Group items tagged

"This paper describes the implementation of a quantitative cost effectiveness analyzer for Web-supported academic instruction that was developed in Tel Aviv University during a long term study. The paper presents the cost effectiveness analysis of Tel Aviv University campus. Cost and benefit of 3,453 courses were analyzed, exemplifying campus-wide analysis. These courses represent large-scale Web-supported academic instruction processes throughout the campus. The findings were described, referring to students, instructors and university from both the economical and educational perspectives. The cost effectiveness values resulting from the calculations were summarized in four "coins" (efficiency coins=$; quality coins; affective coins; and knowledge management coins) for each of the three actors (students, instructors and university). In order to examine the distribution of those values throughout the campus assessment scales were created on the basis of descriptive statistics. The described analyzer can be implemented in other institutions very easily and almost automatically. This enables us to quantify the costs and benefits of Web-supported instruction on both the single-course and the campus-wide levels. "

Adelaide science faculty gives all 1st year students an iPad and only uses electronic text books.  Have redesigned the curriculum  and getting very positive results. Book costs for students have dropped to 60% of what they were and the uni is looking to move entirely to free online resources.

"Recently the Ministry MLE roadshow visited Tauranga and I had some calls from local teachers who attended asking about the hidden cost of running Moodle in a school as it was indicated that running Moodle could be more expensive than one of the commercial vendors (eg Knowledgenet or Ultranet). I decided to sit down and work out ..."

Wiley shows how astronomical the cost of online textbooks is.

Crotchety article challenging advocates of open publishing, about the cost of storing, managing and distributing digital goods, Annoying tone, but some useful points to consider. "Even beyond just their power requirements, digital goods have particular traits that make them difficult to store effectively, challenging to distribute well, and much more effective when handled by paid professionals."

ALTC resource on using multimedia for learning.

The cost of higher education and why cheap shots in facebook sendalongs should get you angry. A compelling post.

"That the acronym MOOCs rhymes with "nukes" seems apt. Massive open online courses, or MOOCs - led by two profit-making start-ups, Coursera and Udacity, founded by entrepreneurial Stanford professors - are a new disruptive force in education. "

"A report issued by the United States Government Accountability Office on June 6th confirms a trend of the educational publishing industry: textbook costs to students at higher education institutions are rising 6% per year on average, and have risen 82% over the last decade. The study, ordered by Congress, looks at the efforts of publishers and colleges to increase the availability of textbook price information and "unbundled" buying options as required under provisions in the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (HEOA"

"The internet lets us share perfect copies of our work with a worldwide audience at virtually no cost. We take advantage of this revolutionary opportunity when we make our work "open access": digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. In this talk, Peter Suber - Director of the Harvard Open Access Project - shares insights from his new concise introduction to open access - what open access is and isn't, how it benefits authors and readers of research, how we pay for it, how it avoids copyright problems, how it has moved from the periphery to the mainstream, and what its future may hold. This event includes questions and responses from Stuart Shieber (School of Engineering and Applied Sciences), Robert Darnton (Harvard University Library), June Casey (Harvard Law School Library), David Weinberger (Berkman Center / Harvard Library Innovation Lab) and more."

Harvard Library cannot afford to subscribe to scholarly journals which have increased in cost to $3.75m, They recommend staff use open access journals.

"...a new breakthrough update means that not only is its physical footprint massively reduced, but also its cost. Depending on the amount of storage space required for files, for less than $50 anyone can now run a PirateBox wireless file-sharing system."

Account of a copyright agreement between 2 Canadian Unis and a licensing agency which increases the cost per student 8-fold and breaks ranks with other Canadian unis.  Troubling developments.

Free and/or low-cost courses from an OER style of institution - mostly

UK moving to an uncapped regime. This analysis suggests that huge pressure will descend on the lower echelons of HE. At what cost?

"OpenStax College offers students free textbooks that meet scope and sequence requirements for most courses. These are peer-reviewed texts written by professional content developers. Adopt a book today for a turnkey classroom solution or modify it to suit your teaching approach. Free online and low-cost in print, OpenStax College books are built for today's student budgets."

"Still images, moving images and sound adviceJISC Digital Media exists to help the UK's FE and HE communities embrace and maximise the use of digital media - and to achieve solutions that are innovative, practical and cost effective."

5 technological (of 25) ways to reduce the cost of education. Maybe #18 is behind the VCs drive for a digital library? (PDFs saved in the WCELteam Zotero group).

"In the context of a growing emphasis on eLearning, most commonly facilitated by enterprise-scale Learning Management System and a range of institutionally managed and supported communication and collaboration software tools, and in an environment of increasing emphasis on intellectual property rights management and quality assurance, how do universities (and other educational institutions) respond to the use of free, open-access tools in common use by their students? What are the potential educational uses of such tools? What are the current practices of use of these tools within educational institutions? What are the issues, risks and hidden costs? What are the advantages and benefits?"