It's About Learning

Taking a Bite Out of Textbook Costs

Dwayne Harapnuik — December 20, 2011 — Leave a comment

Taking a Bite Out of Textbook Costs – UMass Amherst Library via kwout

Faculty using open education resources (OER) or free resources to help save students thousands of dollars on textbooks is not new, it is just getting more popular and easier to do. With the proliferation of tablets and growth of OER sites like Connexions, MITOpenCourseware and Flatword Knowledge it is getting much easier for faculty to include high quality FREE textbooks and related content in their courses.

The UMass’ Open Education Initiative is not the only major open educational resources project that focuses on offering high quality free learning resources to students. Washington State’s Open Course Library initiative includes 42 courses that provide free textbooks, or course content. Both UMass and Washington State projects are looking to significantly expand and are offering faculty incentives for converting over more courses to free course content.

In Learning 2.0 Connexions, OER, Open Educational Resources

Three Ways to Get an MIT Education

Dwayne Harapnuik — December 19, 2011 — Leave a comment

http://chronicle.com/article/MIT-Will-Offer-Certificates-to/130121/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

MIT Will Offer Certificates to Outside Students Who Take Its Online Courses – Technology – The Chronicle of Higher Education via kwout

How, do you make money on FREE online courses? Charge for assessment and certification. In a brilliant move to maximize its brand, MIT will be adding to its library of FREE online courses and by the spring of 2012 will start charging for assessment and certification. To ensure that that they don’t water down their brand, MIT will be offering the certification under another name. Regardless of what they call it everyone will know it is still MIT.

A person now has three ways to get and MIT education:

Face2Face – assuming you have the money and the entrance requirements
Online + Certification – do all the work online, pass the assessements and earn a certificate
Online – use all the online content to learn what you want to learn – for FREE

This move by MIT is great for students because it gives them even more options to learn from the best. Hopefully it will also push the academy to step up and start emulating the leaders in the Ivy League.

Read the full article…

In 21st century learning

ECAR National Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2011 Report

Dwayne Harapnuik — December 19, 2011 — Leave a comment

http://www.educause.edu/Resources/ECARNationalStudyofUndergradua/238012

ECAR National Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2011 Report | EDUCAUSE via kwout

Some of the key findings from this years report include:

Students are drawn to hot technologies, but they rely on more traditional devices
Students report technology delivers major academic benefits
Students report uneven perceptions of institutions’ and instructors’ use of technology
Facebook generation students juggle personal and academic interactions
Students prefer, and say they learn more in, classes with online components

Regardless of whether or not one believes that technology enhances learning our students believe that it does and if we (the academy) aren’t making an effort to at least utilize the most fundamental of technologies like electronic submission of assignments or the posting course content and grades on a course management system then these student have little respect for what we do. If they don’t respect us how can we expect them to learn from us.

The data is very sobering:

About 1 in 3 students (31%) think the instructor often requires the help of others to get technology up and running successfully.
More than 1 in 2 students (51%) think they know more about technology than their professors.

Fortunately, the report also offers a detailed list of recommendations that we can follow to start utilizing technology to enhance learning.

View the Report Infographic…

View the ECAR Report Site…

In IT ECAR, EDUCAUSE, technology

How Tablets are Being Used

Dwayne Harapnuik — December 16, 2011 — Leave a comment

How tablets are being used in business; listed by industry | TechRepublic via kwout

The list provided from the Gartner Group is confirmation that the tablet isn’t just a consumer device…it is being used by everyone in some of the most diverse circumstances. The argument for using it education should not be about when but about how we use this useful tool. More specifically the academy needs to start exploring the use of the tablet that goes beyond its obvious functionality as an e-reader.

Read the full post…

In iPad ereader, Tablet