This is a guest blog post by Jim Farmer, Coordinator, Scholarly Systems Group at Georgetown University and editor at the eReSS project, University of Hull. On Friday, June 1st, the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance released their report “Turn the Page: Making College Textbooks More Affordable.” Responding to a Congressional concern about high and […]
Jim-Farmer
Coming Soon: Guest Posts by Jim Farmer
I’m pleased to announce that e-Literate‘s second guest blogger will be Jim Farmer. From his bio: Jim Farmer began his career in higher education as CIO for California State University Northridge and became the first CIO for the California State Universities. He was one of the founders of Sigma Systems Inc., a U.S. software supplier […]
Jim Farmer on the Impact of the Patent Wars
Seb Schmoller has posted an insightful, moving, and rather depressing reflection piece by Jim Farmer on the impact that the patent wars will have on education in general. Here’s a sample: Education patents and the new licensing environment may further commercialize teaching and learning. The Blackboard patent is not alone, but representative of many that […]
Resources on the Patent Issue
Jim Farmer’s company, instructional media + magic, has archived a wealth of patent-related resources in their eLibrary.
The Economics of the LMOS
Jim Farmer has posted a slide stack (in PDF format) on the economics of interoperability. There’s a lot of good general stuff here about service-oriented architecture (SOA) and interoperability issues from a business perspective, but 90%+ can also be read to apply directly to the LMOS concept. Here are some highlights:
Survey Gives Proprietary AND Open Source VLE Developers Cause to Worry
IM+M (Jim Farmer’s company) has published some survey data on VLE adoption by higher ed institutions in the UK from 2001 to 2005. Interestingly, the data looks bad for almost everyone. There’s some limited good news for Moodle and Boddington, but as institutions are voting with their feet, the general sentiment seems to be “A […]
More Thoughts About Blackboard: "The fault, dear Brutus…"
Jim Farmer’s financial analysis of Blackboard certainly has gotten a lot of attention–and for good reason. To start with, that ~$250K cost per sale is a truly eye-popping number. But upon further reflection, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not the most important part of the story that Jim tells. Here is the most […]