Featured by Sarah Cunnane, writer for the Times Higher Education, as a unique example of a university trusting its own students, staff and faculty - wow, a sad commentary on our higher education community

Areas of Study General Education Program Art History Biology Business Administration Chemistry Computer Science Economics English Literature History Mathematics Mechanical Engineering Political Science Psychology The Saylor Foundation (under its legal name, The Constitution Foundation) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. The Foundation was established in 1999 by Michael J. Saylor, Chairman, CEO, and President of the business intelligence company Microstrategy. Mr. Saylor serves as the Foundation's sole trustee. The mission of the Saylor Foundation is to make education freely available to all. Guided by the belief that technology has the potential to circumvent barriers that prevent many individuals from participating in traditional schooling models, the Foundation is committed to developing and advancing inventive and effective ways of harnessing technology in order to drive the cost of education down to zero.

Professor Jim Taylor, from the University of Southern Queensland, points out that the OER university will create a parallel learning universe to augment and add value to traditional models of delivery through open collaboration networks. "This is not theoretical speculation, it is entirely viable." said Jim Taylor. In this keynote address, Jim: Refers to the "gales of creative destruction" associated with technological change where old industry can be swept away and replaced by new ones. However, the OER university concept provides opportunities for "creative construction" for universities in a digital age. Demonstrates that conventional supply of education using traditional delivery methods will not the meet the demands for access to higher education. Consider, for example: the need for 18 million new teachers the doubling of post-secondary students in the next decade the need to build roughly one new university per week in India alone to meet the future demand for learning. Points out that we already have a critical mass of open access materials, but we don't have open curriculum, open student support, open assessment and open accreditation. Indicates that the OER university concept will provide a stairway to credible credentials based soley on OER.

Includes video from UNESCO where Dr. Pongi asks planners of the OER university to find sustainable and scalable solutions to these key questions: - How can OER be best harnessed to train the millions of teachers needed? - What partnerships and interventions are necessary to support OER quality assurance and acceptance? - What specific types of OER content should we prioritise? - A wealth of content exists. How can an effective "clearing house" function that supports quality, cataloguing, information dissemination and other key tasks be operationalised? also Sir John Daniel, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Commonwealth, highlights two strategic questions for the planning of the OER university: - How can the "OER university" give students every element of possibility to draw on the rich environment of knowledge in their learning? -How can the "OER university" provide routes to credible certification so that learners and society can have confidence in the robustness in their knowledge and skills?

This calculator is based on research conducted in the Department of Instructional Psychology and Technology and the Center for the Improvement of Teacher Education and Schooling at Brigham Young University in conjunction with schools in the BYU Public School Partnership using open textbooks originally provided by CK12.org. This research was funded in part by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Cost information in the Calculator is based on pricing from Lulu, who we found to be the best option for printing open textbooks. For additional information about the Utah Open Textbooks Project, visit http://utahopentextbooks.org/.

Pachyderm, MERLOT, Connexions, SoftChalk, AcademicPub

The CSU's Affordable Learning Solutions Campaign is designed to enable faculty to choose and provide quality educational content that is more affordable for their students. CSU students typically pay over $800 per year for their books. By reducing their expenses, we believe we can provide better access to a quality CSU learning experience. We are launching this campaign in 2010 and will be continuously improving the services to CSU faculty and students each semester. The Affordable Learning Solutions website is designed to: - Make it easy for faculty, staff, and students to find no/low cost course content that can substitute for more costly textbooks Enable faculty to be recognized for their efforts in reducing costs for students - Share practices for using no/low cost digital content in CSU courses - Support campuses in customizing their strategies to enable affordable learning solutions For example: As part of a three-year partnership with Nature Publishing Group (NPG), publisher of the world's leading scientific journal Nature, CSU faculty guided and advised the development of NPG's Principles of Biology - the first in a series of interactive "born digital" textbooks. The text will be incorporated into courses for students at the Los Angeles, Northridge and Chico campuses starting in the 2011/2012 academic year.

he OER university is a virtual collaboration of like-minded institutions [Australia, New Zealand, Canada] committed to creating flexible pathways for OER learners to gain formal academic credit. The OER university aims to provide free learning to all students worldwide using OER learning materials with pathways to gain credible qualifications from recognised education institutions. It is rooted in the community service and outreach mission to develop a parallel learning universe to augment and add value to traditional delivery systems in post-secondary education. Through the community service mission of participating institutions we will open pathways for OER learners to earn formal academic credit and pay reduced fees for assessment and credit.

A Report by the Digital Connections Council of the Committee for Economic Development, Washington DC - 2009 - includes definition of OER, issues re copyright, trends

Daniel E Atkins, John Seely Brown, Allen L. Hammond - for the Hewlett Fndtn