North Dakota University System to host open education resource conference in Fargo in March; Grand Forks Herald, January 7, 2020

Sydney Mook, Grand Forks Herald; North Dakota University System to host open education resource conference in Fargo in March

"In conjunction with Open Education Week, the North Dakota University System will hold an open education resources conference on Friday, March 6, at the Holiday Inn in Fargo, the university system announced Monday, Jan. 6.

The full-day program will include an overview of open education resources at a national level, a panel of representatives from UND, Mayville State University and Valley City State University who have implemented OERs, and research conducted by UND professor, Virginia Clinton, regarding the effects of using open textbooks and student learning outcomes.

Open educational resources, also known as OER and sometimes referred to as open-access resources, allow students to save money on textbooks through a free online textbook."

‘Big Deal’ Cancellations Gain Momentum; Inside Higher Ed, May 8, 2018

Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed; ‘Big Deal’ Cancellations Gain Momentum

"Also last year, SPARC, an advocacy group for open access and open education, launched a resource tracking big-deal cancellations worldwide. Greg Tananbaum, a senior consultant at SPARC, said that there is a “growing momentum” toward cancellations.

According to data from SPARC (which may not be comprehensive, said Tananbaum), in 2016 five U.S. and Canadian institutions announced cancellations with big publishers such as Springer Nature, Wiley, Taylor & Francis and Elsevier. In 2017, seven more North American institutions said they planned to cancel their big deals, including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Kansas State University, among others. 

Motivation for Cancellation 

Both Tananbaum and Anderson agree that one factor driving cancellations of big deals is that library budgets are not growing at the same rate as the cost of subscriptions. Given budget restrictions, “there’s just a reality that tough choices have to be made,” said Tananbaum."

Penn State joining Open Textbook Network to support affordable course content; Penn State News, 1/31/17

Penn State News; 

Penn State joining Open Textbook Network to support affordable course content

"Penn State University Libraries is joining the Open Textbook Network to help support Penn State faculty’s use of and students’ availability to free, openly licensed academic course content.

“Penn State’s membership in the Open Textbook Network supports faculty and students’ access to a large volume of free, openly licensed course content, available online, to help reduce students’ overall cost of attendance,” Joe Salem, the University Libraries’ associate dean for Learning, Undergraduate Services, and Commonwealth Campus Libraries, said. “Joining the Open Textbook Network was one of the recommendations of the University’s Open Educational Resources Task Force as part of a multi-faceted approach to supporting open and affordable course content throughout the curriculum.”

The Open Textbook Network (OTN) helps support colleges and universities’ instructional use of open textbooks and practices. Its Open Textbook Library is the premiere resource for peer-reviewed academic textbooks, all of which are free, openly licensed and complete, according to its website...

Penn State is among the largest universities to join OTN, which was established in fall 2015, and an early supporter among its peer institutions. Other Big Ten Academic Alliance members participating in OTN include the University of Iowa, the University of Minnesota, Ohio State, Purdue, Rutgers, and the Milwaukee and Stout campuses of the University of Wisconsin system."

Are MOOCs Forever?; Chronicle of Higher Education, 7/14/16

[Podcast and Transcript] Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education; Are MOOCs Forever? :

"Think back to the early days of MOOCs. Professors at Stanford and Harvard and other places were suddenly teaching really big classes, free. Hundreds of thousands of students at once were in those courses. It was an unprecedented giveaway of what had traditionally been the most expensive education in the world.

Back then, I met several students who were binging on the courses the way you might binge-watch a season of your favorite show on Netflix. They took as many courses as they possibly could, powering through and finishing as many as 30 courses in a year. When I asked why they were in such a hurry, the most popular reason was that they thought it was all too good to last. As one of those binging students told me, "I’m just afraid this whole thing might end soon." Surely, universities would change their mind about this, or the start-ups working with colleges might lock things up.

Fast forward to last month, when Coursera did something that stirred up all of those concerns again. On June 30 the company deleted hundreds of its earliest courses, as part of a shift to a new software platform. Reaction, as you might expect, was negative on social media and blogs. One programmer called it cultural vandalism...

Hello, and welcome to The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Re:Learning Podcast. I’m Jeff Young, and I recently had the chance to talk with Daphne Koller, a co-founder of Coursera, about those issues."

Amazon Inspire Removes Some Content Over Copyright Issues; New York Times, 6/29/16

Natasha Singer, New York Times; Amazon Inspire Removes Some Content Over Copyright Issues:

"Amazon designed the site to enable teachers to post and freely share lesson plans, quizzes and curriculums of their own design, as well as open educational resources created by others. Mr. Agarwal said that users were not supposed to upload copyrighted materials and that the site had a process in place to quickly take down items that were the subjects of such complaints.

But it may be more difficult than Amazon executives realized for the site’s users to distinguish between open educational resources and copyrighted works.

“Even with all the safeguards in place, you have the ability to have someone upload a resource that violates a copyright,” Mr. Agarwal conceded."

Anant Agarwal: Why massively open online courses (still) matter; TED Talk via YouTube, 1/27/14

TED Talk via YouTube; Anant Agarwal: Why massively open online courses (still) matter:

"2013 was a year of hype for MOOCs (massively open online courses). Great big numbers and great big hopes were followed by some disappointing first results. But the head of edX, Anant Agarwal, makes the case that MOOCs still matter -- as a way to share high-level learning widely and supplement (but perhaps not replace) traditional classrooms. Agarwal shares his vision of blended learning, where teachers create the ideal learning experience for 21st century students."