Group items tagged

"With OpenNow, Cengage is sending its clearest signal yet that it is serious about OER. Taking OER materials freely available online from sites such as OpenStax, Cengage has added its own assessments, content and technology to the materials, which will be delivered through an "intuitive, outcomes-based" platform that can be integrated into students' learning management systems. Focusing on general education, OpenNow has launched with courses in psychology, American government and sociology, and more courses in science, economics and the humanities will be available this fall."

"The Center for Educational Measurement (CEM) at Excelsior College and Cengage Learning recently partnered to begin planning and development of a product called a CourXam, which combines a self-paced digital course with a proctored, college-credit-bearing examination and is powered by Learning Objects, a subsidiary of Cengage Learning. Unlike a college course, CourXams will be available directly to consumers."

"McGraw-Hill and Cengage plan to merge in a deal that would create the second-largest provider of college textbooks and other higher-education materials in the country."

"Publishers claim that new technologies, like digital textbooks and Netflix-style subscription services, make textbooks more affordable for all. But affordability advocates say that if anyone is to blame for the fact that textbook costs have risen more than 1,000 percent since the 1970s, it's the publishers - and, advocates claim, these new technologies are publishers' attempt to maintain their stranglehold on the industry while disguising it as reform."

"If one studies the interest publishers have shown in the OPM market, one sees the desire for them to create this revenue envelope by being the one-stop shop for aggregating everything their customers need: from content, to technology to program design and marketing. Even thought McGraw's next CEO, Cengage's Michael Hansen, declared recently that the company would stay away from "the business of recruiting students to schools," I would be shocked if the new McGraw Hill were not in some way equipping schools to build their own OPM capability - much the way John Katzman's Noodle is set up."