Ocw

A new report out from IMS called Learning Technology Satisfaction & Trends presents data from a survey of US higher education institutions. According to the report, “31% of the respondents were executive administrators. 7% were deans or academic program or department leaders. 50% were information technology or instructional support staff. 11% were faculty.” Several interesting things in this report: First, the two top-rated sources of digital content, including all commercial and other sources, were Google Search and Wikipedia. MIT OCW places fourth. McGraw Hill and all the other proprietary content publishers are “clustered in another tier below the leaders” in terms of user satisfaction (p. 40). As a content management platform, Wikipedia beats out WebCT, Blackboard, and DSpace by an average of almost a full point (on a five point scale). “The strong usage and showing of Wikis indicates that the Web 2.0 phenomenon – use of more collaboration and collaborative authoring – is blazing a path in higher education” (p. 38). On the course management side, Moodle beats out WebCT and Blackboard by a full half point with a third place finish. Apparently eCollege and Angel users are extremely loyal. Sakai isn’t even on the map. From the Top Findings section (p. 8): “Google Search, Apple iPod, and Wikipedia placed in the top ten list for satisfaction, indicating that non-education specific technologies are being perceived, by those ithat incorporate them, as adding value to the educational experience.” That is, their satisfaction scores were so high as to be in the top ten of all products reviewed across all categories. Overall an interesting skim…

In the most recent issue of Innovate, Stephen reviews the OCWC website. He is generally unimpressed, making a variety of comments about the lack of interactivity offered by the site: “contrary to expectations, there is no discussion or community component,” “if there is a community - and one presumes there is - it is well hidden,” and “it is unfortunate that the main access point to the OpenCourseWare Consortium is an impenetrable barrier.” ...

Possibly the most broadly useful, best quality course in any opencourseware out there… The Power of Positive Parenting.

1. It’s an empirically verifiable fact that the greater number of rights a license reserves, the more people are willing to adopt the license. At the extremes of the continuum, almost everyone takes an “all rights reserved” approach while almost no one takes a “no rights reserved whatsoever” approach. The middle cases can be quickly verified by checking Flickr or any of a number of other sites that show the aggregate behavior of users allowed to choose between CC-licenses. I have done a little writing about this previously. ...

Next week I have the opportunity to present a few remarks to the US Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education. Since I had to submit my comments ahead of time, they’re actually done, and I thought I would share. I would greatly appreciate any thoughts you have, as I don’t actually talk to the Commission until next Friday. (UPDATE 06 Feb 06: I have included the new Introduction and Summary as delivered to the Commission.) ...

Due to some recent publicity at digg.com and elsewhere, there have been lots of people coming to the OCW Finder (30,000 some yesterday alone). I’ve updated the listings and included tags for video and audio, making it easier for folks to find those sorts of courses.

Enjoyed listening to Chuck Vest talk (mp3) about where education and open education are heading. Vest was the president of MIT when it conceived of and launched MIT OpenCourseWare.

Lots going around late today about Adam Bosworth’s closing keyonte (links to audio) at the MySQL conference. I enjoyed Ryan Tomayko’s writeup most, especially this deceivingly simple line: Systems that were designed through observation of the web and/or in adherence to the core principles of the web must be more suitable to the web than those that were not. This recognition will either make or break the entire open education movement, including eduCommons and the OpenCourseWares.

Tufts OCW has launched, with course materials in medicine, nutrition, veterinary science, etc. The OCW Finder now includes the Tufts courses as well.

Every so often I get the almost irresistable itch to write some code… Oishii! was my most recent attempt until today. So I’m happy to announce the OpenCourseWare Finder, a remix of the succulent delicious director that lets you interactively browse/search OpenCourseWare materials from several schools. I’d love to hear what you think about it…