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David Wiley & John Hilton's opening article for the Openness and the Future of Higher Education special issue of the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (IRRODL).

"As Casey Green said in my recent interview with him, the LMS space is a "market in transition." In 2005, the year that Blackboard acquired WebCT, the two platforms had a combined total of 75.6% U.S. higher education market share, and the next closest competitor had barely cracked 2% market share. Today, the situation is substantially different and changing rapidly. But the narratives around exactly what's happening tend to be off. Typically, I hear the frame as being a contest between Blackboard and "open source." Has "open source" (by which we mean Moodle and Sakai, the two open source LMSs with significant market share in the United States) made inroads into the market? If you read what the majority of sell-side financial analysts1 are writing, you may see the claim that "open source" is not putting a major dent in Blackboard. If you talk to Moodle or Sakai advocates, you might hear that they are crushing the company in sales. Neither account is really capturing what's happening in the market, so I'm going to try to explain what we know about what's really going on in a two-part series. In this post, I'll talk about what the data are telling us so far about the recent shifts in the market, describe how colleges and universities come to decide that they need to go to market for an LMS, and assess the degree to which we may see an uptick in the number of schools that decide to look around and evaluate our options. In the second post, I'll describe how the next four years of market transition may be different than the previous four and what signs we should be watching for to see which way the market is going to break."

"ast week, one of my media course (ed PD) classmates talked about the ongoing struggle to help students make sense of the flood of information online. She cited a negative experience with wikipedia, which resulted in an energetic exchange about the merits (and challenges) with open online content. It's not about "authority" nor should it be As a long time defender of the open web and open content, I wanted to point out that the educational bias towards "authoritative" or "received" sources, though relevant, is also highly political/ideological - especially in relation to emergent sources of knowledge (i.e., Open Content). Ideological in the contexts of: 1) who has access or control of the means of knowledge power and production 2) who endorses or authorizes those voices and 3) "what" forms are accepted as "valid"."

Personal Knowledge Management: A way to deal with ever-increasing digital information. Requires an open attitude to learning and finding new things (I Seek). Develops processes of filing, classifying and annotating for later retrieval. Uses open systems that enable sharing. Aids in observing, thinking and using information & knowledge (I Sense). Helps to share ideas with others (We Share). "You know you're in a community of practice when your practice changes" (We Use). PKM prepares the mind to be open to new ideas (enhanced serendipity).

"This is a moodle book I've put together to give people an introduction to open learning at UPEI… It still needs some work… but there it is. This topic considers the concept open learning and explores how being open as an educator can increase the chances for collaboration, access to knowledge and promote lifelong learning in students."

askBU Open Visit askBU at The Base, Poole House on Talbot Campus or in Bournemouth House, Lansdowne Campus. askBU Students Service Resources Close Email Your BU Email Account myBU myBU Web BU Website Print Print Account BURO BURO Student Union BU Student Union Library Resources Library Resources Google Google Information Open Current Students Current Students Social Open Keep connected to your mates. Jump to the key networking sites below. Bebo Bebo Facebook Facebook LinkedIn LinkedIn MySpace MySpace Welcome to the Student Portal. Welcome to the Bournemouth University Student Portal. Focusing on student support and guidance together with social and leisure activities, the student portal brings together all of the resources and online services you need during your studies. Having problems logging in? If so then please see our logging in tips page. If you are a returning student, you can complete online registration by logging into the portal (above) and clicking the 'Returning Students' blue box below.

"Who is using Open Educational Resources? This post marks the official open-on-the-web style start to our JISC funded OER Impact study. The key tasks of the study being: * The investigation of patterns of behaviour around the use and reuse of OER. * Examining the impact of these behaviours on teaching and learning strategies from institutional, tutor and student perspectives. Our methodology is distinctly qualitative, focusing on the 'why' and much as the 'what'. Why you might be using OER rather than why they should exist. "

Knight Drupal Initiative * Main * Popular Proposals * Recent posts Drupal and the Knight Foundation agree that open source digital publishing can enable powerful agents of transformation in their respective communities. Together, we are working to improve communities by providing an open democratic platform in the digital age. We provide funding for grant proposals that achieve our mutual goals by using and improving the Drupal platform. Applications for 2008 are now closed. The program will reopen at DrupalCON DC, March 4-7 2009.

