Rasmussen College Announces Public Benefit Corporation Status
Press Releases, Rasmussen College, January 22, 2014

This item was flagged in a securities alert from Wells Fargo's Trace A. Urdan (I don't play the stock market but the reports are interesting). He writes, "as a public benefit corporation its corporate responsibility will extend beyond financial shareholders to include a broader range of stakeholders, and its corporate mission will place making a positive impact on society above delivering financial returns to shareholders." Why does this matter? Urdan writes, "Fealty to financial stakeholders and the fiduciary responsibility to maximize financial returns has been a common criticism levied against forprofit schools by their detractors." By making its educational mission just as important as its shareholder interests under the law the college can argue that its for-profit status will not infringe on its educational mission. I'm not completely convinced, but I view this as a healthy move in the right direction.

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Beyond MOOCs: Sustainable online learning in institutions
Li Yuan, Stephen Powell, Bill Olivier, CETIS, January 22, 2014

Three themes emerge from recent MOOC experiments, write the authors:

• Openness – new approaches to online learning, including models for scalable provision that may generate revenues, and promote open learning
• Revenue models – different revenue models taking the established ideas from technology start-ups
• Service Disaggregation – experimentation with business models that include unbundling and re-bundling of courses and delivery related services.

There are some good tables in the document itself, including a nice distinction between xMOOC and cMOOC, different models of course provision, pedagogic dimensions, self-assessment, and emerging business models. (The preview tool said I had exceeded my bandwidth limit - I don't see why people use those user-hostile 'preview' tools). Direct link (20 page PDF).

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