University wants scientists to make their research open access and resign from publications that keep articles behind paywalls... Could this action catch on? What would it mean for editorial boards and review panels? 
Martin Weller reflects on his decision to become a blogger (way back in 2006) and its potenitial to connect to 'timely intelligent debate'. From the comments posted Martin's article seems to have struck a chord with other academic bloggers, internationaly. 
LearningToday shares two beautiful posters, that help us remember Bloom’s Taxonomy: the Blooming Butterfly and the Blooming Orange. Then it asks how do we connect the Bloom’s Taxonomy with the iPad? 
An interesting overview of some of the options for learners (and possibly employers?) who don't want to pay for a university education but want accredited skills at this level. Its just the start of this particular debate. Where might it lead? 
Ian Skerrett notes that on occasion, people working on open source projects will lament how a lot of organizations are using the output of the open source project but not contributing back.
He makes the point that these are now many open source users. This what open source and OER wants to happen - a sign of health and doing something that meets a need. But he also makes the point (I'm sure you will have thought about it too) that open source and OER are not just about community but also about 'giving back'. This will protect long term usage. So ... open source and OER need users (lots) and also contributors (many) to have a long term. These may not be the same people. Is your OER initiative looking to recruits both types? If you use OER what type are you?
http://bit.ly/zgScGH is a link to a survey based on the Sherrett question. Its about open source but it is worth pondering one of the questions which asks whether you don't contribute because 'we have a policy that we do not contribute back'. To what extent does this happen for OER? I do hear of examples but don't hear how many. 
Text mining promises huge economic and research benefit, but copyright law and other barriers are limiting its use, says JISC report A new JISC report shows that text mining - a complex and innovative method of searching and analysing data - has huge potential benefits for the UK economy and knowledge base, but its use is being held back by copyright law and other barriers. Read the report http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/reports/2012/value-and-benefits-of-text-mining.aspx 
A plethora of Rubrics for Assessment from the University of Winconsin's Polytechnic University covering: Cooperative Learning, Research Process/Report PowerPoint/Podcast, Oral Presentation, Web Page and ePortfolio, Math, Art, Science, Video and Multimedia Project , Creating Rubrics, Writing, Rubrics for Primary Grades... Great to see this stuff shared. - Scooped via Susan Bainbridge (see her http://www.scoop.it/t/the-21st-century site) 
Led by Professor Diana Laurillard, the LDSE project is building software to engage university teachers in the design of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) which is informed by pedagogic research and appropriate theories of teaching and learning. The software will also allow lecturers to build their professional knowledge collaboratively, through sharing their learning designs and contributing to the LDSE’s collection of reference material and resources. The project is part of the Technology-Enhanced Learning Research Programme (http://www.tel.ac.uk). Via Simon Thomson 
Well it might seem like showing off, but it is worth checking out iTunesU http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/ and considering whether this is simply (for the OU) the latest stage of its old University of the Air model. Perhaps now its University of the Net? Or is this really something different? Via Terese Bird 
Exeter University Student's Guild...presents its third year of Teaching Awards. Eight categories Best Lecturer Does this happen at your HEI? 
(2012). Undergraduate interns as staff developers: flowers in the desert. Innovations in Education and Teaching International: Vol. 49, Identities in Transition, pp. 7-17. 
Forty years since the first publication of Donald Bligh's classic work What's the Use of Lectures? National Teaching Fellow George MacDonald Ross revisits the question. From the last issue of Discourse to be published by the Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies. In 1971 in Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich predicted that learners of the future would find each other and use information technologies to form "learning webs" and "networks" - prescient terms, considering that the ARPAnet was only two years old at the time. Did we finally get there? h/t Matt Mobbs http://www.scoop.it/t/mjmobbs/p/1043136011/toward-peeragogy-dmlcentral Via AJCann |
Editorial about decision to shift ALT-J to open access: Going for gold: Research in Learning Technology makes the switch to a fully Open Access publishing model... (for Bill Brown as a local (UK) example to compare with the Harvard Big News. 
