As an interview this is a bit of a thin brew, but it is worth at least scan reading.

"To better organize and direct the efforts of our open source community, and to ensure that every contribution gets handled appropriately, edX is forming the Open edX team. This team will always have at least one person who is employed by edX (the company), but may also contain individuals who work on the edX codebase without working for edX the company."

I think this is a cannier- than-many assessment of the MOOC platform situation.

Lots of food for thought in this retrospective summary of mainly MOOC and maths learning related articles from 2013 by Stanford U's Keith Devlin

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

Ampp3d is a data journalism site from The Daily Mirror. It may provide some useful examples of data being presented and analysed, or of data that CM students could represent and reanalyse.

The OU's Doug Clow live blogs from today's London University conference.

"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. "

The usual thoughtful stuff from Keith Devlin about learning maths - in this case "Quantitative Reasoning" using MOOCs.

Ufi Trust Trustee comments on the emerging MOOC provider landscape.

4 page PDF from a Stanford group including the venerable Roy Pea. Might be relevant to several aspects of our project. Focuses on the question "How can we make a MOOC work for as many of its diverse participants as possible?". Argues for the use of A/B testing to inform MOOC design. Silent on adaptive learning. Still pretty tentative, though.

Based on 2010-2011 data, this BIS study (which I've not read) shows that it is not uncommon for adults who have already got, say, Maths GCSE (or equivalent) at Grade C or above to enrol on a numeracy course at a lower level. This probably strengthens our hunch that there are more people "out there" who might gain from CM than would be assumed from the proportion of adults who have already got a Level 2 Maths qualification.

This piece by Keith Devlin and this one by distance learning stalwart Terry Anderson http://terrya.edublogs.org/2013/11/19/all-moocs-dont-work-for-all-students-are-you-surprised/ between them provide the most constructive and well-reasoned reactions to Udacity's recent change of tack. Alex Usher's "Udacity has left the building": http://higheredstrategy.com/udacity-has-left-the-building/ is also worth reading, though I think he considerably underestimates Coursera's long term profit-making prospects.

Hagiography about Thrun, as Udacity switches focus. (The company's strap line has changed from "Invent your future through free interactive college classes" to "Advance your education and career through project-based online classes). A couple of reactions:http://hapgood.us/2013/11/14/thrun-enters-burgeoning-sieve-market/; http://hackeducation.com/2013/11/14/thrun-as-saint/ Aren't both tilting a bit at windmills?

I'm not well placed to judge if this is "any good". Interested to know what IOE colleagues reckon to it.

Not sure why San Jose State University's online brand is now "Spartans Online", but this summary of what makes a successful online learner is sensible in a low key way.

Excerpt: "Now Stanford is looking to reclaim some leadership in the MOOC movement from the private companies down the street. For some of its offerings it has started using Open edX, the open-source platform developed by edX, an East Coast nonprofit provider of MOOCs. And Stanford is marshaling its resources and brainpower to improve its own online infrastructure. In doing so, the university is putting its weight behind an open-source alternative that could help others develop MOOCs independently of proprietary companies."

Philip Guo presents preliminary research about video usage in some edX MOOCs. Strong evidence for keeping them short.

Someone sent me a link to a different part of this book by Joseph Malkevitch. I think the 6 points listed by Malkevitch from the bottom of the page and over are worth pondering on.

Nice line in this piece by Alex Reinhart about maths as bunch of lego bricks that you use can use by glueing them together to do useful things.