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The Future is Open Courseware: Three Institutions Offering Online Learning Opportunities

Guest Blogger — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:51:11 +0000

As society becomes increasingly more tech savvy, more and more of the foundations of our lives are turning to the web. Our professional lives have been conduced online and plugged in for several years now and, with the advent of social media and social networking, so too are our personal and social lives. The latest trend today seems to be online learning and online education. While at one time online education and online degrees were frowned upon by most employers and scholars, more and more people are turning to online avenues for their educational and academic endeavors. Furthermore, as online degrees and online courses become more popular, online courseware that is free and readily available are becoming the next hot thing. The internet is all about immediate access to information for no cost—this is the crux of open courseware. Open courseware allows anyone with a computer and the internet access to endless knowledge and academic pursuit. These three open courseware resources are wonderful waves of what will be part of the future of education and academics.

MIT Open Courseware

As one of the most prominent names in higher education, MIT plays a major role in America’s opinion on higher education. That being said, MIT has made real wave on the front of open courseware and online learning. Offering up to 1,800 courses online and free to access, MIT is one of the absolute best resources for open courseware in the world. These courses come directly from the actual traditional courses taught at MIT, including syllabi, reading lists, course notes, assignments, and much more. Of course, because MIT is a technical school, most of the courses offered are of that nature. There is both video and audio that accompanies many of the courses, providing a learning environment that closely compares to being inside a class at MIT. MIT’s initiative to provide higher learning material to anyone who wants it is admirable and forward thinking.

Berkeley Open Courseware

UC Berkeley offers webcasts of several different classes offered on their campus. UC Berkeley is one of the top ranked public universities in the nation and boasts some of the most influential professors in their fields. Allowing anyone to watch various webcasts or listen to podcasts of their lectures, Berkeley’s open courseware initiative is one of the best. Each course that is offered provides printable assignments, notes that you can get from the professor’s website, and tests from the actual class. This is a wonderful resource for anyone looking to expand their mind or build on their educational repertoire.

Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative

Carnegie Mellon is another one of the biggest name universities in the nation offering open online learning resources. With Carnegie Mellon’s open learning initiative you can choose to either sign up as a user for free to keep track of your scores and progress or you can simply take a class unregistered. Though the school only offers a few courses online at this time, they are offered in a very useful and approachable way. Mellon offers classes such as Modern Biology, Media Programming, Statistics, French, and several others. These classes are easier to jump into than UC Berkeley’s or MIT’s simply because of the way they are presented. There is basically presented as an eBook, where you can jump from chapter to chapter at your own will.

Each of these open courseware initiatives are examples of how education can be accessible to anyone wishing to find it. These schools set a wonderful example by sharing their wealth of knowledge and resources and making learning and academia available to anyone who seeks it.

Jane Smith is a freelance writer and blogger. She writes about free background checks for Backgroundcheck.org. Questions and comments can be sent to: janesmth161 @ gmail.com.

The Future is Open Courseware: Three Institutions Offering Online Learning Opportunities is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog dedicated to the world of e-learning and new learning technologies.

An Open Book for Learners

Guest Blogger — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 08:34:25 +0000

Open education programmes are solving many of the problems faced by those who are considering embarking on a programme of study. A related problem often faced by students who do decide to study, and which may be particularly acute for distance-learners who do not have access to a university library, is the availability and expense of books. Although many open programmes supply the required study material, there is always room for supplementing learning through broader reading.

Students who are unable to buy or access library books are likely to look for resources, materials and information of all kinds which are now available online for free.

Some of this material is not legal, for instance, scanned copies of copyrighted books. However, there is a movement which is making available to students, researchers, teachers and the general public legitimate resources which are free of charge and often have very liberal copyright policies.

At the present time, when university libraries are facing dwindling budgets, they can scarcely afford to subscribe to the journals they need, particularly when the prices of those journals are rising at a rapid rate. Questions are being asked about the rationale of paying for such subscriptions when the research they contain is funded by public money.

The result of this is that educational institutions are embracing a publishing model called “Open Access” at a rapid rate. This either means that researchers deposit their papers in their institution’s online repositories, where they are often accessible to users around the world via search engines, or that they publish with open access publishers, who may or may not charge a publishing fee and who make the authors’ works freely available worldwide through their own websites and through bibliographic databases, indices and search engines.

Institutions which have signed up to the Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity, a statement of intent to make available resources in support of open access publishing, include Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Among the new signatories in 2010 are Duke University and CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research – otherwise known as the birthplace of the World Wide Web.

