The rising cost of textbooks — along with the rise of easy-to-use publishing tools online — has helped drive the popularity of open-source materials and professors taking a DIY approach to textbook publishing. Here are three examples of professors who wrote their own textbooks and are distributing them free
[Source: Chronicle of Higher Education]
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Posted by Oscar Retterer
If African scholar Ruth Finnegan’s fund-raising campaign via a new site called Unglue.it is successful, the anthropologist’s classic and a definitive study on oral literature in Africa would be back in circulation.
UPDATE: 255 Ungluers have pledged $7,562 toward a $7,500 goal.
[Source: Chronicle of Higher Education]
Leave a Comment » | Crowd Sourcing/Crowdfunding, eBooks, Open Access | Permalink
Posted by Oscar Retterer
The country needs to recognize and embrace a fundamental shift in scholarly communication toward open access, according to a government-commissioned report.
[Source: Chronicle of Higher Education]
Leave a Comment » | Emerging Trends, Open Access, Scholarly Publishing | Permalink
Posted by Oscar Retterer
In an effort to reduce costs for students, the College of Education and Human Development has created this catalog of open textbooks to be reviewed by faculty members.
Leave a Comment » | Copyright, Disruptive Technologies, eBooks, General, Media Distribution, Online resources, Open Access, Scholarly Publishing | Permalink
Posted by Teb Locke
The rising cost of journal subscriptions has created an “untenable situation” for the Harvard Library, according to the library’s Faculty Advisory Council. In a frank open letter to the Harvard faculty, the council warns that the library faces a subscription crisis “exacerbated by efforts of certain publishers” to bundle journals into high-priced packages. The letter does not name those publishers but says that Harvard now pays almost $3.75-million a year for their journals. “Continuing these subscriptions on their current footing is financially untenable,” the council says. It urges faculty and students to “move prestige to open access,” and lays out several steps that researchers and librarians can take.
Leave a Comment » | Digital Humanities, Media Distribution, Open Access, Research, Scholarly Publishing | Permalink
Posted by Teb Locke
In the grand University of California system, the Berkeley and UCLA campuses have long claimed an outsized share of the public imagination. Its easy to forget that the state system has more than two great institutions of higher education. In the heart of the Central Valley, UC-Davis has grown in a hundred years from being the “university farm” to becoming one of the worlds most important research universities. Now its part of a process that may fundamentally redefine the credentials that validate higher learning.
via A Future Full of Badges – Commentary – The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Leave a Comment » | Blended/Hybrid/Online Learning, Disruptive Technologies, Emerging Trends, Instructional Design, Instructional Technology, Learning Spaces, Online resources, Open Access, Teaching with Technology | Permalink
Posted by Teb Locke
Two academics working on the new service answer questions about how it will work and what it means for the status quo.
[Source: Chronicle of Higher Education]
Leave a Comment » | Blended/Hybrid/Online Learning, Education, Emerging Technologies, Emerging Trends, Instructional Technology, Online resources, Open Access | Permalink
Posted by Oscar Retterer
MITx is the next big step in the open-educational-resources movement that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology helped start in 2001, when it began putting its course lecture notes, videos, and exams online, where anyone in the world could use them at no cost. The project exceeded all expectations—more than 100 million unique visitors have accessed the courses so far.
Now MIT has decided to put the two together—free content and sophisticated online pedagogy—and add a third, crucial ingredient: credentials. Beginning this spring, students will be able to take free, online courses offered through the MITx initiative. If they prove they’ve learned the material, MITx will, for a small fee, give them a credential certifying as much.
[Source: Chronicle of Higher Education]
Leave a Comment » | Education, Emerging Trends, Online resources, Open Access | Permalink
Posted by Oscar Retterer
Professors who use Blackboard’s software have long been forced to lock their course materials in an area effectively marked, “For Registered Students Only,” while using the system. Today the company announced plans to add a “Share” button that will let professors make those learning materials free and open online.
The move may be the biggest sign yet that the idea of “open educational materials” is going mainstream, nearly 10 years after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology first began giving away lecture notes online. Blackboard made the change after college officials complained that the company’s software, which more than half the colleges in the country use for their online-course materials, was holding them back from trying open-education projects.
Leave a Comment » | Copyright, Emerging Trends, Learning Management Systems, Open Access | Permalink
Posted by Teb Locke
Foundations, tech experts, and librarians came together to offer support for the proposed library, which would make many collections accessible to the public online.
[Source: Chronicle of Higher Education]
Leave a Comment » | Emerging Trends, Media Distribution, Online resources, Open Access | Permalink
Posted by Oscar Retterer
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