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Tony Bates (who is an "old-style" authority on online distance learning) concludes a long series of posts on productivity and online learning.

Results from the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics have been used to suggest there is a crisis in the literacy and numeracy skills of Australian adults. This study challenges this current view by looking at the issue from a worker's perspective. Production workers, together with their managers and trainers, from three manufacturing companies were interviewed and observed. Little evidence of a direct link between increasing literacy and numeracy skills of workers and improved productivity was found.

Slightly verbose, but authentic blog post by Cathy Davidson about what it is like at the sharp end of MOOC production and teaching. Note her point about 150 hours of production time per hour of MOOC learning time.

Worthwhile piece by John Duhring commenting on MOOC production methods, and with plenty of emphasis on Keith Devlin's Introduction to Mathematical Thinking. For more on the latter see my http://fm.schmoller.net/2013/06/second-report-from-keith-devlins-itmt-course.html

"This document captures edX's product direction, as we see it today. As things get closer up and more concrete, we'll add more detail, link to specs. We try to describe the roadmap in terms of the problems that we'll be trying to solve, instead of just in terms of features that implement particular solutions. "

Thoughtful piece by Keith Devlin, who is no naysayer, having put a lot of effort into making and running MOOCs. Key excerpt: "Teaching and learning are complex processes that require considerable expertise to understand well. In particular, education has a significant feature unfamiliar to most legislators and business leaders (as well as some prominent business-leaders-turned-philanthropists), who tend to view it as a process that takes a raw material -- incoming students -- and produces graduates who emerge at the other end with knowledge and skills that society finds of value. (Those outcomes need not be employment skills -- their value is to society, and that can manifest in many different ways.) But the production-line analogy has a major limitation. If a manufacturer finds the raw materials are inferior, she or he looks for other suppliers (or else uses the threat thereof to force the suppliers to up their game). But in education, you have to work with the supply you get -- and still produce a quality output. Indeed, that is the whole point of education."

This free, hour-long webinar, "The Legal Side of MOOCs," will discuss important legal considerations that come into play with MOOCs. How does copyright apply to the delivery of course materials in the MOOC context? What about laws governing accessibility for persons with disabilities? Are there important privacy issues to address? In this webinar, Madelyn Wessel, associate general counsel for the University of Virginia, will discuss the legal landscape pertaining to MOOCS, including course production, data creation, copyright, privacy, and conduct issues.

Seb, are you going to this? It's slap bang in middle of bath time, so difficult for me.

Interesting 1/10/2013 post from Keith Devlin about the production of technology based maths education.

Nice open approach by Duke University to reporting on the development and running of Duke's first MOOC, with data about costs and operational issues.