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By: Matthew LeBar Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are often described as the future of education - or at least a significant part of it. But there may be a significant problem with them: a very small proportion of students who start them actually finish. This poses a serious threat to their legitimacy.

This brings up the question of what it means to complete something? And why is it so important to us? And why 'productivity', a thing somebody defined ages ago, is so important to our humanity? .. or is it anymore?

Because I am taking a MOOC course but also on campus at University, I receive credits and grades where this is definitely one of the motivations for me to contribute. Although I agree that completion of the course is not essential to attain knowledge, what about our motivations to learn? And what about our incentives? Not saying MOOCs are not interesting nor helpful, I like MOOCs, but I think people like recognition too. I think to just receive the "statement of accomplishment" is not enough to prove efforts made within the course. However MOOCs are not as well developed at this stage, there definitely will be adjustments in the near future.

I really cannot recommend this resource highly enough. The brainchild and master's thesis of a lawyer-turned-information professional, SIPX is an incredible blend of copyright control centre, digital distribution hub, and online marketplace. With the impending downfall of Access Copyright and its rejection by most Canadian universities, schools have had to quickly learn about copyright and establish good practices and guidelines, but this product provides the safest legal protection while considerably upgrading the dissemination of course readings; it also makes strides that push against the dominance of the traditional textbook market. It has already been adopted by several major American universities, including Stanford (where it was developed; it seems all the greatest open knowledge stuff is coming out of there!) and Notre Dame. Did I mention that it even supports MOOCs? I just found out about this resource while doing a practicum placement for library school, and I can't believe that I'd never heard of it before. It's exactly the kind of integrated library and informational system that needs to happen in academic institutions, and while it's not explicitly modelled on open access, it relies on many of the same values that we've talked about throughout this course. Check it out!

Detailed description and analysis of UBC's Policy 81: Use of Teaching Materials in UBC Credit Courses. Helpful in understanding the challenges of encouraging open education within institutions.

Should Open Knowledge be associated with old and irrelevant knowledge. Going through MIT Open Course, all I could see is knowledge as old as 10 years. Well some information may still be relevant but most of the information has evolved and there is new materials.For me, this makes Open Knowledge a joke if all , that can be offered is outdated knowledge

A great website of Free Online Course Materials. MIT OpenCourseWare is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.

With these resources, you can create or participate in collaborative efforts to develop tools and methods for online education.

Many Open Education Resources (OER) have been introduced by governments, universities, and individuals within the past few years. OERs provide teaching and learning materials that are freely available and offered online for anyone to use. Whether you're an instructor, student, or self-learner, you have access to full courses, modules, syllabi, lectures, assignments, quizzes, activities, games, simulations, and tools to create these components.

Thanks. An extensive list of resources. It may have been easier to use the list if it wasn't categorised only alphabetically but also further grouped into categories. It's still a valuable collection.

The author stresses that MOOC's materials for learning may be used for commercial purposes when originally it was available free of charge. She offers some alternatives measures to control ownership of the course

It's absolutely shameful that so few library and information science journals are open access: if any professional associations have a professional imperative towards improving the scholarly and cultural communication processes, it is librarians and other information professionals. This substantial (but still woefully short) list of open access journals that publish on library and information science will be a great resource for those of us in this course who are aspiring or practicing librarians. As we've heard over and over again throughout this course, advocacy is absolutely essential if open access principles are ever to receive wider acceptance and implementation; that's why it's important that, as practicing information professionals, we use open access publications for our research whenever we can. Lists like this one allow us to streamline our research in ways that align most closely with our professional values, though of course currently there just isn't enough published to allow us to rely exclusively on open access material for our own work. But having lists like this also allows us to determine where our research should be submitted; otherwise, by publishing in paid journals, we are only making things worse. This all being said, most lists like this that I could find online were either outdated and incomplete, part of a larger database that made hyperlinking difficult, or-like this one-they lacked any explanation of what sorts of articles could be found within; even this one hasn't been updated in eighteen months. But as is so often the case with open access, we must take what we can get.

Hi, thank you for sharing the link! I agree with your comments. However, I am very pleased that I found my professional journal on the list :)

Thank you for sharing the resource on library statistics. The site attracted my attention first of all because it is a Scandinavian resource. The material contains lots of useful theoretical and practical material. In the introduction the author states "It contains a number of research papers, but the framework is different. This is collection of texts, tables, graphics and links that are aimed at the people who actually run libraries." Statistics is a useful tool if used correctly and wisely. It may inspire changes and innovations and also measure the importance of changes. Besides, collection and interpretation of statistical data also changes with the course of time. The author has very clearly explained library statistics with good examples. .

