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"The problem is the idea that the price of digital books will be 50 percent of the new price. That's not holding. We're seeing anywhere from 35 to 42 percent off."

Robin is a new faculty at UD, from Penn State.

List of Learning Analytic Resources - Educause, ELI Focus Session April 2012

The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) has released a fact sheet for proposed national legislation to enact a key recommendation of the Postsecondary Accessible Instructional Materials (AIM) Commission report released over a year ago.

"Higher education is facing a variety of conflicting challenges. National and state competitiveness depend on a citizenry with postsecondary education. Large segments of the population traditionally have not had equal access to higher education, and this is particularly true for minorities and the economically disadvantaged, two groups that also suffer disproportionally from another of higher education's challenges-students coming to higher education without adequate preparation. This bulletin describes an analytics system that Bowie State University (BSU) has implemented and is enhancing in order to improve the retention and success of at-risk students. While BSU has a substantial population of such students, the approaches taken are broadly applicable since many institutions have students in this category."

"Given an expectation of digital literacy among students, why should we worry about student perceptions of CMS tools? For the same reason exemplary instructors stay aware of their students' general learning style preferences-to evolve their teaching styles to meet diverse preferences and maximize learning while also attempting to develop and enhance students' abilities to learn in different ways. Likewise, knowing the CMS tools that students find most effective establishes an important baseline for understanding student needs that can be addressed not only in a CMS but also through other online systems and services. The University of Florida (UF) conducted a survey investigating that question in spring 2009, during the university's most recent CMS evaluation and adoption decision to replace the existing CMS. This research bulletin presents the survey results to help inform other institutions with their own evaluation and adoption processes. The information will also benefit instructors looking to maximize their own use of a local CMS and/or to choose tools that enable personal learning environments, as well as specific tools for learning. "

Insights on student perceptions of the LMS.

"Of the 1,140 respondents, 92% reported they found the system very useful, useful, or somewhat useful, providing further evidence of the mission-critical nature of CMSs. [...] Responses identified their top choices as the ability to see their grades, course announcements, syllabus, assignment submission, online quizzes and tests, discussions, and calendar." (p. 4) "Students most frequently cited the need for a better user interface." (p. 5) "The most repeated suggestions fell into the areas of: - Improving ease of use of the e-learning system - Requesting specific tools or features - Requesting --perhaps requiring-- instructors to use the CMS" (p. 6) "Students most value tools that support self-monitoring: tracking progress, self-assessment, grade book views, and the like." (p. 8)

In this session, we'll briefly describe Indiana University's e-text agreements with five publishers and with Courseload, the provider of the e-text e-reader software. These agreements are resulting in substantial cost savings for students and providing them with new tools for teaching and learning. The IU agreements evolved from two years of pilot testing and in response to substantial input from students, faculty, textbook publishers, and authors. We will also discuss how these agreements can be extended to other institutions through short- and long-term pilot programs, which will allow them to gather valuable data about student and faculty use of e-texts.

Disrupting Ourselves, The Problem of Learning in Higher Education

Great article by Randy Bass. There is a reference to the eportfolio model that C2L is starting to create. He also aligns eportfolios and PLE's. [E-portfolios, or Personal Learning Environments (PLEs), or whatever they are named-as something that enables students to weave these connections back and forth across the formal and experiential curricula-will be an essential element of our response to this disruptive moment. Randy also mentions the emerging discussions about learning analytics.

"The QlikView Business Discovery platform delivers true self-service BI that empowers business users and drives innovative decision making."

Business intelligence and learning analytics have a lot in common. Just sharing a product that was mentioned in an EDUCAUSE list.