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"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 University of Central Florida has chosen Canvas from Instructure to replace Blackboard Vista as the institution's learning management system. The decision came after a six-month evaluation process that reviewed Desire2Learn, Blackboard 9.1, and Instructure Canvas. "

The majority of students in the Udacity and Coursera courses analyzed were professionals in the software industry - hardly the target audience for those seeking a change in how we educate postsecondary students. The current MOOCs provide a nice proof-of-concept, but hardly solve significant educational problems.

"Papertrell is a cloud-based, feature rich, book-app platform built specifically for publishers, authors, content owners or anyone to convert books into stunning, interactive apps that run across multiple devices. "

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.

Data mining hinges on one reality about life on the Web: what you do there leaves behind a trail of digital breadcrumbs. Companies scoop those up to tailor services, like the matchmaking of eHarmony or the book recommendations of Amazon. Now colleges, eager to get students out the door more efficiently, are awakening to the opportunities of so-called Big Data.

" 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."

"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." "

"The university president has expressed interest in the idea of exploring mechanisms for professors to publish textbooks online, and to receive appropriate academic credit for it," Mr. Carey said.

"E-textbooks show signs of finally gaining traction, although they still account for a smaller share of all textbook purchases than any method of acquiring a print textbook. Twenty percent of students in this year's survey either bought or "rented" an e-textbook this spring. Over all, electronic versions accounted for 9 percent of all textbook purchases."

But now Ms. Finnegan is working to get the book digitally back in circulation, by collaborating with Unglue.it, a Kickstarter-inspired publishing start-up that opened last month. Oral Literature is featured as one of the site's five inaugural campaigns, which ask users to pledge money toward "ungluing" each previously published work. If the campaign is successful, Oral Literature will be available as a free, legal e-book, downloadable from anywhere in the world. Ungluing "is not really buying the rights, and it's not really buying the license," said Eric Hellman, Unglue.it's founder. "It's compensating the rights-holder in exchange for them releasing something with Creative Commons."

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is stepping up its investment in innovative delivery models in higher education, announcing $9-million in grants today to support a range of new approaches. Among the awards is the foundation's first contribution to so-called MOOC's, or Massive Open Online Courses, where professors let anyone online take their courses, sometimes attracting tens of thousands of learners. Specifically, the Gates Foundation is giving $1-million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for its MITx project, which offers such open courses.

For millions of students worldwide, free, open courseware provides a window, if not a front-row seat, to top university classes. The formats are as varied as the people who tune in. Some consist mainly of lectures recorded on iTunes, while other courses seek to replicate a classroom experience by offering study groups, computer-graded tests, and weekly assignments. And while you might get a badge or certificate showing you mastered the material, you generally won't get direct interaction with the professor, who may have recorded the lectures a few years ago. Here is a look at five introductory economics classes: four through open courseware and one in a traditional classroom.

"A new service at Purdue, however, called BoilerBackpack, will give students, faculty and staff 100 gigabytes of personal storage, so everyone at Purdue will have a large amount of space to store their digital stuff. And that's just the first step in a new partnership between Purdue and storage giant EMC Corp."

Bookboon makes its digital textbooks available free to college students, has taken the approach of funding its work by including advertising within the pages of the books.