"The main scientific problems investigated in this article deal with technical evaluation of quality attributes of the main components of e-Learning systems (referred to here as DLEs - Digital Libraries of Educational Resources and Services), i.e., Learning Objects (LOs) and Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs). The main research object of the work is the effectiveness of methods of DLE components quality evaluation. The aim of the article is to analyse popular existing LO and VLE technical evaluation tools, and to formulate new more complex tools for technical quality evaluation of LOs and VLEs based on requirements for flexible DLE, as well as to evaluate most popular open source VLEs against new more complex criteria. Complex tools have been created for the evaluation of DLE components, based on a flexible approach. The authors have analysed existing tools for technical evaluation of LOs, and it was investigated that these tools have a number of limitations. Some of these tools do not examine different LO life cycle stages, and other insufficiently examine technical evaluation criteria before LO inclusion in the repository. All these tools insufficiently examine LOs reusability criteria. Therefore a more complex LO technical evaluation tool is needed. It was considered that this new more complex LO technical evaluation tool should include LO technical evaluation criteria suitable for different LO life cycle stages, including criteria before, during and after LO inclusion in the repository as well as LO reusability criteria. The authors have also examined several VLE technical evaluation tools suitable for flexible DLE, and it was investigated that these tools have a number of limitations. Several tools practically do not examine VLE adaptation capabilities criteria, and the other insufficiently examines general technical criteria. A more complex VLE technical evaluation tool is needed. Therefore the authors have proposed an original more complex set of VLE tech

"Today Blackboard announced that ANGEL's Ray Henderson will be the new President of the Blackboard Learn division. This is great news. Ray is one of the best executives in educational technology today, known for his competence, his integrity, and his leadership in supporting open standards and openness in general. Does this mean a new beginning for Blackboard?"

JISC Conference 2009 - Opening Digital Doors conference notes and podcasts

"The Cognitive Edge Network is evolving a series of open source methods based on naturalising sense-making through the Method Development Cycle. The full list of methods can be accessed here. The Method Template is designed to provide some guidance to users of the Cognitive Edge Wiki and also a cut and paste capability to assist in setting up a new page. In general the following principles should be followed: 1. Consistency: should be consistent with the principles of naturalising sense-making. In other words it should avoid idealistic approaches based on defining future states rather than enabling evolution 2. Minimalism: a method template should contain the essence of the method and should be written so that a practitioner can quickly glance through the sheet (especially the work flow) during use without the need to navigate through a large amount of text. 3. Use HTML: additional material, illustrations, detailed check lists, supporting documents, action forms or whatever can also be stored as files or as new articles and then referenced from the method document. 4. Object based: methods should be descrete items, which can easily be combined with other methods. As such they should be codified at a level which allows that. Assemblies can be written up as Offerings 5. Non-specificity: as far as possible do not make the method description specific to a particular application area or industry sector. If there is a good example of the application then create a new article and create a link to that article 6. Avoid recipes: the Cognitive Edge method is object based, it is not a recipe. We expect adaption in context. Methods should therefore not read like recipes, or encourage people to repeat past practice. The method document is an original from which context specific practice can be developed. "

"July 27, 2010 Ten Factors that Determine Online Student Success at Community Colleges By: Christopher Hill in Distance Learning * * * ShareThis Community colleges are especially prone to problems with student completion of courses and retention of the students to graduation. To assist these institutions in addressing problems of persistence among online students, Robert Knipe, dean of learning technologies at Genesee Community College, undertook a study with area colleagues to learn what factors are most critical in predicting success, with an eye to understanding which factors are in the college's control and which may predict a student at risk for failing to persist. Persistence is a key issue for community colleges because they tend to be driven by FTEs. These institutions are typically open admission, and maintaining a certain level of FTE determines the school's funding for the next year. To better understand online course persistence, Knipe contacted colleagues at area community colleges. "All [were] seeing about a 70 percent on-time completion rate, down from 80 percent," he says. However, most research done at that point on online student persistence focused on programs at the baccalaureate level. So, Knipe constructed a "Top Ten" list based on his research that helps community colleges understand when students are most at risk for not completing an online course."

