itcss-instructionalsupport

"Just three months ago, the University of Michigan and Indiana University made a joint decision to "pause investment" in the Sakai OAE project. The latest news is that the University of California Berkeley and Charles Sturt University (in Australia) have also decided to leave the Sakai OAE project. The only schools remaining as part of the Sakai OAE Steering Group are New York University, Cambridge University, and Georgia Tech."

Slides from a guy who's very active on the etexts list.

"The third thing we think is exciting is our analytics platform, which lets students and teachers track what's occurring on an individual level to be able to see everything from how a student is performing overall in math, to how they're performing specifically within algebra and within linear equations, to how they're doing on specific problems. "

"We are the leading education management platform for Google Apps. Our tools address critical regulatory and performance mandates confronting schools and districts world-wide. Cutting through roadblocks in adoption, content management and security, we transform Google Apps into a powerful learning and analytics environment, reclaim teaching time and cut software costs."

"Shortly after the invention of the quantum computer chip, and the laying of fibre optic broadband to almost every house in the UK, it had been clear that the days of teaching as a profession were numbered. Teaching had been relegated to a minority profession in a matter of years. It had been simply a question of scale. A teacher, working for 45 years, could teach maybe 1,500 children. Some lessons would be better than others, some children would get more attention and do better than others, they'd occasionally need time off and so on. Simply put, human teachers were inconsistent, and not always great. So when the new educational bodies started recording the best lectures for every subject from around in the world, annotating them in 3D, and enhancing them with CG, what could the schools do to fight back?"

That's neat. Time for professors to update their resumes?

"Most content is finite and contained; whereas, learning is chaotic and indeterminate. It's relatively easy to create technological infrastructures to deliver content, harder to build relationships and learning communities to help mediate, inflect, and disrupt that content. MOOCs, though, don't only have to be about static content. MOOCs are trainable."

The preview version of the TechWatch report entitled Preparing for Effective Adoption and Use of eBooks in Education is now available. We invite feedback on this report produced by JISC Observatory, to help shape its coverage and guidance to the Higher and Further Education sectors. The feedback period is open from 27 September to 8 October 2012.

"University of Minnesota faculty will be paid $500 to write a review of an open-source textbook. They'll earn the same amount to adopt such a book in class. "

"Research finds overwhelming percentage of faculty feel students need texts to succeed… and they prefer them in print. "

Education-focused tablet sold for around $150 in India.

The 11-year-old online program accounts for just over a quarter of the enrollment at UMass's Isenberg School of Management, yet revenues from the program cover about 40 percent of the school's $25-million annual budget. And that's after UMass Online, the in-house marketing agency, as well as a few other arms of the university have taken their cuts. The business school's experience helps to illustrate the economics of distance education and the way one college with a marketable offering is using online education to help its bottom line.

Newco will combine Barnes & Noble's digital and college businesses, meaning the retailer's Nook operations and its Nook Study software for students and educators will be a part of the undertaking.

It is far more common, however, for Rio Salado to revise its existing courses, which it does every two or three years. The job of creating and revising courses is assigned to a team of faculty and staff members. Each team includes a project manager, who keeps the process moving; a faculty chair, who ensures that the material is rigorous and aligned with the rest of the curriculum;, and a subject-matter expert, who is typically one of the college's 1,400 adjunct faculty members. (Only 23 faculty members are full time). A separate team of technical staffers puts the material online.

The University of California, Irvine OpenCourseWare is now offering four new courses in Public Health, Physics, and Chemistry on iTunes U. iTunes U provides users with free public access to lectures, videos, books, podcasts, and courses from colleges and universities across the globe. Users can download the content to their iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch with the iTunes U app.

"I believe it is time for the Sakai community to embark on a proper planning and management process for the Sakai CLE, to take us well into the future. Not one that is based on existing Jira's that are left hanging, not one that is based on just fixing a bunch of bugs and calling that a release, but one that completely realigns the focus of the CLE and brings the product back into the spotlight within the LMS market."

"A number of experiments are using new kinds of data - such as how many times a student has clicked on an e-textbook or logged in to a class Web page - to measure and guide learning in new ways. That could improve the student experience, but it could also end up dumbing down college, argues Gardner Campbell, director of professional development and innovative initiatives at Virginia Tech."

Use this template package and tutorials to organize your material and give your course a professional look.

"The university even hosts D2L training for instructors. There is no excuse for not knowing how to use D2L. Students who want to check their grades are instantly at a disadvantage. It also puts visually impaired students at a severe disadvantage."

Student newspaper article about forcing faculty to use the LMS.

Bookstores know their customer needs are changing and so do we! We started selling our All Access Pass (AAP) in the fall of 2011. Since then we've got a lot of positive feedback from students for the ease of use and instant access meeting their demands for multiple, affordable choices they can access anytime, anywhere, on any device . We now want to bring our bookstore partners into the fold by allowing them to sell All Access Pass redemption codes in their store. The All Access Pass helps bookstores stay competitive, better serve customers, and be "paper-lite."