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Washington, DC-based Gilfus Education Group has released its annual list of the top five trends in education innovation for 2012, which included three focused on higher education technologies: Prestigious institutions will launch online experiences designed to be as unique as those available to students on campus: "Dynamic and flexible learning experience engines" will emerge to replace learning management systems (LMS); and Tablets will surge as a means of delivering courses and e-learning media.

This week, Jamie Merisotis, president and CEO of the Lumina Foundation for Education, released a statement offering ideas for a national strategy to rapidly train workers for new jobs; among these, prior learning assessment (PLA) was cited as one possible game-changer. But beyond CLEP and the controversial challenge exam, how can enrollment managers and academic leaders assess prior learning effectively and with rigor? We asked Denise Hart, director of adult education and creator of the Success Program at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and author of a landmark study of prior learning assessment portfolios, for techniques that institutions should be thinking about.

The way to think about the iPhone in relation to higher ed is less as a single product but a new product category. This category, which includes Android/Google and maybe eventually the Windows 8 phones, equals smart phone plus an app ecosystem. The carriers (Verizon, Sprint, AT&T etc.) remain a critical (as they own the cellular network), but annoying component of this ecosystem. Annoying because their voice/data pricing plans are only getting more expensive, restrictive and confusing as the hardware and software on smartphones improves exponentially each year. Any impact that the iPhone and its cousins achieve in higher ed will be in spite of, rather than because, the big cellular companies that we all must endure. Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/6-ways-iphone-changed-higher-ed#ixzz1zZpsm081 Inside Higher Ed

After seeing low success and persistence rates in introductory STEM classes, UMBC began using unconventional teaching approaches to help students with the transition to rigorous college courses; in at least one area of study, the approach worked: the number of students failing chemistry has been cut in half and the number of chemistry majors has doubled since the changes.

Open-source textbooks, long considered a promising way to cut costs but still not widely used, could become more readily available and easily vetted as a University of Minnesota project expands. Minnesota launched an online catalog of open-source books last month and will pay its professors $500 each time they post an evaluation of one of those books. (Faculty members elsewhere are welcome to post their own reviews, but they won't be compensated.) Minnesota professors who have already adopted open-source texts will also receive $500, with all of the money coming from donor funds.

A good picture of the changing landscape of "accommodations."

More food for thought on discussion and community.

A collection of video tutorials from the Indiana University School of Education.

As universities transition to a mobile-friendly campus, more and more IT departments are considering the benefits of open source technology. Cost is definitely a factor, but schools are just as attracted to the flexibility that open source gives them.

With its recently debuted project "Toda la UNAM en Línea" (All of UNAM Online), the university will go beyond providing lecture notes and classroom handouts by giving users digital access to libraries, special collections, conferences, and the research of students and professors.