"My suggested assumptions in MOOC include: * people would learn in a self-directed manner * Knowledge is distributed * Knowledge is negotiated * Knowledge is emergent * Knowledge is rhizomatic (thanks to Dave's video posted - refer to How to be successful in MOOC?) * Learning is capacity to construct, navigate and traverse across networks * personal learning networks would be a far better way for people to learn * people like to learn via social networks * people know how to connect (people have the communication, literacy and critical literacy skills) * people know how to use the technology to connect * people are self motivated (intrinsic motivation) * people like to accept challenges, chaos and complexity is just part of the learning process * people don't need to follow a course or qualification for learning to be effective * Learning is emergent, and is based on connections, engagement and interactions * Learning is open * Identity in networked learning is based on individual's "participation, interaction" in the networks, and is reflective of ones involvement in the media, it's dynamic, adaptive * Individual and social learning is emphasised - cooperation * Sensemaking and wayfinding are important"

Innovation in Online Higher Education Published November 14, 2008 Random... , Thinkses In an article in the Guardian a couple of days ago - UK universities should take online lead, it was reported that "UK universities should push to become world leaders in online higher education", with universities secretary, John Denham, "likely to call" for the development of a "global Open University in the UK". (Can you imagine how well that call went down here?;-) Anyway, the article gave me a heads-up about the imminent publication of a set of reports to feed into a Debate on the Future of Higher Education being run out of the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills.

useful survey and comments on new govnt report on e learing from expert at the OU

Curriculum-free, interactive, self-service learning is the way of the future, but it's a future most training departments are not quite ready to adopt. Most of us agree on where we're headed: to ecologies where work and learning are one and the same, where people help one another build competency and master new crafts, where members of self-sustaining communities of professionals participate because they take pride in maintaining their standards and doing a great job, and where everyone strives to be all she can be. Open, participative, bottom-up, networked, flexible, responsive: that's what we're after. If only it were that simple. Learning professionals are already over-burdened. Budgets are tight. The economy is a shambles. Management demands cost-effective, rapid-impact solutions. And they want them up and running tomorrow. Pulling this off requires choosing among a myriad of new technologies, coordinating with IT, cobbling together social networking tools, CYA with legal, monitoring social network performance, and answering demands for new approaches, all the while doing the old job with fewer resources and more demands.

"The emergence of the networked information economy is unleashing two powerful forces. On one hand, easy access to high-speed networks is empowering individuals. People can now discover and consume information resources and services globally from their homes. Further, new social computing approaches are inviting people to share in the creation and edification of information on the Internet. Empowerment of the individual -- or consumerization -- is reducing the individual's reliance on traditional brick-and-mortar institutions in favor of new and emerging virtual ones. Second, ubiquitous access to high-speed networks along with network standards, open standards and content, and techniques for virtualizing hardware, software, and services is making it possible to leverage scale economies in unprecedented ways. What appears to be emerging is industrial-scale computing -- a standardized infrastructure for delivering computing power, network bandwidth, data storage and protection, and services. Comsumerization and industrialization beg the question "Is this the end of the middle?"; that is, what will be the role of "enterprise" IT in the future? Indeed, the bigger question is what will become of all of our intermediating institutions? This volume examines the impact of IT on higher education and on the IT organization in higher education."

About the Project For four years, Bosnia and Herzegovina was torn by the bloodiest and most ruthless European conflict since World War II. Its capital, Sarajevo, was the focus of an epic siege. Its territory was riven into ethnic enclaves, and accounts of mass killing and rape shook the world's conscience. With the signing of the Dayton accords last December, Bosnia is emerging from that torment. Now it faces the challenge of reconstruction and reconciliation, of carrying out free elections and of bringing accused war criminals to justice. "Bosnia: Uncertain Paths to Peace" is both a photographic chronicle and a worldwide discussion of this crucial passage in Bosnia's struggle. An interactive photo essay by the French photojournalist Gilles Peress, with the photographer's narrative, documents the last weeks of the siege of Sarajevo in February and March, including the exodus of Serbs from the suburbs from which the siege had been mounted. A collection of forums for discussion, led by scholars, diplomats, artists, humanitarian leaders and other experts, will be active for one month, starting June 10, and open to contributions from the entire Internet community. Connections have been established in Sarajevo, at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague and at the United Nations to encourage participation by those closest to the Bosnian conflict and its resolution. And resources for context are available, including chronologies, maps, links to other Internet sites, a glossary and who's who, a reading list and recent coverage of the Bosnian events from The New York Times. We welcome your feedback about this project.