As Phil wrote about recently, Cengage has announced "Cengage Unlimited," which is being described in various outlets as the "Netflix" or "Spotify" of curricular materials. It's an all-you-can-eat digital subscription service to Cengage's complete catalog. Spotify is probably the more apt comparison, both because the Netflix analogy is contaminated and because the music industry is a more apt analogy for the economic pressure this puts on content creators. More...
25 décembre 2017
Cengage Unlimited Draws the Battle Lines in the Curricular Materials War
Pearson Open Sources Equella—Properly
Not too long ago, Pearson contributed the Equella software to the Apereo Foundation as open source software.1 Equella, which both Pearson and Apereo refer to as a "digital repository," might have been called a Learning Object Repository (LOR) in a previous era (and probably was called that back then). More...
Cengage Unlimited – Marketing ploy or significant change in strategy?
One week ago Cengage announced Unlimited, an all-you-can-read subscription for their digital course materials. For $120 per academic term, students get access to any and all of Cengage's 20,000 digital titles with the ability to also get a print rental for $7.99 (shipping costs) per title. Once the subscription ends, students keep access to up to six digital textbooks for another year at no additional cost. More...
Cengage Unlimited Textbook Author Update
The Textbook & Academic Authors Association has a blog post up exploring the implications of author royalties that I raised in in my last post on the subject. Here are some of the highlights. More...
Somalis Leaving Kenya Face Educational Roadblocks
As students in Kenya’s education system sat this year for exams necessary to advance to higher grades or graduate with a high school diploma, thousands of Somali refugees couldn’t participate, even though they had also taken classes and studied hard. More...
Pakistan-Educated Afghans: Refugees in Their Own Home
A recent graduate with a degree in economics from a top private business school in Pakistan, Shamsur Jabarkhel spends his days scouring the Internet for job openings. Yet he has been unable to land a job in Afghanistan, his newly adopted country and the birthplace of his parents. More...
In a Refugee Camp, Classrooms Open Up to Somali Girls
“Who said girls from Somalia cannot go to school and achieve their dreams?”. More...
Report Shows Arab World’s Differing Opinions on Freedom of Expression
Countries around the world have experienced a significant decrease in freedom of speech over the past ten years, and the Middle East is leading the trend, say two recent reports on the subject. More...
A Haven No More: The Closing of Aassoun Tower
Aassoun Tower is a tall cylindrical building located in picturesque, hilly country east of this coastal city, and was originally intended as a tourist hotel with a rooftop restaurant. Its construction was incomplete, but like many unfinished buildings stalled by financing problems, it was put into service as a settlement for Syrian refugees. More...
Helping Libyan Professors Become Better Teachers
Professors from the University of Tripoli, in Libya, have been taking intensive courses at the University of Southampton this academic year to learn teaching practices that are standard in higher education in the United Kingdom. More...
