By Tony Bates. What: D4Learning 2015, the International Conference on Innovations with Digital Learning for Inclusion (D4L), aims at becoming a biannual forum and meeting place for presenting and discussing. More...

By Tony Bates. I’m not sure that there is much of an immediate ‘market’ for these posts on issues around developing an open textbook (or maybe everyone is sensibly enjoying the summer), but for those who may in the future be contemplating self-publishing a textbook, I though it may be helpful to draw on my experience in authoring both commercial and open textbooks to lay out some guidelines for reviewers of open textbooks. More...

By Tony Bates. One of the questions I had to ask myself as a self-publishing author of Teaching in a Digital Age was whether I needed my book to be independently reviewed before publication. If so, would the same criteria need to be used as if I was publishing commercially. More...

By Tony Bates. I don’t usually promote any of the many online sites recommending online schools, because they are usually a front for advertising for-profit schools such as University of Phoenix, Walden and Kaplan. Although programs from these more established for-profit schools can be very good and just right for certain people, the web sites promoting them are directing potential students to a very limited range of options. More...

By Tony Bates. Not surprisingly, the turmoil at Athabasca University is causing concern for at least some students, and I recognise that I am responsible for some of this anxiety. For instance, I received the following e-mail from one student. More...

By Tony Bates. So I have now read the report in full. I have had some lengthy comments from several AU faculty about the report and my previous blog post, and have had a chance also to read some of the press comment. I have also had a very challenging e-mail from a student, wanting to know whether they should still be considering Athabasca University as part of their learning plans. More...

By Tony Bates. My main reason is that there is a major paradigm shift happening in education, driven partly by a changing economy and the need for a highly skilled and knowledgeable work-force, greater diversity of students as access has increased, and of course new technologies that not only have great capacity to change the way we teach, but which are also in common use by our students. More...

By Tony Bates. I hate to rely on third-party reports, but a thorough web search did not find the actual sustainability report online, so all I can do is provide a summary of the newspaper article. (How comes an open university doesn’t make this most important report ever on its future available online? This is just another indicator of the depth of the problems at AU. More...

By Tony Bates. Open textbooks may be free, but they are not without cost.
So what is the cost of developing an open textbook from scratch?
Answer: a minimum of $80,000, more likely around $130,000. More...

By Tony Bates. This is the obvious and most important measure of success: how much does an open textbook save by reducing one of the major costs of education? Here in British Columbia, the average annual cost of textbooks for BC post-secondary institutions is $1,200 per student, if they bought all the required textbooks new (which of course, many don’t). More...