By Ann Carrns. If you are a former student having trouble paying back college debt, you may be relieved to hear that the Education Department has created new rules that will bolster borrower protections for federal education loans. 
The new regulations will make it easier for distressed borrowers to get out of default and repay their loans, said Pauline Abernathy, vice president of the nonprofit Institute for College Access and Success, which supported the changes. More...

By Paul Stacey. Providing free learning with pathways to formal credit, the OERu officially launched on Friday November 1, 2013 at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops British Columbia. “In basing your learning and teaching on OER, you have an excellent opportunity to treat the minds of your students primarily as fires to be set alight rather than as vessels to be filled with the knowledge of just one teacher,” said Sir John Daniel, former UNESCO Assistant Director General of Education and open learning visionary. More...

By Alando Ballantyne. Hunched over his bowl of ramen, Yutao Zhang puts down his chopsticks and checks his cell phone. He’s texting a lady he met at a party last night. Zhang, who also goes by Otto, is wearing a light blue plaid shirt and black-rimmed glasses. Despite a slight hangover, Zhang, 25, is in good spirits because he finished his midterms and handed in his last paper on Friday. 
“Two papers for two classes, and one test for math. Math sucked, but it’s okay,” the economics major said.  Zhang, who is from Guangzhou, the capital city of the Guangdong province in China, arrived in Eugene in the summer of 2010. He lives with his roommates Peng Zhao, from China, and Yeh Chenyuan, from Taiwan. More...

The recording from the Can MOOCs democratize higher education? panel at WISE is available here. Donald Clark shares his experience of the event as a whole, including our panel. 
One interesting take away from WISE13 was how much people still want a teacher. During the session, if a panelist desired applause, all that was required was a statement along the lines of “this is not about technology, it is about teachers” or “teachers are so important” or (as in our panel) “it’s not software or hardware but humanware”. I understand the appeal of wanting someone to guide us or wanting a person rather than a computer to direct our learning. Brian Lamb has an excellent post on Agency and Algorithms that captures the dehumanizing aspect of algorithmic instruction. The concern of waning teacher influence is not only a result of technology – it is also due to the prominence of networks and participatory culture. Mediators, in networks, are less important than they are in hierarchies. More...

By Phil Hill. Despite much talk about the demise of the LMS market, the end is nowhere in sight. Unlike many of the newer learning platform concepts (e.g. MOOCs, free platforms, unbundled learning platforms), the LMS market has an established business model and real revenues. Just today came news of an investment analysis report predicting that total LMS market (higher ed, corporate training, K-12) would triple in revenue by 2018, moving from $2.6B to $7.8B. The LMS ain’t sexy, but it’s still important. More...

In all the discussion about learning management systems, open educational resources (OERs), massive open online courses (MOOCs), and the benefits and challenges of online learning, perhaps the most important issues concern how technology is changing the way we teach, and - more importantly - the way students learn. For want of a better term, we call this “pedagogy.” 
What is clear is that major changes in the way we teach post-secondary students are being triggered by online learning and the new technologies that increase flexibility in, and access to, post-secondary education. 
As a first step in an exploration of what these pedagogical changes are and their implications for students, faculty, staff, and institutions, we begin here by:

• Taking a look at some key developments in online learning and how they impact our understanding of pedagogy;
• Illustrating these developments through highlighting innovations in Ontario colleges and universities from the Pockets of Innovations series on  the Ontario Online Learning Portal for Faculty & Instructors and offering links to many more; and
• Raising some questions about changes in pedagogy and in student learning.

But this is only the first step. Our goal is to use these questions on teaching and course design, student learning, and technological choice to spark a dialogue with professors, instructors, and those who work with them to provide online learning, through opportunities for online and face-to-face discussions of the emerging pedagogy. More...

By Jeffrey R. Young. Free online courses do big numbers these days. So-called MOOCs, or massive open online courses, typically get tens of thousands of sign-ups to watch video lectures delivered by tweedy academics, some more photogenic than others. But imagine how many students would tune in—or make it through the class without dropping out—if instead of bookish professors, Hollywood stars delivered the lessons. 
That’s one idea under consideration by leaders of EdX, the nonprofit provider of MOOCs started by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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