By Steve Kolowich. If highly selective colleges begin awarding credit to students who pass massive open online courses created by their faculty members, the institutions could undermine their ability to invest in promising students, according to an analysis by a well-known Stanford University economist. Caroline M. Hoxby rose to prominence with her research into helping talented, low-income high-school students make better decisions about where to apply to college. In a new working paper published online by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Ms. Hoxby takes on the subject of MOOCs and what they could mean for colleges. Read more...

By Danya Perez-Hernandez. As the price of college textbooks continues to increase, more students are opting to skip the books even if their grades suffer, a survey conducted by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group has found. In a report released on Monday, the group said open textbooks—written by faculty members, peer-reviewed, and available free online—could help make textbooks affordable again. For the report, “Fixing the Broken Textbook Market,” more than 2,000 students at 156 college campuses in 33 states were surveyed during the fall of 2013. Read more...

By Lawrence Biemiller. The learning-management behemoth Blackboard is getting into the virtual-campus-bookstore business. This semester the company is testing a system in which a faculty member can visit the new online bookstore to search for and select materials for her course—including new, used, or rental books, e-books, open-source content, material the faculty member wrote herself, and more. When a student visits the bookstore, he’ll find the course materials for all his classes waiting in an online shopping cart for checkout. Read more...

By Danya Perez-Hernandez. Coursera, a company that helps clients build massive open online courses, will soon expand its reach internationally by offering Spanish-language MOOCs. On Wednesday the company unveiled its latest partnership, with a Mexican philanthropic organization called the Carlos Slim Foundation, and announced plans to translate 50 Coursera courses into Spanish by the end of the year. Read more...

By Steve Kolowich. San Jose State University, whose high-profile experiments with online teaching last year drew scrutiny, has adopted a new policy on how “technology-intensive, hybrid, and online courses” may be created and run on its campus. The policy follows concerns that university administrators—and particularly the president, Mohammad H. Qayoumi—have ignored the principles of shared governance. Read more...