By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Open Access Interviews: Paul Royster, Coordinator of Scholarly Communications, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Long, interesting, and important essay by Richard Poynder on open access (20 page PDF). The context is an interview with Paul Royster (pictured), who has established the second largest institutional repository in the US at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with some 60K open access works. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The challenges of open data: emerging technology to support learner journeys
Graham Attwell, Pontydysgu.org, 2014/09/02
One of the consequences of an outcomes-driven competency-based education system is that it creates the risk of running through the gamut of issues surrounding metadata that characterized the development of online learning resources. This appears to be the basis for the development of LMI in Britain - labour market information. Graham Attwell describes and links to the "LMI for all" API in this presentation. More...
The study, commissioned by the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and conducted by the National Union of Students (NUS), found that overall students have positive stances towards the use of OER. More...
This handbook is a collaboratively written living web document targeting educational practitioners and the education community at large. Open Education Handbook. More...
By Matt Reed. Libby Nelson has a thought-provoking piece in Vox about why textbook prices keep climbing so quickly. It’s worth a read, not least for the point that, as with tuition, prices do not necessarily equal spending. As prices have climbed progressively higher, students have become more vigilant about finding alternatives, whether through rentals, used purchases online, or other, more ethically ambiguous means. Read more...
By Brian Jacobs. The dominion of open educational resources is apparently looming large, if one were to judge by a blog thread touched off with a panel discussion at a recent Knewton event. David Wiley, participating in the panel, made the bold claim that “in the near future, 80 percent of textbooks would be replaced by OER content.” Jose Ferreira responded critically to that view a few days later with a blog post, to which Wiley offered a dissenting reply. Michael Feldstein then weighed in with a dissenting perspective of his own. Read more...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. OER Beyond Voluntarism
Brian Jacobs, Inside Higher Ed, 2014/08/29
I don't think panOpen.com's Brian Jacobs gets the concept of OERs. here's what he writes in Inside Higher Ed: "A better way forward is to compensate the stakeholders -- faculty, copyright holders, and technologists, principally -- for their contributions to the OER ecosystem. This can be done by charging students nominally for the OER courses they take or as a modest institutional materials fee". More...
By Michael Feldstein. Jose Ferriera, the CEO of Knewton, recently published a piece on edSurge arguing that scaling OER cannot “break the textbook industry” because, according to him, it has low production values, no instructional design, and is not enterprise grade. Unsurprisingly, David Wiley disagrees. I also disagree, but for somewhat different reasons than David’s. More...
By Phil Hill. Recently I wrote a post about many ed tech products being stuck in pilots without large-scale adoption. /https%3A%2F%2Fprofilepics.canalblog.com%2Fprofilepics%2F1%2F0%2F1076071.jpg)
