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Blackboard, a global leader in online teaching solutions, has announced the release of a flexible option for running Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The platform will be available soon to all Blackboard clients at no extra cost in a non-exclusive, non-binding manner.
With more institutions looking to offer large, open courses, the new option annouced by Blackboard aims to provide a fully functional, flexible platform option complete with social learning capabilities and a wide range of course management and student engagement features.
"Institutions need more flexible options for experimenting with MOOCs and running online courses that meet their individual needs," said Katie Blot, president of education services at Blackboard.
Dozens of institutions have already partnered with Blackboard to run MOOCs on a service called CourseSites. The new platform will be enhanced with features to let colleges make some connections between their on-campus courses and their free open courses.

Authors: Allison Littlejohn, Isobel Falconer, Lou McGill. This paper, originally published on the blog on Open Education 2030 of the Joint Research Centre, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, provides a vision of what we term ‘fluid learning’ through which autonomous learners make choices about their own learning.
Fluid learning is suited to a world that has seen a radical change in cultural perceptions of learner agency and learner-teacher roles, associated with changes in technology. After completing compulsory education, the focus of each learner moves from learning pre-defined knowledge to filling gaps between areas of knowledge, integrating different areas of expertise, as well as learning new knowledge. Read more...

Author: Brian Mulligan. This paper, originally published on the blog on Open Education 2030 of the Joint Research Centre, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, suggests Competency Based Assessment may be the key to unleashing a wave of innovation.
Although Open Educational Resources and Practices, and other innovations contain huge potential to transform lifelong learning, there are unnecessary regulatory barriers, and Competency Based Assessment may be the key to removing these barriers and unleashing a wave of innovation.
There are two things you need to innovate. Competition and the freedom to innovate. There is no shortage of innovation in teaching and learning in the world today and Open Education Resources and Practices are among the most significant of these. Read more...

Author: Katerina Zourou. This paper, originally published on the blog on Open Education 2030 of the Joint Research Centre, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, claims that multilingual, user driven and glocalised components will be catalysts in shaping future Open Education.
Open education, as a societal demand that overcomes barriers to learning and development of personal and professional skills, is a reality, together with similar-minded initiatives such as open access to knowledge and more recently MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) aimed at large-scale participation via the web regardless of the learner’s location, status, age or origin. Read more...

Authors: Li Yuan, Stephen Powell, Hongliang Ma. Designing Learning for the 21st Century (DL21C) is an online course developed by collaboration between a UK and Chinese University to explore new approaches for open learning courses, and the key attributes of Massive Open Online Courses.
A primary motivation for this project included the exploration of business models, this is essential if long-term viability of new approaches and courses are to be assured. From a pedagogical design perspective, the motivation was to create interactive, responsive and pedagogically effective on-line and blended learning, freely available as an open educational resource (OER).  A particular challenge was how to make the course developed culturally, linguistically and pedagogically useful in different languages, cultural contexts and educational settings.  
The rapid expansion of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) has sparked great interests about their potential to disrupt the higher education system and the provision of open online courses as strategic choices for the future in institutions. The course developed by the team fulfills the criteria of a MOOC in that it was online and free to access, although in practice the only students registered with the Chinese university participated and were awarded credit.

Author: Dr. Juan Cristobal Cobo Romaní. URL: The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning.
Over the last decade, open educational resources (OER) initiatives have created new possibilities for knowledge-sharing practices. This research examines how, where, and when OER are attracting attention in the higher education sector and explores to what extent the OER discussion has moved beyond the English-speaking world. This study analysed English, Spanish, and Portuguese OER queries over a long-term period (2007-2011). The data retrieval was conducted using four online platforms: two academic journal databases (Web of Knowledge and Scopus), one video-sharing Web site (YouTube), and one document-sharing Web site (Scribd). The number (more than 32,860) of search results collected indicate an increasing interest in online OER discussion across languages, particularly outside academic journal databases. Additionally, a widening “language gap” between OER discussions in English and other languages was identified in several platforms. This research reports some of the cultural and language challenges caused by the expansion of the OER discussion and highlights relevant findings in this field. Read more...

Author: Paul Stacey. URL: Government support for open educational resources: Policy, Funding, and Strategies.
Foundations like Hewlett, Mellon, and Gates provided start-up funding and support that nurtured the field of open educational resources (OER) from infancy to a robust early adolescence characterized by energy and idealism (Casserly & Smith, 2008). However, foundation grants typically focus on establishing exemplars and cannot be relied on for sustaining ongoing operations or generating widespread adoption. One strategy for sustaining and expanding OER is for governments and public funding to take over from the early stage funding foundations provided (Stacey, 2010).