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Interesting article. The key concept I took away was multiple perspectives where "Citizens could watch multiple versions of the same basic courses taught by different professors across the country and see a variety of ways of approaching the same questions".. but I wonder (especially for 1st yr students) if students would listen to multiple lectures on the same topic?

Some arguments about  the economic benefits of OER for higher ed

Interesting review by the U of Edinburgh about trying to establish a student-centred MOOC in Coursera.

Nice review with 2 interesting concepts: - distinguish between 'content' and 'process in Open Ed - distinguish between 'push' and 'pull' models Push models (e.g. MOOCs) provide open access to a structured course experience. Pull models enable academics to choose the OERs they want to use for their context. Summary: "In summary, OERs as they are currently being promoted (the current ''push' model), will be a passing fad with respect to mainstream university and college education, because the core assumptions on which initiatives such as edX are based are false. However, OERs in terms of resources freely available over the web will be a game-changer, but in a 'pull' rather than a 'push' model. The one exception to this will be in the area of continuing education for the masses, where there will be continuing demand for structured, prepackaged courses built around the edX model. In other words, we need a little more humility about the potential role of OERs. There are niche markets such as continuing education that can still be very large that can be served by initiatives such as edX and MOOCs. But the real value of OERs will be to shift instructors away from the creation and delivery of content to focusing on how best learning can be developed and facilitated for, in and by our students. This way we will avoid developing automatons and instead will be developing people who can think for themselves."

another example of free online courses

Rob, towards the end of this articles there are some good quotes about the need for Universities to become more open that might be useful for the white paper. I've highlighted a few sections.

I agree with most of this. Change doesn't need to be massive, just a shift in favour of short, high-quality 're-purposeable' objects, to stay at the forefront of the new wave.

Great article, thanks for sharing. I also agree with most of this. Having participated in a MOOC, I don't think this form of learning will takeover. I think there are a couple of very good quotes here that we should include in our white paper e.g., "A reputation for innovative teaching will be invaluable in the fight for domestic and international student dollars." and "Incentives at all our universities are based on research output, so academics have little incentive to embrace educational reform. The universities that succeed in transforming education will not be those that work on a top down approach. That cannot work. Rather, it is the universities that develop the incentives and motivation for "bottom up" academic-led reform who will be tomorrow's leaders in tertiary education."

OpenEd MCQ generator I heard about at a recent conference. Feedback I heard from a few VetEd users is very good in terms of student interaction.