"Este es un material educativo autoguiado en línea y abierto sobre conceptos básicos de derechos de autor para bibliotecarios de América Latina, presentado a través de School of Open en P2PU, una comunidad global de voluntarios centrada en proporcionar oportunidades de educación gratuita sobre el significado, la aplicación y el impacto de la "apertura" en la era digital y su beneficio para los esfuerzos creativos, la educación, la investigación, entre otros. School of Open en P2PU es coordinado por Creative Commons y P2PU, una comunidad de aprendizaje entre pares y la plataforma para el desarrollo y realización de cursos en línea gratuitos."

Kay, R., Lauriclla, S. (2011). Exploring the Benefits and Challenges of Using Laptop Computers in Higher Education Classrooms: A Formative Analysis. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology. 37:1

a. Laptops and mobile devices are ubiquitous in todays classrooms as students are digital natives. Because of decreasing prices of technology over the past few decades, an overwhelming majority of the university students surveyed own a laptop (87%). Because of this quick onset of technological adoption, culture has lagged, in terms of re-defining the social institutions that such mobile and computer technologies affect. According to this analysis, students feel that the use of a laptop helps in aiding studies, is useful for gathering course and supplementary materials and engaging in peer collaboration. Several challenges have been noted: communication based challenges, relating to social media, email and messaging services; and entertainment based challenges, relating to media consumption. These challenges serve as potential sources of distraction for the student using the technology and others. In their findings, 16% of students reported being distracted by pornography during class, on their own or others' computer screens, which ranked higher than computer games, at 1%. The authors conclude that the benefits of laptop use in class outweigh the challenges 2:1. Possibly, if the functionality of student laptops are integrated into course curriculum further, students can benefit from further peer collaboration, increased academic benefit and decreased distractions.

Another resource I've learned of in this course is the Open Economics organization, and what I really appreciated is not only the accessibility to very interesting data and research, but the clear way in which they're presented

David Wiley (aka @opencontent) is a long-time advocate for OER and the use of open content in education. He consistently blogs and tweets very relevant resources and information for this group.

I am a great fan of David Wiley. I follow his blog in my feed to make sure I get all his posts. He recently posted a great article about how MOOCs have hurt the open movement, rather than helped it since MOOCs are not using the word 'open' to refer to the same thing - one is open registration/participation versus open content. http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/3557

@mbishon Marvelous article with one theme summed up in one of his sentences..."Their modus operandi has been to copy and paste the 1969 idea of open entry into online courses in 2014. " I have taken lots of MOOCs and they truly vary in quality. The best MOOC I every took was etMOOC that did exactly what David says open education should be--to revise, remix, and redistribute materials available for reuse, thereby adding value.

Want to let people share and use your photographs, but not allow companies to sell them? Looking for access to course materials from the world's top universities? Want to encourage readers to re-publish your blog posts, as long as they give you credit? Looking for songs that you can use and remix, royalty-free?

El último módulo de este curso "OpenKnowledge Changing the Global Course of Learning" se centra en el pasado y futuro del Conocimiento Abierto. Desde aquí, he querido compartir las reflexiones de Francesco Tonucci hacia la escuela del futuro, donde, entre sus puntos importantes, evita también el uso de libros de texto y aulas cerradas y propone una escuela democrática, participativa y colaborativa, con aprendizaje por descubrimiento y pensamiento crítico capaz de formar a personas felices. Promueve un aprendizaje basado en proyectos no centrados en libros de textos estancos, sino construyendo el material o buscándolo entre los recursos que hoy día tenemos disponible. En una concepción de escuela como la de Tonucci, precisamente que la información pueda ser de acceso libre para todos permite reforzar la idea de una escuela nueva formando a personas felices y competentes.

"It is an irony of the digital age that at a time when we are used to having easy access to seemingly endless information and knowledge, so much of it is disappearing into a digital black hole. For 450 years the concept of legal deposit has helped to preserve the nation's intellectual record.| There is this aspect of disappearing data as well.

See my bookmark post 'Academic citation practices ...' for some geeky stuff on the reference / citation issues.

Jacynthe, you are welcome, and Phillip, many thanks!