By Tony Bates. I spent last week in and around Guadalajara in the state of Jalisco in Mexico. The Universidad de Guadalajara, whose origins go back to 1586, is the second largest university in Mexico, with about 130,000 students distributed between 15 campuses across the state. It also has a long-standing distance education program, now called Virtual Campus, which offers fully online programs, often through local ‘casas’ or study centres with Internet access (only about 40% of Mexicans, and almost none in the lower socio-economic groups, have Internet access at home, mainly due to lack of competition in the Mexican telephone industry). More...

By Tony Bates. Unauthored (2015) Stability and Modest Growth Expected for U.S. Colleges, Inside Higher Ed, December 3
Lederman, D. (2015) ‘Stabilizing’ Financial Picture, Inside Higher Education, July 8
These two reports are for the record (i.e. to help me find the data when I need it for other articles). Nevertheless, they are still interesting. More...

By Tony Bates. First thanks to Phil Hill for correcting what I and many other have been saying: that students are spending more than $1,000 a year on textbooks. It turns out that what students are actually spending is around $530 – $640 (all figures in this post are in U.S. dollars and refer to U.S. post-secondary education.) Furthermore, student spending on textbooks has actually declined (slightly) over the last few years (probably as a result of increasing tuition fees – something has to give). More...

By Tony Bates. BCcampus has just announced that as of October 30, 2015, it has now made available 23 new ‘Common Core’ open textbooks for the Province of B.C.’s Trades Apprenticeship Programs. More...

By Tony Bates. This article presents a short written account and a video of the adaptive learning program being introduced at the University of Central Florida (which is one of the pioneers of blended learning). It is being used particularly in large classes to personalize the learning. More...

By Tony Bates. This morning I gave my third webinar in the Contact North series based on my online, open textbook, Teaching in a Digital Age. There were 95 participants from 16 different countries. More...