Inside Higher Ed has a write-up today on an effort by the Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) to develop a competency-based framework for general education called General Education Maps and Markers (GEMs), funded by a multi-million-dollar Gates Foundation grant. I am honored to report that I have been invited to participate on one […]
Boundless Is Totally #Winning
I was contacted by Boundless CEO Ariel Diaz regarding a concern he had with my blog post about the lawsuit outcome. This was not entirely surprising, and I was curious to see which aspects of the post concerned him. Was it my characterization of Boundless as not a content company? Was it my speculation that […]
Lessons from the Boundless Copyright Infringement Suit
On December 17th, the Boundless OER-based textbook startup issued a press release describing the settlement they had reached with Pearson, Cengage, and Macmillan in the lawsuit those three companies had filed against the company. (Full disclosure: Pearson has been a client of MindWires Consulting.) Actually, a lot of the press release wasn’t really about the […]
More on Pearson and Change
I am amazed at the number of comments we have gotten already on the other day’s Pearson post. Don’t you people have better things to do on a holiday than read and comment on 7,000-word blog posts about textbook publishers (asks the man who spent his holiday writing a 7,000-word blog post about a textbook publisher)? […]
The Year in e-Literacy
I’m generally conflicted about year-end lists of top blog posts because there is no single way to order the list that is truly reflective of the conversations that we’ve been having together on the blog. But after finding Audrey Watters’ list for Hack Education so interesting I thought, “Oh, what the heck.” First, some general stats: We […]
Can Pearson Solve the Rubric’s Cube?
Love ’em or hate ’em, it’s hard to dispute that Pearson has an outsized impact on education in America. This huge company—they have a stock market valuation of $18 billion—touches all levels from kindergarten through career education, providing textbooks, homework platforms, high-stakes testing, and even helping to design entire online degree programs. So when they […]
Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina
While it is well hidden, wrapped in a very careful press release, Phil’s sharp eye has caught the details in SJSU’s press release about the next phase in the Udacity pilot that suggest the partnership between the school and the company is winding down. When Carl Straumsheim of Inside Higher Ed asked an SJSU spokesperson point-blank […]