Open access publishing has spread far more quickly in the natural sciences than in the social or formal sciences, while open access humanities materials are comparatively limited in volume. Among the reasons for this are the manner of funding scientific research, the cost of scientific publications and the mode of working in scientific research, in which scientists benefit from citations and have great potential to gain value from collaboration. Additionally, there is greater urgency to publish findings quickly. A consensus is being reached that opening up access to scientific research findings will greatly benefit the global science system and speed up the process of solving problems pressing upon mankind such as disease and climate change.

It looks increasingly like publishing of all kinds of material is likely to change, not least because of the lower cost and ease of producing and distributing digital material. Academic publishers are experimenting with various models of distributing books for students, which include options to buy or rent electronic material at a substantially reduced cost compared to buying printed textbooks and journals. It is not yet clear which model is going to emerge as the clear leader, but it is certain that the publishing landscape will alter significantly, and among the end results will be lower costs or no cost to the end-user.

Open learning and open access are connected initiatives in a global movement to open up information for the benefit of all and to share knowledge of all kinds. Examples of initiatives promoting an open world culture are websites such as the World Digital Library, Europeana and Museums With No Frontiers, which aim to display for the enjoyment and enrichment of all the cultural treasures of our planet.

All of this has exciting implications for education, literally opening up a whole world of information to readers everywhere with access to the internet. The possibilities available for people who wish to educate themselves are simply staggering.

This guest post is contributed by Nataly Anderson, PR Manager at InTech, open access publisher of academic books and journals in science, technology and medicine. The InTech collection is available at www.intechopen.com.

An Open Book for Learners is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog dedicated to the world of e-learning and new learning technologies.

6th Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning: Access and Success in Learning

Jorge Goncalves — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 16:55:35 +0000

The Sixth Pan Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning (PCF6) will take place from 24-28 November 2010 at Le-Meridien, Cochin Resort & Convention Centre (Kochi, Kerala), India. The theme of PCF6 is: Access and Success in Learning: Global Development Perspectives.

PCF6 is an international conference that will explore the contribution of open and distance learning to international development goals by opening up access to learning at every level. The Forum brings together practitioners, researchers, planners and policy makers in the fields of open and distance learning and development from over 70 countries. It provides opportunities to share experience and expertise and to contribute to future policy and provision. Participants will represent the main Commonwealth, Asia and international institutions and agencies active in the field, including funding bodies and technology providers.

Commonwealth of Learning (COL): The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) is an intergovernmental organisation created by Commonwealth Heads of Government to encourage the development and sharing of open learning/distance education knowledge, resources and technologies. COL is helping developing nations improve access to quality education and training.

6th Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning: Access and Success in Learning is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog dedicated to the world of e-learning and new learning technologies.

2010 Horizon Report Highlights Mobile Computing and Open Content

Jorge Goncalves — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 10:01:54 +0000

2010 Horizon Report. From the Executive Summary: In each edition of the Horizon Report, six emerging technologies or practices are described that are likely to enter mainstream use on campuses within three adoption horizons spread over the next one to five years. Each report also presents critical trends and challenges that will affect teaching and learning over the same time frame. In the seven years that the Horizon Project has been underway, more than 400 leaders in the fields of business, industry, technology, and education have contributed to this long-running primary research effort.

The report’s format is consistent from year to year, opening with a discussion of the trends and challenges identified by the Advisory Board as most critical for the next five years. The format of the main section closely reflects the focus of the Horizon Project itself, centering on the applications of emerging technologies to teaching, learning, and creative inquiry.

Technologies to Watch: On the near-term horizon — that is, within the next 12 months — are mobile computing and open content.

You may also want to browse the Horizon Report Wiki, the workplace for the members of the Horizon Project Advisory Board to manage the process of selecting the topics for the 2010 Horizon Report or download the PDF version of the report (available in four languages).

2010 Horizon Report Highlights Mobile Computing and Open Content is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog dedicated to the world of e-learning and new learning technologies.

Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative

Jorge Goncalves — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:58:41 +0000

What a wonderful initiative! Canergie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative: Using intelligent tutoring systems, virtual laboratories, simulations, and frequent opportunities for assessment and feedback, the Open Learning Initiative (OLI) builds courses that are intended to enact instruction – or, more precisely, to enact the kind of dynamic, flexible, and responsive instruction that fosters learning.