Small study but amongst interesting findings: 'Around a third of librarians are confident in using and promoting Creative Commons licences, but the majority are not.' Hm. Interesting stats on numbers of male students entering and being retained in HE. 
Research associate Jennifer Jones believes that open research paves the way for ordinary people to take control of mass communication and to free information flow from the constraints of the closed worlds of corporate media giants and publishing houses.
An interesting behind the scenes view of how she pulls open research into her life and teaching. Interesting quote 'If you're not on Google who are you?' (which she stresses she does not agree with, but its very quotable). 
The OERu anchor partners have shortlisted 8 university / college courses to be developed as prototypes to be offered in the 2nd half of 2012.
* College Composition (1st year-level course) * Regional relations in Asia and the Pacific (1st year-level course) * Critical Reasoning (2nd year-level course in Philosophy)Why Sustainable Practice (1st year-level course)
These courses will carry credit towards a Bachelor of General Studies - the inaugural credential selected at the OERu 2011.11 meeting of founding anchor partners. The OERu network will be able to formerly accredit OER learning in Africa, Asia, Oceania and North America.
The OER Foundation uses open source development approaches and we subscribe to radical transparency and open governance. We conduct all business openly. We release early and frequently. Via OLnet Team 
I used Jigidi to make the Jigsaw version of me in the H812 Intro slideshow so this defence of Fair Use caught my eye. 
This is an interesting take on Maslow to give some consideraton to. Perhaps Amazon could be at the Physiological end? 
Student as Producer at the University of Lincoln is an innovative teaching and learning strategy that engages undergraduate students in research and make research part of the teaching process. At its core is the principle of openness.
This is a radical initiative which has widespread support at University of Lincoln. Thinking of your own institution would this be welcomed or resisted? What reasons would be given? Digital Researcher 2012 - Identifying Knowledge workshop: recording of. Makes for interesting viewing with some thought-provoking stats. Do you think of yourself as a Digital Researcher and how has that changed how, where, why and what you research?
This link may work better than heading link ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyG3yYbswfw 
Something to think about for evaulation - using Google Plus for Student Feedback. Experiences from the University of Leicester. 
Interesting to see student take on Institutional Teaching and Learning Review @ Warwick University. SU Education Officer Sean Ruston while optimistic about the review expressed concern that in some cases the recommendations may reflect staff priorities rather than student priorities. Pointing out that: “Some departments have still not adapted to the changes that will take place in terms of rising student expectations in the quality of teaching and learning due to the planned fees rise.” 
iversity Open Courses make open educational resources and public domain content interactive, collaborative and social. Interesting new kid on the block (well new to me). About iversity (in case you wondered): <paste> its an interdisciplinary and international team of 20 young graduates (iversity.org/pages/team). Members of the team have studied at universities such as Cambridge, Columbia, Duke, Humboldt, Princeton, the Sorbonne, the Freie Universität Berlin and the National University of Singapore. Together they want to build a learning infrastructure for the digital age. Following an EXIST-Founder Scholarship from the German Federal Ministry of Science and Technology, iversity received more than 1 million Euros in funding from the BFB Frühphasenfonds Brandenburg (EU 75% / Brandenburg 25%) and bmp media investors in July 2011. </paste> Via Andreas Link |
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Bill, its an interesting question about fragmentation. In the physical world of publishing having things spread over many different locations is a problem. In the online world where it is easy to discover and slip between information source (but not always easy to read beyond the abstract) some researchers are pushing for open access because there is better dissemination of the research. I don't (personally) think that this is only about cost, although there is a real push in the US (particularly) towards arguing that research that is paid for through public funds should be public, and not only published in forms which require subscription. I will look out information on the open access shift of ALT-J to show you what can happen with open access dissemination. Quite surprising.
I'm surprised that there is anything that harvard cannot afford, they are the best endowed university on the planet, are they not? I have been reading lately that companies such as Elsevier are charging exorbitant sums for journals, but it would be bad news for students and researchers if a revolt led by customers for these journals resulted in a fragmentation of sources from which one would source information.