For some time now I’ve been critical of “disposable assessments.” An assessment can be characterized as “disposable” if everyone understands that its ultimate destiny is the garbage can. Take an all-too-typical example: Faculty member assigns student to write a two page compare and contrast essay Student writes the paper and submits it to faculty Faculty … Read more

Fifteen years ago MIT announced its OpenCourseWare project. Above all else, this groundbreaking project demonstrated that an institution can openly share it’s core instructional resources without materially harming itself. Inspired by MIT’s example, hundreds of other institutions around the world began openly publishing the resources they created in support of their courses. Of critical importance … Read more

This began as a comment on Heather’s post, but grew unwieldy and so ended up here. Heather’s post is reacting to this quote from an article she read recently: “There is one additional requirement for widespread OER adoption. Incentives need to discourage ‘free-riders’.” This statement is demonstrably false. Of the 50 colleges in the US … Read more