As long-time readers know, I strongly believe that the national discussion about the costs of textbooks and course materials is more productive when we focus on actual student behaviors and impacts, rather than artificial numbers used by many organizations. There may be short-term benefit from claiming or implying that the average college student spends $1200 […]
McGraw-Hill Education’s Perspective on Adaptive Learning
Last spring, I had the opportunity to interview some of the top folks on McGraw-Hill Education’s (MHE’s) digital team to get their view on adaptive learning. Between ALEKS, LearnSmart, and SmartBooks, they have the developed the most well articulated adaptive strategy of any of the big publishers, under the leadership of Chief Digital Officer Stephen Laster. […]
The Great Unbundling of Textbook Publishers
When we hear the phrase “unbundling” in education, it usually refers to one of two things. Either it’s about unbundling the university into component parts like separating courses from certification or it’s about unbundling content from textbooks or courses into discrete learning objects. On the spectrum from “figment of the imagination” to “the one and […]
Recommended Viewing: Learning Analytics Webinar on Caliper and xAPI
What happens when you combine the IMS Caliper and SCORM’s xAPI learning analytics standards! You get xCaliper! Can the working groups pull the sword from the stone?
Recommended Reading: Article in Chronicle on Measuring Learning
Dan Barrett’s piece over the weekend in The Chronicle, “The Next Great Hope for Measuring Learning,” deserves a close read. He describes in some detail a ground up effort by faculty and administrators across several institutions to define and measure what it is that students are learning and why it’s important. In doing so, these […]
Introducing “Recommended Reading” and O’Neal Spicer
More good stuff to read, from us and from others.
About That Cengage OER Survey
Last month Cengage Learning released a white paper titled “Open Educational Resources (OER) and the Evolving Higher Education Landscape” where the headline called out expected increases in OER adoption:
“Open Educational Resources (OER) in higher education have the potential to triple in use as primary courseware over the next five years.”