The Kept-Up Academic Librarian

New Group Of Elite Universities Will Offer Open Courses

On average, it will cost $55,600 to attend Princeton, Penn, Michigan or Stanford next year. But now you can enroll in online courses at all four universities online for free. The universities won’t just be posting lectures online like MIT’s OpenCourseWare project, Yale’s Open Yale Courses and the University of California at Berkeley’s Webcast. Rather, courses will require deadlines, evaluations, discussions and, in some cases, a statement of achievement. No matter how elegant the solution, universities don’t believe their course offerings on Coursera will ever equate to the $55,000 classroom version — or they would not agree to give them away. Read more at:
http://mashable.com/2012/04/18/drop-in-top-schools-from-berkeley-to-yale-now-offer-free-online-courses/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter

Coding Education Is Happening Outside Of Traditional Higher Ed

The market for night classes and online instruction in programming and Web construction, as well as foriPhone apps that teach, is booming. Those jumping on board say they are preparing for a future in which the Internet is the foundation for entertainment, education and nearly everything else. Knowing how the digital pieces fit together, they say, will be crucial to ensuring that they are not left in the dark ages. at the center of the recent frenzy in this field is Codecademy. Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/28/technology/for-an-edge-on-the-internet-computer-code-gains-a-following.html?pagewanted=1&ref=education

Open Education Week Was About Making Higher Education Change Less Scary

Ms. Mulder was speaking here at Open Education Week, an event held this month on campuses from the University of California, Irvine, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to the University of Cape Town, Leeds Metropolitan University, in England, and the National Science Library, in Beijing. At 47, Ms. Mulder can remember the days of typewriters and hardback textbooks. Yet as president of the Open Course Ware Consortium, a global group of universities devoted to expanding the amount of free, openly licensed educational material on the Internet, she is focused on the future.She said, the five functions now performed by universities — teaching; providing a space for social interaction; testing students’ knowledge and offering feedback in the form of grades; cultivating a reputation as a good place to learn; and certifying what graduates know through accreditation — will inevitably change. The goal of Open Education Week was “to make the process seem less scary." Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/world/europe/19iht-educlede19.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Will Badges Replace College Diplomas

What’s so special about a diploma? With the advent of Massive Open Online Courses and other online programs offering informal credentials, the race is on for alternative forms of certification that would be widely accepted by employers. Mozilla, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and others are working to devise a system of online educational “badges” certifying exactly which skills had been learned. to be trustworthy, alternative credentials would have to be at least as cheat-proof as traditional ones. And that is not so simple. Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/education/beyond-the-college-degree-online-educational-badges.html?ref=education

MOOCs Have The Potential To Democratize Higher Education

The big names have been a big draw. Since Udacity, the for-profit startup running the course, opened registration on Jan. 23, more than 90,000 students have enrolled in the search-engine course and another taught by Mr. Thrun, who led the development of Google’s self-driving car. Welcome to the brave new world of Massive Open Online Courses — known as MOOCs — a tool for democratizing higher education. While the vast potential of free online courses has excited theoretical interest for decades, in the past few months hundreds of thousands of motivated students around the world who lack access to elite universities have been embracing them as a path toward sophisticated skills and high-paying jobs, without paying tuition or collecting a college degree. And in what some see as a threat to traditional institutions, several of these courses now come with an informal credential (though that, in most cases, will not be free). Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/education/moocs-large-courses-open-to-all-topple-campus-walls.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha26

MIT Plans Process To Provide Credit For Those Taking Its Open Courses

While students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology pay thousands of dollars for courses, the university will announce a new program on Monday allowing anyone anywhere to take M.I.T. courses online free of charge — and for the first time earn official certificates for demonstrating mastery of the subjects taught. But the new “M.I.T.x” interactive online learning platform will go further, giving students access to online laboratories, self-assessments and student-to-student discussions. While access to the software will be free, there will most likely be an “affordable” charge, not yet determined, for a credential. Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/19/education/mit-expands-free-online-courses-offering-certificates.html

Library Pirate Wants To Change The Textbook Industry

LibraryPirate was founded a little over a year ago with a site mission of providing college students with an alternative to continuously rising textbook prices. “Our mission is simple and specific,” LP’s admin explains. “To revolutionize the digital e-textbook industry and change it permanently.” LibraryPirate’s founder believes that real-world business rules don’t apply when it comes to textbook pricing and he bemoans the often unnecessary annual updates that render last year’s textbook obsolete, just as this year’s version – with its 6% annual price uplift – becomes the dictated ‘choice’. Read more at:
http://torrentfreak.com/free-textbooks-for-students-will-break-greedy-monopoly-110816/ 

 

Free Online Course Attracts More Students Than Most Universities Enroll

A free online course at Stanford University on artificial intelligence, to be taught this fall by two leading experts from Silicon Valley, has attracted more than 58,000 students around the globe — a class nearly four times the size of Stanford’s entire student body. The online students will not get Stanford grades or credit, but they will be ranked in comparison to the work of other online students and will receive a “statement of accomplishment. The computer scientists said they were uncertain about why the A.I. class had drawn such a large audience. Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/science/16stanford.html?src=me&ref=general

Survey Finds 70% Of Students Skipped A Textbook Purchase To Save Money

As the cost of textbooks continues to rise, many college students are choosing to skimp on textbooks to save money. Seven out of 10 undergraduates surveyed at 13 college campuses said they had not purchased one or more textbooks because the cost was too high. The U.S. PIRG analysis also found the price of textbooks has risen 22 percent over the past four years-- a much faster rate than overall inflation. Read more at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/11/student-advocates-sound-alarm-on-textbooks_n_924536.html

Latest "7 Things" From EDUCAUSE Covers Open Textbooks

The open educational resources model, including textbooks, has emerged as a response to rising text prices, a need for greater access to high-quality learning materials, the proliferation of e-reader devices, and a trend in publishing toward electronic media. Many contend that educational resources should be open and that instructional models increasingly depend on open content. Open textbooks can be offered by commercial publishers or found in open repositories. Open resources can promote active learning through student interaction with the text, particularly when they contribute to authorship. Although open textbooks face questions about the accuracy and reliability of their content, they allow higher education instructors to design content for their courses on an as-needed basis, choosing from an array of books, articles, videos, audio recordings, and readings. Read more at:
http://www.educause.edu/Resources/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAboutOpenT/225383