OERandtheLiberalArts

The Open Yale Courses program, which broadcasts select Yale lectures online, will offer popular courses through a more traditional medium starting this spring: a book

"talk by Hal Plotkin, Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of the Under Secretary of Education in the United States Department of Education. The title of his talk was "Meeting President Obama's 2020 College Graduation Goal - The Role of Open Educational Resources," but his focus was actually on how to foster a culture of sharing among academics, including the very important role that government policymaking has to play. "

"What are the dimensions of openness that must be combined to provide sustainable and credible higher education in the 21st century?"

"Despite college costs rising faster in college than any institution in the country including health care, we have the technology to disrupt education, turn brick and mortar lecture halls into global classrooms, and dramatically bring down the cost of a high quality education. Entrepreneurs like to say there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. Is education innovation that next big idea?"

"Tufts University is committed to active citizenship, trans-institutional collaboration, and internationalism, and is proud to share its scholarly work by providing free open access to high quality resources from all its schools, including research centers and hospitals."

"The colleges in 15 states and one Canadian province that make up the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER) will now be able to tap into the collection of open textbook resources compiled by the international group of institutions that make up the OpenCourseWare Consortium (OCW Consortium) and vice versa in a new partnership. "

"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.

MIT and digital learning

" Community colleges are finally getting more than praise from the Obama Administration, with the announcement Monday of $500 million for job training grants from the Department of Labor. The grants, which range from $24 million to $2.5 million, will go to 49 community colleges, some of which are sharing the money for projects across consortiums."