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" the education startup Highlighter has been tackling, initially offering a JavaScript plug-in enabling "comments in the margins" on blogs and websites. (I chose Highlighter as one of my favorite startups of 2011). Since then, the startup has shifted its focus slightly to become an education publishing platform that lets textbooks be published for the Web (as well as in PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel and ePUB) - all with built-in social marginalia features."

"Last week, the City University of New York (CUNY) unveiled its plans to create a "Commons in a Box," an open-source toolkit to help colleges and universities "roll their own" academic networks. The project will help replicate CUNY's Academic Commons at other schools."

"In the spring semester of 2011, the Provost's Office and the University Libraries launched the Open Education Initiative at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. This initiative incentivizes the use of textbook alternatives through ten $1,000 grants to faculty. Using any combination of Open Educational Resources and proprietary Library resources, this initiative aims to bring about new ways of conceptualizing higher education tools, hopefully saving undergradute students hundreds of dollars each year. Below is a copy of the Open Education Initiative announcement and guidelines."

"For four years, students in John Sterman's [2] business management courses have gone toe to toe in simulated business arenas, with the latest being a concocted world of video game companies looking for an edge in marketing and selling their game consoles and software. The university announced Nov. 30 that the simulation, known as "Platform Wars," [3] would be freely available on the MIT Sloan Teaching Innovation Resources (MSTIR) website, following the lead of MIT's OpenCoursWare program [4], a seminal experiment in higher education's sharing of open source material."

What are the Key Challenges for the OER Movement?   With the great support of Rob Farrow we were able to put together a first draft of 10 key challenges. Our aim is to come out, by this Friday (14 Oct) , with a final list of key challenges to add to the Evidence Hub (EH). These challenges will be used as "Higher Level Questions" that we present to the community and under which we would like to cluster the community generated challenges/issues. This means that every time a user will add a new challenge/issue to the EH he will have the option to say to what "key challenge" it is related to. Another objective of this exercise is also to offer some key "entry points" for new users to explore the Evidence Hub contents.

Ithaka S+R is conducting a multi-year research study to examine whether use of sophisticated, interactive modes of online learning can improve educational effectiveness and reduce costs in higher education. Our focus is on large, introductory courses, especially gateway courses in disciplines that are well-suited for online learning. 

"Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg announced today that he will push for legislation to create an online open source library to reduce the cost of course materials for college students across the state. The Sacramento Democrat framed the proposed project as an effort to lower costs for students struggling to cope with higher fees and tuition rates at California's public colleges and universities."

"The time is right for higher education to pursue "best for the world" strategies enabled by the strategic use of information technology to improve learning productivity by serving more students more effectively while simultaneously creating a privately and publicly affordable, stable financial model for learning-securing education's future as an affordable first priority imperative for students, families, donors, employers, and governments."

"The OER Impact Study was a JISC-funded research project examining the impact of Open Educational Resources on teaching and learning in UK higher education. It was part of Phase 2 of the JISC/HE Academy Open Educational Resources Programmme. The study was undertaken jointly by TALL and the Learning Technologies Group of Oxford University Computing Services. "

"Colleges and universities have no reason to view OER as a threat. On the contrary, OER can help institutions provide higher education to rapidly increasing numbers of students and lifelong learners. Traditional colleges and universities, with their experience and reputation, are in a good position to further develop online teaching, testing, learning communities, and certification."

Anka Mulder is President of the OpenCourseWare Consortium and Secretary General of Delft University of Technology, Netherlands. Comments on this article can be posted to the web via the link at the bottom of this page. Open Educational Resources (OER) have become an unstoppable development since MIT started publishing educational resources online as OpenCourseWare (OCW) in 2001.

The overall aim of OPAL is to support Open Educational Practice. This will lead to improvement of the effectiveness of teaching and learning by enhancing the quantity and quality of Open Educational Resources that can be incorporated into higher education and further education provision.

Presentation by Matt Gold at MobilityShifts making the case for the commons in higher ed.