Open Access Without Tears - 2017 Edition
A Big Publisher Embraces OER
By Lindsay McKenzie. Cengage will offer open educational resources, curated and adapted to include proprietary assessment tools, from $25 per student for general education courses. More...
Openness and the Decline of the Textbook Author
The emerging model of openly licensed educational content makes pedagogical as well as financial sense for today’s higher education market, fostering inclusivity and knocking down the wall between writer and reader, writes Brian Jacobs. More...
Open Invitation to contribute toward the Ljubljana OER Action Plan
Open Invitation to contribute toward the Ljubljana OER Action Plan
UNESCO, 2017/08/15
Cable Green writes by email "UNESCO has released a draft "OER Action Plan" and has asked for our comments and feedback. The draft OER Action Plan is available in English and French." The recommendations are pbroken down into five major categories: capacity-building and usage; language and cultural issues; access; changing business models; and policy. More...
Repositories of Open Educational Resources: An Assessment of Reuse and Educational Aspects
Repositories of Open Educational Resources: An Assessment of Reuse and Educational Aspects
Gema Santos-Hermosa, Núria Ferran-Ferrer, Ernest Abadal, International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2017/08/16
This study examines resources from 110 repositories. It should be clear that this post doesn't measure actual reuse, it measures only how suitable the resources are for reuse. Having said that, there are some issues with how the observations are presented (for example, licensing is divided between CC-by-NC-SA (42.4%) and "Any of the 6 CC licenses (27.1%)", which is an impossibility). But there are some interesting things. More...
Learning through the Open Creation of Knowledge
Learning through the Open Creation of Knowledge
Allison Littlejohn, Little by Littlejohn, 2017/08/14
This is a quick read exploring the idea of students creating and organizing heir own learning. As Allison Littlejohn notes, "Some Massive Open Online Courses have been designed around every learner also acting as a teacher and bringing knowledge to the network." Students don't always follow present objectives. More...
A Big Publisher Embraces OER
Techno-News Blog. For years, big-time publishers have been skeptical of open educational resources, questioning their quality and durability. But one of those publishers, Cengage, is today announcing a new product line built around OER. Cengage predicts that the use of OER — free, adaptable educational course materials — could triple over the next five years. More...
How Machine Learning Is Easing OER Pain Points
Techno-News Blog. Algorithms can help faculty discover and select open educational resources for a course, map the concepts covered in a particular text, generate assessment questions and more. The basic definition of machine learning is that it allows a computer to learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed. More...
UM System encourages faculty to use more open educational resources
Techno-News Blog. Beginning next week, professors will have more incentive to offer free or low-cost textbooks. As part of a University of Missouri System initiative on educational resources that are free to access online, the four campuses will be launching an incentive grant program next week. More...