OERu Launches Worldwide
Paul Stacey, Creative Commons, November 5, 2013

Paul Stacey has written an article for Creative Commons on the launch of OERu. This is important for OERu - as Wayne Mackintosh writes in an email, "Creative Commons is the air that OER breathes.  Creative Commons provides the legal tools to enable the realisation of the OER vision for more affordable education futures." Stacey writes, "The distinctively open aspects of the OERu, including its use of open-source software, open peer review, open public input, open file formats and open educational resources are key differentiators from MOOCs." He's right, but I'm sure he meant to write xMOOCs.

[Link] [Comment]

Feds outline aggressive Shared Services transformation timeline
Jeff Jedras, ComputerDealerNews, November 5, 2013

For those working inside the government of Canada, this detailed plan outlining the rollout of shared services in information technology may be interesting. For those not working inside the government, it provides a good view of large-scale institutional transformation. From my [perspective, it has been overall a good thing - for example, the days of "if it's the weekend corporate email services must be down" are long since past. Here's the full presentation.

[Link] [Comment]

91% MOOC satisfaction rating for University of London International Programmes
Press Release, University of London International Programmes, Coursera, November 4, 2013

I remember once the University of Alberta proudly displaying a survy which showed a 95 percent student satisfaction rate. The catch? The survey was taken of students on their graduation day. This is the sort of statistical fallacy educational institutions sould know better than to commit. But they can't help themselves, it seems. Witness this latest in the genre, a survey from Coursera touting a 91% satisfaction rating among students who had completed the course. We are not told the actual number of people completing the survey, but we know it is a very small percentage of the 210,000 total registered students, a self-selected sample from a very biased pool. The survey is part of a full report available from Coursera on request, but with data like this, I wouldn't bother.

[Link] [Comment]

Innovation Imperative: Change Everything
Clayton Christensen, New York Times, November 3, 2013

I think Clayton Christensen is playing catch-up with this article on disruptive innovation in education; the piece seems ad hoc, the examples of 'pioneers' arbitrary (Thunderbird School of Global Management? The Minerva Project?), and the explanations implausible. For example, this: "In theory, for-profit companies should have shaken up the higher education landscape. But federal financial aid seems to have gummed up the disruption." The world is larger than just one country, though, and despite a wide variety of aid regimens, the for-profit companies didn't shake up the landscape anywhere. Online learning wasn't ready, and consumers weren't ready; you need good high-speed always-on access to really make it work (indeed, if anything, for-profit companies slowed it down, clinging to their profit margins as long as they could).

[Link] [Comment]

Research Data Canada
Unattributed, Research Data Canada, November 3, 2013

Worth a look (they have been sending me webinar notifications): "[Research Data Canada] is a collaborative effort to address the challenges and issues surrounding the access and preservation of data arising from Canadian research." The website offers links to data sets (just two at present, but it's early days), reserach reports (such as Report of the 2011 Canadian Research Data Summit) and access to working groups. One of the keys to immersive online education is direct access to real-time data, so I have high hopes for this initiative and the role it will play in helping us move beyond online courses (massive or otherwise).

[Link] [Comment]