e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: Ken-Udas

  • Ken Udas to Head Up UMassOnline

    I am thrilled to report that my former colleague Ken Udas, most recently the Executive Director of Penn State World Campus and before that a fellow escapee from the SUNY Learning Network, has been selected as the new CEO of UMassOnline. Says University of Massachusetts President Jack M. Wilson,

    The role of CEO of UMassOnline requires an individual whose knowledge and skills are strong in education, solid in technology, and visionary in management, development, and planning. In Dr. Udas we have clearly met this requirement. Dr. Udas has experienced, and understands, the all-important faculty and program development component which is key to UMassOnline’s future; the all-important technology component that has always distinguished our offering; and, he has been a vocal champion of online learning and teaching throughout his career.

    This was a very smart move on the part of the University of Massachusetts. I’m sure Ken will do great things there.

  • EDUCAUSE Openness Constituent Group

    My fellow SUNY escapees Patrick Masson and Ken Udas are up to some good stuff now. They’ve started an EDUCAUSE constituent group on Openness–open source, open standards, open educational resources, open content, open management practices, etc. Their hope is that the disparate groups that tend to care about each of these strands will identify the common strands of philosophy and practice that will help universities develop more coherent policies and ways of doing business that are both practically beneficial and consistent with the values that universities ought to support. It’s an ambitious project, to be sure, but very important.

    In concert with the new constituent group, the EDUCAUSE board has released a value statement on Openness. Here’s an excerpt:

    A central pillar of the academic community is its commitment to the free flow of information and ideas. This commitment to sharing is essential to scholarly discovery and innovation. It is also central to helping learners engage, absorb, and apply knowledge in order to advance personally and academically. Finally, this commitment to openness provides the foundation for leveraging resources, both within and among institutions, to strengthen the creation, transmission, and preservation of knowledge.

    The academic—and, by extension, social—value of unfettered intellectual exchange finds expression in technologies, applications, and approaches that foster sharing, collaboration, and open access to knowledge and resources. By actively encouraging collaboration, customization, and experimentation, open environments—whether social, cultural, or technological—best facilitate the free flow of information and ideas on which discovery, innovation, and high-quality higher education depend. In an IT context, examples include:

    • Open standards and interoperability
    • Open and community source software development
    • Open access to research data
    • Open scholarly communications
    • Open access to, and open derivative use of, content

    The constituent group meets at the conference this afternoon at 4:55 PM in Room W340D. I’ll see you there. And if you’re not at EDUCAUSE, you can find out more information about the effort here.

  • My New Post on Terra Incognita

    I have an article up today on Terra Incognita. If you haven’t checked this blog out yet, I highly recommend that you do. Managed by Penn State World Campus’s Executive Director Ken Udas, the blog features a series of guest posts by various interesting folks on topics related to open source and open educational resources for higher education.

    Anyway, my piece uses the analysis of Yochai Benkler to explain how it is that open source works from an economic perspective. I had intended to get into all kinds of nuances, such as the implications for aspects of open source projects such as modularity, transparency, license choice, patents, etc., but the post would have been way too long. As it was, I’m not sure that I even managed to capture the basics of his ideas in a compelling way.

    Oh well. Maybe I’ll do a follow-up post sometime.

  • The Openness Dialogue Continues on Terra Incognita

    After a brief summer hiatus, Ken Udas’ Terra Incognita blog is resuming its series of guest posts on open source and open educational resources in higher education. The latest post is from Gavin Baker, a member of the board of directors for FreeCulture.org (among other things).

    Good stuff.

  • Open Source in Education Post Series on Terra Incognita

    My good friend Ken Udas has asked me to pass along the following:

    I would like to point you to a project that I am helping to coordinate on “The Impact of Open Source Software on Education,” in which a group of colleagues are posting perspectives on OSS in education. The group will make brief posts of their personal perspectives on OSS using Terra Incognita (the Penn State World Campus Blog). Most of the authors have a strong distance, open, and eLearning background. After each posting there will be a period of time during which comments, feedback, and dialog will occur. Eventually the posting, comments/discussion, and a brief summary will be formatted and made available as open educational resources on WikiEducator. During the days following each posting on Terra Incognita, the author will be available to respond to feedback and engage in a group dialogue with you.

    I think that this activity could provide an excellent introduction to OSS in Education for practitioners and is also a way to get a feel for some perspectives from around the globe. We have contributing authors form the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Kenya, and South Africa currently scheduled.

    If you are interested in learning more about the “The Impact of Open Source Software on Education” series, you can check out the project site at on WikiEducator.

    Or if you just want to check out the first posting it will be made on Terra Incognita on March 12th. An interview with Ruth Sabean, assistant vice provost for educational technology in UCLA’s College of Letters and Science, will kick off the series on March 12. Ruth ran the evaluation process at UCLA that resulted in the selection of the open source application Moodle.

    Parts one and two of the interview with Ruth Sabean are up now and are very interesting reads.

  • Add This Feed to Your RSS Reader

    Friend, colleague, connoisseur of Swedish schnapps, and Executive Director of Penn State World Campus Ken Udas has started a blog. There are two reasons why this is significant. First, Ken often has novel perspectives on his work, and from the early posts it looks like this blog will be no exception. Second, it’s an official blog on a PSU URL. I would like to see more university executives take the plunge this way. Kudos to Ken for leading the way.

    The RSS feed is here.

  • Ken Udas is Moving to Penn State

    I am both sad and delighted to report that friend and colleague Ken Udas will be leaving SUNY to become the next Executive Director of Penn State’s World Campus. Sad because I will miss having him to share triumphs, trials, tribulations, and tragedies with on a daily basis. Delighted because Ken is a stellar professional who deserves to be in a place where he can have the greatest impact on the broader world of online learning. I’m sure that Ken and his new colleagues at PSU will accomplish great things together.