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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.

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.

MIT today announced the launch of an online learning initiative internally called "MITx." MITx will offer a portfolio of MIT courses through an online interactive learning platform that will: organize and present course material to enable students to learn at their own pace feature interactivity, online laboratories and student-to-student communication allow for the individual assessment of any student's work and allow students who demonstrate their mastery of subjects to earn a certificate of completion awarded by MITx operate on an open-source, scalable software infrastructure in order to make it continuously improving and readily available to other educational institutions. MIT will make the MITx open learning software available free of cost, so that others - whether other universities or different educational institutions, such as K-12 school systems - can leverage the same software for their online education offerings, ...MITx online learning tools to be freely available All of the teaching on the platform will be free of charge. Those who have the ability and motivation to demonstrate mastery of content can receive a credential for a modest fee...If credentials are awarded, will they be awarded by MIT? As online learning and assessment evolve and improve, online learners who demonstrate mastery of subjects could earn a certificate of completion, but any such credential would not be issued under the name MIT. Rather, MIT plans to create a not-for-profit body within the Institute that will offer certification for online learners of MIT coursework. That body will carry a distinct name to avoid confusion"

Asking questions of the professors The course will offer a forum in which you can pose your questions directly to the instructors. You can also see the questions of other students in this class and vote on them. The instructors will answer the top-voted questions. So for your question to make it to the top of the list, you will have to ask a question that appeals to many other students. Discussions There will also be a general discussion forum, in which you can discuss questions and interact with other students. You are not allowed to post solutions to active homework assignment and exams here, but you are allowed to discuss the material covered in class; and you can of course pose questions. Once the answers to a homework assignment have been posted you are free to discuss them, as well as sharing any code you may have written. Video Lessons Video lectures are the primary method for communicating content in this class. They are posted weekly, and are composed of many small chunks of 1 to 15 minutes in length. Professors Thrun and Norvig will cover key concepts of AI in these lectures. Lectures will be posted weekly for each topic, and you can view lectures at your own pace once they have been posted until the end of the course. Quizzes There will be online quizzes as well, which enable you to demonstrate your knowledge of the AI topics you just learned about. If you get a question wrong, no problem. Quizzes don't count towards your score. But you may find that you will be asked to watch specific videos that discuss certain mistakes you may have made. Homework assignments These are just like quizzes, but now your submission counts towards the score. Homework assignments will be available all week, and you must complete all the questions during the week they are available; otherwise they count for 0. We plan for a total of 8 homework assignments, of which your two lowest scores will not be counted towards your score. The remaining 6 assignments taken together

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.

"The market for "continuing education" is potentially much larger than undergraduate. After those four years of college, there are a lot more years in a rapidly-changing workplace. Maybe that's where the real money lies? Could providing the on-going, lifelong learning be the place where some of the costs for the face-to-face undergraduate education are carried? Maybe the content gets paid for by the lifelong learners, and the undergrads get it at reduced cost? Recall what John Daniel said about the US Open University - it failed because it went after undergraduate first, not graduate."