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I say it's about time. A family member of mine studied on the East Coast USA and tuition was impossible. While I can't speak extensively for American schools, I can say that post-secondary education at established universities in Canada is expensive and the financial burden becomes a stressor, often effecting academic performance. It is accessible, yes. National and provincial student loans make it possible for almost anyone to obtain a post-secondary education. But does it make sense? Definitely not. The debt incurred by students is mortifying. What about a European model? Many schools around the globe offer free post-secondary educations. I recently visited New Mexico, where if you stay within the state after high school graduation you enter a lottery to go to university for free. Every entree into the lottery is awarded sufficient funds to make a post-secondary career in the state of New Mexico feasible. My question about this article is about how "low income" is determined. There are a lot of factors that can play into one's financial needs that sometimes aren't on paper.

George Siemens, President of the Society for Learning Analytics Research, takes a more jaundiced view of MOOCS. While acknowledging the benefits he points out some of the more negative impacts, particularly focusing on the concept of 'opennesss'

This is an excellent article which explains how Sugata Mitra's teaching models helped to transform a failing school in Mexico. It's a story which completely changed my attitude to learning and education and inspired me to discover as much as possible about cloud-based and student-centred learning.

Thanks for posting. I have heard of similar ideas from my girlfriend who works with learning disabled people, helping them make goals and follow through with them. The way the criticized traditional 'top down' eduction system is set-up, learning disabled people end up with the impression that they are failures and burdens. This goes beyond learning disabled people though, anyone who finds no inspiration for math, English and the sciences is bound to under perform at school, fail at the competitive aspect of it and get told their failures as a result, implicitly or explicitly. I also found that at design school when I realized that math and English were important for the projects I was working on I started to learn effectively and enjoy doing so. This is after failing my secondary education (pre university in New Zealand). You say this changed your attitude towards cloud learning, have you done much else as a result?

I've been employing Mr Google to try to help me determine how much OER might be used in post-secondary institutions in Canada and came across this document, which I think might be a slide deck turned into a PDF and without the accompanying script it's a little cryptic. The title is misleading, as it's the view from Western Canada, BC in particular. Most of the main OER initiatives I've been hearing about are in the west, I posted links to the BC Open Textbook initiative and to a particular text previously. This particular document