The open and free courses available at this moment are: Engineering Statics, Statistics, Causal and Statistical Reasoning, Modern Biology, Chemistry, Economics, French, Logic & Proofs, Physics, Empirical Research Methods, Computational Discrete Mathematics and Visual Communication Design.

Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog dedicated to the world of e-learning and new learning technologies.

The Open Research and Open Knowledge Society

Jorge Goncalves — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 18:17:54 +0000

The Open Research and Open Knowledge Society (ORS Acronym) is a Non Governmental Organization (NGO) based on Athens Greece and is operating all over the world. It is not depending on any government, political party, political or religious organization or entities representing financial interests.

Given the significance of the knowledge society as a new context of our era, four significant objectives formulate the justification of the Open Research and Open Knowledge Society:

The need to provide a sustainable worldwide knowledge society vision based on collaboration, knowledge and learning for all and especially for people in need.
The need to investigate the “soft” and “hard” aspects of the knowledge society, with the aim of providing organizational and cultural frameworks as well as infrastructures enabled by the evolution of information technologies.
The need to anchor government policies in scientific evidence concerning the characteristics of the emerging knowledge intensive economy and social environment.
The need to investigate the key priorities of the knowledge society in terms of critical aspects of human life (e.g. health, education, culture, science, business etc).

The Open Research and Open Knowledge Society is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog dedicated to the world of e-learning and new learning technologies.

Wikia Search Alpha Just Launched

Jorge Goncalves — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 19:27:55 +0000

Wikia Search Alpha Launched. ‘Wikia is working to develop and popularize a freely licensed (open source) search engine.

Wikia’s search engine concept is that of trusted user feedback from a community of users acting together in an open, transparent, public way. Of course, before we start, we have no user feedback data. So the results are pretty bad. But we expect them to improve rapidly in coming weeks, so please bookmark the site and return often.

Right now, the most important thing you can do is help with the “mini articles” that appear at the top of popular search terms.’

Wikia Search Alpha Just Launched is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog dedicated to the world of e-learning and new learning technologies.

OLAT (Online Learning And Training): Open Source LMS

Jorge Goncalves — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 22:41:11 +0000

OLAT (Online Learning And Training) is a web-based open-source Learning Management System (LMS) based on Java and completely free of charge.

The development of OLAT started in 1999 at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, where it is the strategic learning management system and deployed on the main OLAT server. The University of Zurich leads the further development and has a team of 12 developers pushing OLAT to the next level.

See the OLAT feature list or the documentation section to get more information about OLAT.’

OLAT main features:

It is open-source and therefore free of charge

The Java based framework can handle over 700 students simultaneously on one standard Linux server

OLAT uses cutting edge AJAX/Web 2.0 technology

It is multilingual (UTF8) and offers translations for over 15 languages

OLAT supports eLearning standards such as SCORM, IMS Content Packaging or QTI

OLAT (Online Learning And Training): Open Source LMS is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog dedicated to the world of e-learning and new learning technologies.

Open Conference on Technology in Education: Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange 2008

Jorge Goncalves — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 19:24:56 +0000

Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange 2008 (TTIX): The Open Conference on Technology in Education. ‘The 4th Annual Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange will be June 5-6, 2008 on the UVSC campus in Orem, Utah, with a pre-conference workshop on faculty development June 4.
Join other educators, developers, and innovators from across the nation and beyond in this two-day conference devoted to the exchange and development of information, best practices, and new ideas. TTIX is an open conference that encourages free access to presentation information and materials, and facilitates the sharing of knowledge. Registration for this conference is and always will be free.
You are invited to contribute to the professional knowledge provided at this conference by presenting a session that relates to teaching and learning with technology.
The 2008 call for proposals is now open until February 1, 2008. Attendance is free, but pre-registration is required.’

Open Conference on Technology in Education: Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange 2008 is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog dedicated to the world of e-learning and new learning technologies.

Elgg – An Open Source Social Networking Platform

Jorge Goncalves — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 19:58:26 +0000

Elgg. ‘Elgg is an open source software platform designed to allow people to easily connect and share resources. Established in March 2004 by Ben Werdmuller and David Tosh, Elgg allows you to create a social network and host it on your own infrastructure, modifying the features to fit your specific needs.
Users establish personal digital identities and connect with other people, collaborate with them and discover new resources through their connections. Plugins allow users on different social networks to collaborate, and provide specific functionality for tasks like project management, mobile browsing and collaboration through user-controlled wikis.’

Elgg Features and User Manual

Elgg – An Open Source Social Networking Platform is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog dedicated to the world of e-learning and new learning technologies.