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"The study, "A Study of Four New Models and Their Implications for Bending the Higher Education Cost Curve," prepared by, rpkGROUP, a consulting firm, and funded by the Lumina Foundation, studied CBE programs at four institutions: the University of Wisconsin-Extension and Kentucky Community and Technical System (both public universities), Brandman University (a private nonprofit university) and Walden University (a private for-profit college).  It suggests colleges and universities could cut the cost of producing some of their degrees by as much as 50 percent with competency-based education (CBE)."

A video showing some people creating a scale model of the solar system on a lakebed in Nevada. Helps to illustrate the relative sizes of the planets, their distance from the sun and differences in speed to orbit the sun.

This is worth thinking about. What if we had an app where students could record their learning 'workouts' and it was social? Imagine a Brainbit similar to the Fitbit that reminded students to study for 15 minutes every hour or they could set their own goals and reply yes/no if they met the goal. They could then choose to share on FB or twitter, etc. Maybe there's a way to start thinking about the D2L Awards and the Mozilla backpack and start modeling something like this?

"Coffee courses are an easy way to learn new ideas for using technology in your teaching. Each coffee course will cover a new topic in education technology, teaching online, digital tools, pedagogy, or trends in technology. It is equivalent to a one- or two-hour face-to-face training session, but is done at your own pace from your own desk. Courses are offered regularly through the blog, and take place over one week. Each day while the course runs, a short activity or video will be posted to the blog for you to do. It should take about 15 - 20 minutes, just enough time to enjoy a cup of coffee (or tea, or whatever you prefer). For more information, please see this post about coffee courses. You can do any course at any time and all are welcome to participate. If you would like recognition on your employment record for completing the course, you can register for the session on HORUS prior to the course starting (available for ANU staff only)." From Wendy: I love the blog idea! Participants from their University can review each course and post a substantive comment to the blog in order to get the certificate. We could do this with workshop. It would help ensure faculty are really learning, since their posts would be public. Thoughts? Also note that all of their content is posted with a CC-BY license in case there's something we can use. It's also a model we can follow?

Harvard Universityand Duke University have revamped their general education models to make courses more interesting and meaningful to students and faculty, Colleen Flaherty reports for Inside Higher Ed. At both universities, leaders are concerned that students do not understand the point of general education, a problem also seen at other institutions nationwide.