atılgan, who is one of the consortium’s executive board members and also a member of Ankara University, commented on this survey. “The views and tendencies of our academic staff are of great importance for the consortium. Unfortunately, not enough awareness has been created amongst the lecturers about the open courseware subject in Turkish universities. If we ascertain and eliminate the barriers the lecturers face, we can increase the number of open courses. Copyright and technical problems are two of them.”
Posted in Open Education
Tagged higher education, ocw, oer, open content, Open Education, research
Chris Lott has a new post on teaching science education. Lott suggests that the future lies in openness within teaching, educational resources and scholarship. From the post:
It’s astounding to me (though it shouldn’t be) to attend conferences like this and see yet again how many things—artifacts, documentation, records, instructor and student work—is inaccessible. Amazement and surprise at what colleagues—often within the same institution, sometimes within the same program or school—are doing is the norm. Sometimes this is due to being required to use (or in the habit of using) an LMS. More often the idea of defaulting to being open and making closed activity the exception—and there are legitimate exceptions!—hasn’t even been considered or is seen as “more work.”
Posted in Open Education
Tagged higher education, oer, online learning, open, Open Education, open-teaching, openness
Posted in Open Education
Tagged google, Google's Settlement, policy, public domain
“Bryanwb” at Slideshare has posted slides from a presentation by The Karma Project, which is “an open source toolkit for interactive learning activities.” The slides address how HTML5 and JavaScript can assist in open education projects. The slides are licensed CC BY.
Posted in Open Education
Tagged e-learning, Internet, oer, online learning, open content, open source
Cynthia Curry has a new post discussing accessibility and open educational resources. Curry asks how designers can shape OER to include as many learners as possible. From the post:
“What does all of this mean for teachers and students who want, need, and should take advantage of high quality, effective, and meaningful OERs?” As consumers of OERs, what influence can we have on their design? As creators of OERs, how can we adopt a model for accomplishing inclusive design?
Posted in Open Education
Tagged accessibility, e-learning, oer, Open Education, openness
Peter Brantley has posted a summary of the Open Book Alliance’s position on the Google Book settlement. From the post:
It’s important to remember that this controversy was created by Google and its partners in the first place; it isn’t incumbent upon the huge number of innocent bystanders to fix their bad deal. But we are more than happy to continue to engage in discussions about how to make the promise of the digitization of books a reality, discussions that will never occur if this settlement is allowed to proceed as it is currently written.
Posted in Open Education
Tagged google, Google's Settlement, openness, policy, public domain
“Lisa,” a self-described “blogger, author and online instructor” has started a new blog called The Open PhD. Lisa is planning to construct her entire PhD program around education technology and open education. From the post:
In the next few posts, I will lay out my 4 year plan – with help from the Twittersphere, blog readers, my advisors, and hopefully some subscribers. I plan on completing research and a dissertation as well – no shortcuts here.
Posted in Open Education
Tagged higher education, oer, open content, Open Education, openness
