Open

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Charles M. Vest[Edit][Delete]: Open Content and the Emerging Global Meta-University, EDUCAUSE Review [Edit][Delete]EDUCAUSE REVIEW [Edit][Delete] May 11, 2006
Article based (loosely) on his talk at Snowmass last summer. In it, Charles M. Vest talks mostly about the thinking behind OpenCourseWare and a bit about open educational resources generally. It is important to understand, though, that this is a global movement, and is about more than the rest of the world being the passive recipient of MIT's largesse (sorry that sounds harsh, but that's how the article reads). In the last paragraph he gets to describing the meta-university, "a transcendent, accessible, empowering, dynamic, communally constructed framework of open materials and platforms on which much of higher education worldwide can be constructed or enhanced". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Katrina A. Meyer[Edit][Delete]: The Closing of the U.S. Open University, EDUCAUSE Quarterly [Edit][Delete] May 4, 2006

Interesting article. I personally wonder about the desire on the part of OU to enter the U.S. market at all - it's not like there's a shortage of universities there. And as the article makes clear, U.S. accredication is a significant hurdle. Also, "for the USOU, recruiting one student took approximately $4,000 to $5,000." This money, in my view, would have been better spent elsewhere. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Scott Jaschik[Edit][Delete]: Momentum for Open Access Research, Inside Higher Ed [Edit][Delete] September 6, 2006

The scholarly societies have been opposing open access to academic content, but as this article notes, it is increasingly apparent that they represent only their own interests, and not those of the academics they purport to represent. I haven't covered every iteration of the increasingly show of support by academics for open access, but this increment, the most recentl, in which the provosts of 25 research universities came out in favor of open access, is typical. The support for open access is there, as people become aware of the issue. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Stephen Carson[Edit][Delete]: Downes on OER Sustainability, OpenFiction [Edit][Delete] February 9, 2006
Some commentary and correction regarding my observations about MIT's OpenCourseWare contained in my recent paper on sustainable open educational resources. Some good observations, too: "no project can really sustain the costs of producing 'reusable' materials, even assuming they could determine what that meant. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. John Lorinc[Edit][Delete]: The Bottom Line on Open Access, University Affairs [Edit][Delete] February 24, 2006

Longish article on open access with a specific focus on Canadian issues, which I enjoyed. Good coverage, including reporting on lobbying against open access in the U.S., coverage of SSHRC deliberations on the issue, and accounts of some specific cases, such as IRRODL's attempt to get funding while functioning as an open access journal. More...