itcss-instructionalsupport

Coursera's leaders say they are actively pursuing only two of the moneymaking ideas on the list: charging students who pass the courses a small fee for a certificate, and serving as a matchmaker between students looking for jobs and companies seeking qualified employees.

"several of the Kaleidoscope schools started using the rSmart Academic LMS, built on the Sakai open academic environment, which allows faculty to pull Kaleidoscope modules into their courses and add localizations. It also allows users to access the reservoir of openly licensed, shared content used in the Kaleidoscope courses. "This is the only LMS designed for the era of open sharing of content and a collaborative approach to curriculum design, so it could not be a more perfect match," says Thanos. "It allows for social connections and you can bring your academic content into your profile." "

According to the report, students said e-textbooks "somewhat" became part of their learning routine but didn't help them interact more with classmates or the professor, largely because most people didn't use the collaborative features. Mr. Wheeler noted that the students of professors who did annotate their e-textbooks reported having a better experience, since "these capabilities make the electronic text much more than just an alternative to a physical book."

UW Canvas (uw.instructure.com) is a feature-rich learning management software, allowing for simplified course management, seamless course calendaring, and efficient grading. Canvas improves communication between instructors and students through integrating multiple tools and methods.

The partnership will expand the reach of the McGraw-Hill Campus service, which was first rolled out last July as a means of offering universal, single sign-on access to McGraw-Hill offerings to students and educators from within a school's existing LMS at no cost. With the service, the entire library of McGraw-Hill resources can be accessed with the service with a single click for browsing of test banks, e-books, PowerPoint slides and other offerings.

"The Center for Instructional Technology maintains a pool of approximately 125 iPads and iPad2s dedicated to student/faculty use in semester-long courses. Interested Duke faculty whose instructional goals are compatible with CIT's annual investigative goals as listed below may submit an application to use iPads in their class. Additional information and a link to the application can be found on the iPad Course Loan page."

Site for UD students to sell and buy textbooks directly to one another.

""We were shocked to discover that among our majors, there is considerable resistance to this idea," Frechie said. "It began as our faculty thinking how can we keep pace with this new, emerging, younger and more technologically-literate population of students that we're working with today." The administration at Cabrini is also taking into consideration that there are many conditions to look at before making any move toward a digital transition. It is likely that some upperclassmen at Cabrini wouldn't get to experience a digital classroom experience."

"Minnesota launched an online catalog of open-source books last month and will pay its professors $500 each time they post an evaluation of one of those books."

"eCub is a cross-platform tool for creating EPUB and MobiPocket books. EPUB is become a popular e-book standard and is open and free for all to implement. EPUB files can be read by MobiPocket, Adobe Digital Editions, FBReader, Stanza, the Sony Reader, and many other readers and applications. MobiPocket books can be read on desktop platforms, mobile platforms and the Amazon Kindle e-book reader."

"Jutoh makes it easy to create ebooks in popular formats that you can sell on many ebook sites, including Amazon's Kindle and Apple's iBooks. Create your project in seconds from existing files using the New Project Wizard; or create your book from scratch using the built-in styled text editor. "

we find ourselves in an environment that is fast evolving from one based on one-to-many relationships to one based on many-to-many relationships, powered by social networking sites, consumer and cloud technologies, and mobile devices. In this brave new world, we CIOs have a lot less authority and control than we expected.

I did it! I made it all the way through a MOOC, submitting the final assignment in Coursera's Computer Science 101 this afternoon.

Of course, the rules are often in flux, making it difficult for to stay up to speed-which reinforces the need for a digital literacy program for teachers and administrators. It's not enough to impose rules on how not to use social media; teachers should be required at the start of every school year to learn how to use social networks and other tools effectively in the classroom, and how to maintain privacy settings for both professional and personal accounts.

In this project, McGraw-Hill will provide e-books and access to software, such as McGraw-Hill's adaptive learning system, LearnSmart, and the university will pay a "significantly discounted flat fee" for the materials. In addition, Western Governors will also pay the company a premium for each student who uses the materials and receives a B or better grade in the course.

" The University of Maryland will adopt Instructure® Canvas® as its new enterprise learning management system (ELMS), an online learning platform that facilitates teaching, learning, and collaboration among faculty and students. A pilot will begin in fall 2012, and Canvas will be fully deployed by January 2013."

"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)

"We told the publishers, 'We'll go to the agency model, where you set the price, and we get our 30%, and yes, the customer pays a little more, but that's what you want anyway,'" Mr. Jobs was quoted as saying by his biographer, Walter Isaacson. The publishers were then able to impose the same model across the industry, Mr. Jobs told Mr. Isaacson. "They went to Amazon and said, 'You're going to sign an agency contract or we're not going to give you the books,' " Mr. Jobs said. The Justice Department believes that Apple and the publishers acted in concert to raise prices across the industry, and is prepared to sue them for violating federal antitrust laws, the people familiar with the matter said.

Apple is aggressively moving to make the iPad cheaper and cheaper to build while eyeing the situation where tablets in general, and iPads in particular, are nearly ubiquitous. When you understand these trends, the iBooks Author / iBooks 2 / iTunesU App strategy for education makes a lot more sense.

"Having done this, I can't teach at Stanford again," he said at a digital conference in Germany in January. "I feel like there's a red pill and a blue pill, and you can take the blue pill and go back to your classroom and lecture your 20 students. But I've taken the red pill, and I've seen Wonderland."