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"Those of us in the industry get this. But now our learners are getting it, too. We're living in a world where people have figured out that if they don't know how to do something they don't have to wait 2 months and pay to take a day-long class. They are identifying their own learning needs and choosing from available options the ones they feel best suit their own situations. Not only can they do it, they are starting to expect it. And they are doing it for each other. Go look at YouTube, or Snapguide, or product discussion forums, or any number of other sites where individuals are creating and posting help just for the purpose of sharing it with others."

"As these online course products have improved, more and more schools have plugged them into their curricula. The result is a creeping homogenization of basic classes throughout many U.S. universities. That's raising some uncomfortable questions, starting with: Why should I pick one school over another if they offer the exact same classes? And: Why are universities buying ready-made frozen meals instead of cooking up their own educational fare?"

"It gives me great pleasure to announce that OER Research Hub is now ready to release the first of its dissemination reports. The 'OER Evidence Report 2013-2014′ brings together a range of evidence around the research hypotheses of the product and provides an overview of the impact OER is having on a range of teaching and learning practices."

"In January, we featured series of short animations from BBC Radio 4 addressing the question "How Did Everything Begin?" In February, we featured its follow-up on an equally eternal question, "What Makes Us Human?" Both came scripted by Philosophy Bites co-creator Nigel Warburton and narrated by X-Files co-star Gillian Anderson (in full British mode). Now that March has come, so has the next installment of these brief, crisp, curiosity-fueled productions: "Has Technology Changed Us?""

""My entire critique of higher education started with curricular reform at Penn," he says. "General education is nonexistent. It's effectively a buffet, and when you have a noncurated academic experience, you effectively don't get educated. You get a random collection of information. Liberal-arts education is about developing the intellectual capacity of the individual, and learning to be a productive member of society. And you cannot do that without a curriculum.""

Chrystal chose to come down on the side of internal development. "We want to do in-house instructional design with our curriculum people, our professors and our production people. We really feel then that we can make quick changes the way we want them. If something doesn't work, we can make the change right now. We don't have to be in line with the four other clients that the company has."

"The company announced that, for the first time, it generated more revenue from digital products than print. This seemed to go relatively unnoticed by most, likely because we all took the evolution for granted, but it is a key milestone in the ongoing reinvention of learning content for Higher Education."

"Affordable content is a choice. It's a choice that many students have made in recent years as they've sought alternatives to higher-priced textbook and courseware products. But it is also a choice for faculty, and informing and persuading instructors to make this choice remains a major obstacle to ensuring that affordable content is adopted widely in Higher Education."

"Diamandis believes that solar energy will soon satisfy the demands of the entire planet and replace the market for fossil fuels. This will mean fewer wars and cleaner air. Systems for converting atmospheric humidity into clean drinking water will become cheap and ubiquitous. The industrial meat industry will also vanish, replaced by tastier and healthier laboratory-grown products with no environmental downsides. He also predicts that exponential increases in the power of AI would soon render teachers and universities superfluous. The best education in the world will become freely available to anyone."

"Companies are in constant pursuit of building simple and usable products. More features, new technologies, and advanced capabilities but still in a lightweight and simple to use format. More often than not, making it simple is the hardest thing there can be."

"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."

"However, it is individual faculty, not CAOs and CIOs, who make the decisions about course materials - and by extension, the use of OER materials in their classes.   And there is evidence that faculty are far less enthusiastic about OER than CAOs and CIOs. Drawing again from the 2018 Campus Computing Survey, just two-fifths (38 percent) of CIOs report that faculty at their institution "believe that the quality of OER course materials is about the same as comparable commercial products.""

"Narrative podcasts are story-driven audio recordings. As opposed to more traditional interview-style podcasts, where a single person or group is interviewed, narrative podcasts splice together a number of interviews, recordings, and sounds to present a more complete listening experience. They tend to lean more heavily on production effects, such as the use of music and sound effects, as well as narrative storytelling techniques such as multiple characters, scene setting, backstory, hooks, framing devices, and cliffhangers. Narrative podcasts can be either fictional or non-fictional, but at their core both teach learners by presenting concepts as an immersive experience, allowing listeners to become a part of what they are learning."

"Costing less than 10 cents to manufacture, the company envisions the device being embedded into products as they move around the supply chain. The computer's sensing, processing, and communicating capabilities mean it could effectively turn every item in the supply chain into an Internet of Things device, producing highly granular supply chain data that could streamline business operations. But more importantly, the computer could be a critical element of IBM's efforts to apply blockchain technology to the supply chain."

"Truth is that they're not the sole culprit. Consumerism as a whole is evolving and many businesses are not upgrading or updating value propositions, processes or products. Beyond Millennials, Centennials or any age demographic for that matter, the consumer every brand needs to pay attention to the group I call "Generation-C." This ever-growing group of connected consumers interacts with brands differently and has a rising expectation for on-demand assistance. As Google puts it, these highly-connected, mobile-first consumers are giving rise to "the age of assistance.""

"Ambi is reinventing how learning takes place in higher education by putting students at the center of the experience: a Learner Engagement Platform designed for the student first, creating a more engaged, involved, and immersive learning experience for everyone. Ambi is the product of three years of research and more than eighteen months of development to build a Learner Engagement Platform where learning takes place without limits. The interface is as familiar as the social networks students use on a day-to-day basis, but with a tight integration to the course materials and features from Learning Management Systems like Canvas from Instructure, and Blackboard."

"Knewton's pivot in 2018 toward tools that combine adaptive-learning technology with open educational resources was a big part of the attraction for Wiley. With its Alta digital-courseware platform, Knewton is primarily an OER company now, Wiley's president and chief executive, Brian Napack, told The Chronicle. The product costs students about $40 per course. Wiley wants to "double down" on low-cost options, Napack said. "We're doing this because we think the future needs to look different than the past.""

"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."

"Given our current, collective limitations, what are we to do? Instead of searching out alternative platforms, we might partner with LMSs to reconceptualize the LMS as a platform. In many ways, the LMS is already beginning to evolve in this direction. Canvas has their App Store, which is a more individual faculty-driven model. John Baker of D2L recently utilized the oft-referenced Lego analogy. LMSs in general are moving away from individual building blocks or custom integrations towards open standards like LTI, but the robustness of that interoperability is still inconsistent across what version of LTI their product meets."

"Zapps are apps that you can use within the Zoom platform to help improve productivity and create more engaging experiences. No more switching between multiple applications on your desktop. Now you can quickly navigate to apps within the Zoom interface to streamline permissions, grant document accessibility, and collaborate on screen."