By Carl Straumsheim. Open educational resources could make up 12 percent of the market for textbooks and other course materials and 19 percent of supplemental materials within five years, according to a survey of OER users, traditional textbook users and industry experts conducted by Cengage Learning. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. Report finds initiative fatigue and a lack of accountability, among other obstacles, are preventing colleges from improving student outcomes. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. Quality Matters, which offers quality assurance programs for online courses, is this fall expanding into online teaching certification. The organization has begun offering seven one- to two-week workshops that, when completed, award participants a Teaching Online Certificate attesting to their skills as effective online instructors. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. Publisher John Wiley & Sons has acquired Ranku, an ed-tech start-up that helps colleges convert web traffic into applications. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. MOOC-based master's degree initiative expands to more than a dozen universities. Will learners opt to enroll or settle for a certificate. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. LinkedIn on Thursday unveiled its own learning platform, which its paying members can use to learn new skills and make themselves more attractive to potential employers. LinkedIn Learning features about 9,000 existing courses from Lynda.com, which the professional networking site acquired last year, and plans to add about 25 new courses a week. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. Dozens of colleges may have had their websites hacked in a wide-ranging scheme by one gambling site to boost its own search engine ranking. The SEO and web marketing firm eTraffic last week discovered that a number of search terms involving online gambling -- including "real money slots," "online slot casino" and others -- had been inserted into other websites to boost the gambling site's ranking. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. Enterprise software provider Workday on Tuesday launched its full cloud-based student information system, Workday Student, after about three years of development. The company, known for its finance and human resources software, in 2013 announced that it would enter the student information system market, and has since then rolled out components such as curriculum management and enrollment on an annual basis. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. Education company Cengage Learning on Tuesday announced it had acquired WebAssign, a homework platform provider that spun off from North Carolina State University. Read more...