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MOOC have burst into the sphere of education in an accelerated way. Firstly, the main US universities, and later many others -among them, some Spanish ones- have been developing courses under this format through various platforms on the Internet. Since MOOC are still at an early stage of development...

Thank you Susan. Interesante!

In everyday life we are learning continually from each other. Whatever the situation, most of us draw on the knowledge, skills and experience of our friends and colleagues. Within any educational setting learners naturally engage in informal peer learning to make sense of their course, test their ideas and share their concerns.

Peer learning is engaging, and researches say that people learns most effectively when they are interacting with each other. It creates this network of knowledge when you share and connect with people, it not only benefits the individual, but benefits everyone as a whole. It also relieves the pressure of University funding with teachers having to teach such a large class, which affects the quality of learning as well. With peer learning, students engage with one another, and will eventually find the correct answer. It is not independent learning, this is interdependent learning.

Thank you for your share. I think this is a great article that introduces the potential of peer learning in higher education from the teacher's perspective. I agree that connected learning does a great job in promoting student's interactivity, creativity, motivation and interest in learning a particular topic with peers. In addition, peer learning provides learners with opportunities to collaborate and learn a subject together, which might maximize the productivity if used in a correct way. Peers and collaborative learners can do their own research separately, and meet together to discuss and express different opinions on the issue, which can inspire student's deep thinking. However, peer learning and collaborative learning is not always superior to individual work, or contributing to the learning result of every individual. Sometimes it might decrease the learning productivity if the group members or peer partners over reply on others in the group without doing much themselves, or if they didn't communicate well. Thus it's important to practice students learning ability and teacher's facilitating ability in peer learning or collaborative learning.

This is really a good initiative. One can only wish that African states finally realize that internet access is no longer a privilege but a right because without it such brilliant initiatives do not spread to all corners of the developing world.

I like the "equalization" word, even if it seems to make it too simple, but it is also making it sound possible

Three things guide everything we do: openness, community and peer learning. Interesting website.

This report addresses four main questions: * How can sustainable cost/benefit models for OER initiatives be developed? * What are the intellectual property rights issues linked to OER initiatives? * What are the incentives and barriers for universities and faculty staff to deliver their materials to OER initiatives? * How can access and usefulness for the users of OER initiatives be improved? This is part of an OECD series of reports looking at the impact of Open Knowledge on education systems and learning

Hi Matt, Thanks for sharing this OECD report from the year 2007. The OECD is really forward looking. One sentence strikes me: "Wikipedia has two employees and well over a million articles in multiple languages." Yes, that was true, back in the year 2007.

A very interesting paper that discusses issues around OER, as well as some topics already covered in the course is, "Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources" (Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). The paper highlights some of the barriers, sustainability issues, and how to improve access and usefulness of open educational resources. I found the paper very comprehensive, with many additional resources. While published in 2007, when conversations around OER were fairly new, many of the points they raise are still in discussion and relevant.

We - students, graduate students and professors from different universities of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, CIS and non-CIS countries. We believe that the essence of higher education is not in memorizing 30-40 books on the list of disciplines. A good engineer - not the one who knows by heart the formulas, theorems and methods, and the one who knows the ways of solving problems and approaches to the study of various problems.

University open access publisher turns 10!

"People giving a foreign 'face' to a cause are standing between us. Media who pretend to write stories about groups whose voices are never heard but write almost universally through the lens of western men instead, are ensuring that all interpretations and solutions come from the same small segment of society. Wars are told from the point of view of arms dealers and politicians, disasters are interpreted by NGO's, most issues are never covered at all. Official channels decide what will or will not be revealed and media are rewarded for their obedience by access to more official information. New media in its current form has made this worse instead of better. Journalists write about those powerful in social media to have their stories amplified by the same people. The news - celebrity symbiosis has only escalated as writers vie for page views. We are at risk of having increasingly narrow news coverage as platforms like Twitter move to increase amplification of already powerful accounts and hide the less powerful opinions from view."

The co-founder of Coursera on digital revolution and online education. The results can be better than traditional lecture-model in the classroom. Better results means more students passing with results above average. And "It turns out, maybe not surprisingly, that students like getting the best content from the best universities for free". ;)