Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eCampus News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

10 OER resources every educator should know about

These OER repositories and content creators provide higher-ed faculty and students vetted, free learning materials

openresizedAs textbook prices soar, tuition skyrockets, and educators are more pressured than ever to provide innovative courses and lectures packed with multimedia and current materials, the open education movement and its open education resources (OERs) have never been more critical for success than now.

What began in the ‘90s has now evolved into massive national, state, and university repositories that can be accessed by anyone, anytime…and the best part is, almost all OERs are free. What makes these current repositories worth investing time, however, is that thanks to decades of feedback, many are vetted by educators and are organized into highly-accessible repositories.

Many of these OER resources also provide step-by-step guides and OER tools to make multimedia, such as videos and tutorials.…Read More

Realizing the power of ‘open’ to transform higher education

Are we really at a turning point in the creation of truly crowd-sourced knowledge?

As the concept of open source has evolved and expanded over the past two decades from difficult-to-manage productivity and organizational tools to a vast, friendly, and rapidly growing bank of interactive open content, the possibility for grassroots innovation that can transform higher education is more viable than ever.

Beyond the open-source learning management system (LMS), for instance, which has become a cornerstone for many higher-education institutions, open education resources (OER) are disrupting traditional teaching and learning processes by radically altering the “supply and demand” balance of courseware creation and deployment to place learners front and center in the process.

Read more about open source in higher education……Read More

Students stage ‘textbook rebellion’ at University of Maryland

Plotkin spoke to students gathered outside a UMD library.

College students are going without required textbooks, doing their best to eke through the semester without shelling out hundreds in their campus bookstores. With inexpensive alternatives sparse, a group of college activists—backed by the Obama administration—is railing against skyrocketing textbook prices … one campus at a time.

The Textbook Rebellion, a nationwide tour of 40 campuses in 14 states during the fall semester, kicked off Aug. 31 at the University of Maryland’s (UMD) College Park campus, where officials from the Student Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs), student leaders, and an Obama administration official rallied for more open-source textbook options, both online and in print, that could trim students’ annual $1,000 book bill.

Textbook Rebellion launched a website that collects petition signatures aiming to show the widespread support for course textbooks that cost $30 or less, including online books that can be converted to traditional texts through an inexpensive printing process. Student PIRG officials said they hope to collect 10,000 signatures over the next six weeks.…Read More

Feds reverse course on open education mandate

Ed-tech officials lobbied for a change to a federal grant program.

The departments of Education and Labor have heeded calls from online education experts to change a mandate in a $2 billion grant program that opened last month, meaning grant applicants will have much broader choices in how to share their web-based learning tools freely among educators.

The federal grant program, known as the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) Grants Program, included a requirement to use the Department of Defense’s Sharable Content Object Reference Model, or SCORM, in developing open education resources.

SCORM is an eLearning software standard for self-paced, computer-based learning in the military and business sector.…Read More

Open education group says feds made mistake in grant program

Ed-tech advocates are wary of a federal grant requirement.

A $2 billion federal grant program promoting the development of sharable web-based educational tools requires applicants to comply with a Department of Defense (DOD) program, irking a leading open education organization.

The federal grant program, known as the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCT) Grants Program, includes the easy-to-overlook line: “… online and technology-enabled courses developed under this [program] must be compliant with the latest version of SCORM.”

SCORM, which stands for Sharable Content Object Reference Model, is an eLearning software standard created by the DOD for self-paced, computer-based learning in the military and business sector.…Read More

$2 billion that could change online education

The federal government could expand the open education model made popular by MIT.

It wasn’t the $12 billion in community college funding that officials hoped for in 2010, but a $2 billion federal grant program unveiled in January could encourage two-year schools to develop open education material that would be freely available online.

Officials from the federal departments of Education (ED) and Labor introduced the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) Grants Program on Jan. 20, inviting community colleges—and other two-year degree-granting institutions—to apply for up to $5 million per institution, or up to $20 million to applicants who apply for funds in a consortium of schools.

ED will dole out about $500 million in 2011, and $2 billion will be distributed in the next four years overall, according to the announcement.…Read More