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The course management system (CMS) reinforces the status quo and hinders substantial teaching and learning innovation in higher education. It does so by imposing artificial time limits on learner access to course content and other learners, privileging the role of the instructor at the expense of the learner, and limiting the power of the network effect in the learning process. The open learning network (OLN)-a hybrid of the CMS and the personal learning environment (PLE)-is proposed as an alternative learning technology environment with the potential to leverage the affordances of the Web to dramatically improve learning.

"A complete list of free online courses offered by Stanford, Coursera, MIT and Harvard led edX (MITx + Harvardx + BerkeleyX), and Udacity"

"A complete list of free online courses offered by Stanford, Coursera, MIT and Harvard led edX (MITx + Harvardx + BerkeleyX), and Udacity "

"Last month in a blog post titled "Better Than a Textbook?", I noted that some faculty find it easier to think about the massive open online courses (MOOCs) provided by vendors like Coursera as "super-textbooks" than as actual courses. Earlier this month, Vanderbilt computer science professor Doug Fisher wrote a guest post for the blog ProfHacker titled "Warming up to MOOCs," in which he described his experiments in using MOOCs in this fashion."

"Current students who take the free online college courses can earn certificates of completion, but not college credit. However, if MOOCs are determined to be close enough to traditional college courses as to become eligible for academic credit, they could make higher education more affordable and accessible, Ms. Lewin writes."

"Amid the various influences that massive open online courses have had on higher education in their short life so far -- the topic of a daylong conference here Monday -- this may be among the more unexpected: The courses may be prompting some faculty to pay more attention to their teaching styles than they ever have before."

The prices of traditional textbooks continue to increase, further driving up the cost of Higher Education. CTE's goal is to help save OU students money while delivering highly engaging and pedagogically sound course materials. There are a number of options to supplement or replace high cost textbooks such as free online resources, lower-cost digital books and course packets and downloadable open-access textbooks.

All OMS CS course content will be delivered via the massive open online course (MOOC) format, with enhanced support services for students enrolled in the degree program. Those students also will pay a fraction of the cost of traditional on-campus master's programs; total tuition for the program is initially expected to be below $7,000. A pilot program, partly supported by a generous gift from AT&T, will begin in the next academic year. Initial enrollment will be limited to a few hundred students recruited from AT&T and Georgia Tech corporate affiliates.

Of course the current big buzz in the LMS arena is analytics: over the past few years each and all of the LMS providers, on their own or in partnership with other firms, have announced an analytics strategy and analytic applications that allow faculty, departments, and institutions to leverage student transactional data extracted from the LMS for analytic purposes intended to aid student academic performance, course completion, student retention, and learning outcomes.

"As the demand for online education continues to increase, institutions are faced with developing process models for efficient, high-quality online course development. This paper describes a systems, team-based, approach that centers on an online instructional design theory (Active Mastery Learning) implemented at Colorado State University-Global Campus. CSU-Global Campus is a newly-created online campus within the Colorado State University System, and launches in Fall 2008 with fully-online undergraduate degree completion programs and Master's degrees."

My admission wasn't because of a bad episode. And it wasn't that I was experiencing my first taste of burnout (that would come later). Rather, my discomfort with teaching stemmed from the broad experience I was gaining in the classroom. My Midwestern state university required teaching assistants to lead four 50-minute tutorials each week for a large introductory course. I had four semesters of that behind me, and two small courses that I taught on my own during summers.

IN LITTLE MORE THAN A YEAR, discussion of the role of online learning in higher education has undergone a qualitative shift. With the launch of for-profit educational start-ups such as Coursera, Udacity, and the MIT and Harvard-founded nonprofit platform edX, Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have moved from obscure experiment to major initiative. MOOCs are online classes, generally composed of short lectures, that allow for open, often free enrollments (thousands can easily enroll in a single course), assessing students through periodic quizzes and discussion forums.

"Georgia Tech's Tucker Balch, an associate professor at the School of Interactive Computing, released the following information based on the survey of students who took part in his recent Coursera class, "Computational Investing." Of the 2,535 students who completed the course (or 4.8 percent of those enrolled), 34 percent were from the United States and 27 percent came from non-OECD countries. The average age of participants was 35 (ranging from 17 to 74). Seventy percent were white. Ninety-two percent were male. And more than 50 percent of the students already had a master's degree or a PhD. Clearly, this is hardly the "typical" undergraduate population (although it's worth noting that "Computational Investing" isn't really a "typical" or introductory class). Nonetheless, these figures do raise questions about who exactly is being served by today's MOOCs: Is it "learners" from around the world? Or, for lack of a better word, is it "knowers" from the U.S.?"

"But how completely can online courses reproduce the college experience? Lexington writer and entrepreneur Jonathan Haber wanted to find out. This January, he set out to earn a "one-year MOOC BA." He is trying to cram about 32 courses, all free, into 2013-with enough breadth and depth to fulfill the distribution requirements for a bachelor's degree in philosophy. Already finished with his "freshman year," Haber has completed or is currently taking about a dozen classes."

The Academy offers a wide variety of STEMx topics offered as online workshops, mini-courses, or "massively open online courses" (MOOC's) that are fun, practical, and engaging. Topics include "Helping students solve community challenges through app design" (offered by AppsforGood.org), "Game Design for Learning" (offered by LearningGamesNetwork.org), "Using Remote Science Labs" (offered by Northwestern University) and more. Educators earn recognition from the host institution and from the HP Catalyst Academy by collecting electronic badges.

Massive Online Open Course (MOOC): an online course or content aiming at large-scale interactive participation and open access. Open Educational Resources (OER): freely accessible, usually openly licensed documents and media that are useful for teaching, learning, educational, assessment and research purposes. ($): Requires some financial investment

A collection of high quality, free-to-use courses that you can download and use for teaching. All content is stored in Google docs making it easy to access, browse and download.

" Instructors will offer a "special 'flipped' version of an electrical engineering course ... where students watch online lectures from Harvard and MIT at home." So the good is the flipped part because it's more interactive and dynamic and there's less lecture-based didacticism in the classroom due to watching videos at home? Really? The 1970s just called: they want their Open University courses back. This model perhaps moves the Cal State system forward as it offers more accessibility to content for working adults in a hybrid format. I wish they would just step away from the MOOC terminology, which is, let's be honest, copying and lending out a videotape in another name."

The recently announced partnership with the University of Edinburgh presented the team with an opportunity to engage and experiment with the much-publicised MOOC format, and foreground issues related to the theory and practice of online education itself. What follows are some of our perspectives on the planning and development of a large scale open course, what challenges the MOOC presents for delivering a worthwhile educational experience, and what questions this type of course format provokes for a team already teaching and researching in the field of e-learning and technology in higher education.

"The boring university lecture is going to be the first major casualty of the rise in online learning in higher education, says Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. The custodian of the world's biggest online encyclopaedia says that unless universities respond to the rising tide of online courses new major players will emerge to displace them, in the way that Microsoft arrived from nowhere alongside the personal computer. "I think that the impact is going to be massive and transformative," says Mr Wales, describing the importance of the MOOCs (massive open online courses) that have signed up millions of students."

The Open Learning Initiative offers online courses to anyone who wants to learn or teach. Our aim is to combine open, high-quality courses, continuous feedback, and research to improve learning and transform higher education.