Featured Blog Posts (52)

The "Academia and the MOOC" course that I am facilitating on the Canvas Network started this week. It is a 4 week course but very open-ended and you can still register and easily work through the content since the discussion if the key element.

It is not a "massive" MOOC (there will be less than 1000 participants) and it isn't a "course" (in that it has no assignments or grades) but is it gathering people in academia around the topics of how MOOCs are impacting education and might do…

Education leaders Manny Barbara of Silicon Valley Education Foundation (SVEF) and Nicholas Smith of HotChalk provided provocative and challenging insights for Open Doors Group (ODG) directors and managers at…

Open Doors Group and College Open Textbooks honor the following Community Colleges for ranking very high on the list of the Top 1500 Colleges and University by Textbook Affordability

#1    Essex County College  - Super achievement beating out 1499 2- and 4-year colleges!

#11  East…

The ninth International Open Ed Conference 2012 was held in Vancouver, British Columbia, from October 16 to 18. This conference brings together many of the thought leaders and practitioners in the open education movement from around the world to report on progress, compare notes, and collaborate.  This year’s conference got off to a rousing start as the Honorable John Yap, Minister of Advanced Education, Innovation and Technology for British…

ODG-COT senior marketing professional Deepa Sinha has written and issued a press release announcing the DynamicBooks sponsorship of the Open Doors - College Open Textbooks 2012-2013 program. Thanks to Deepa for…

College Open Textbooks has selected two texts, Principles of Microeconomics and Principles of Macroeconomics by Dr. Timothy Tregarthen and Dr. Libby Rittenberg, as its featured books for August 2012.

PRLog (Press Release) - Aug 17, 2012 -

College Open Textbooks is proud to announce that it has selected two outstanding texts, Principles of Microeconomics and Principles of Macroeconomics by Dr. Timothy Tregarthen and Dr. Libby Rittenberg, as its…

Here are some very helpful presentations you can share with constituents. Presenters include Jacqui Cain, Matt Gehrett,

James Glapa-Grossklag,

Una…

http://mindshift.kqed.org/2011/10/open-education-sites-offer-free-content-for-all/ Nice summary of open ed sites. I'll put them in alphabetical order:

CK-12 - Developer of CK12 Flexbooks

CK12 FlexBooks - Free, collaboratively created K-12 digital textbooks…

Jonathas Mello has designed a new OER logo on behalf of UNESCO. 

You can see it at right, and you can download it in several formats and languages…

Building a textbook in 48 hours http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKnJe9VzXXY



UC Irvine provides outstanding open courseware http://bit.ly/AriZXr



Tony Kuphaldt's 7 videos on Active Learning: http://bit.ly/TonysVideos



Debut of 5 outstanding open textbooks…

2//7/12 from INSIDE HIGHER ED

If ramen noodle sales spike at the start of every semester, here’s one possible reason: textbooks can cost as much as a class itself; materials for an introductory physics course can easily top $300.

Cost-conscious students can of course save money with used or online books and recoup some of their cash come buyback time. Still, it’s a steep price for most 18-year-olds.

But soon, introductory physics texts will have a new competitor,…

There's a nice article about this called "Open Textbook Authoring Tools Part 2 – WordPress and Pressbooks" posted Feb. 7. It…

Although criminal justice courses are popular and well-enrolled, especially in Community Colleges, there is a definite lack of OER resources in this area.  My frustration with the cost of textbooks and dearth of criminal justice open resources inspired me to join the College Open Textbooks Community.  It didn't take me long to notice Flat World Knowledge, one of the recognized publishers of college-level open textbooks.  After checking the Flat World Knowledge catalog, I adopted one of their…

Mentor Cloud and Open Doors Group / College Open Textbooks Partner to

Facilitate Sharing Best Practices 

New Community to Share Best Practices and Facilitate Mentoring in the Open Education Community…

Tom Caswell, Program Manager for the Open Course Library, reported 10, 000 visitors to their site since its official launch of the first 42 courses on October 31, 2011.   He sums up the project which will contain 81 open courses targeted at the highest-enrolled general education classes for lower division…

It is with great pleasure that I announce the 8 winners of our Adopter Communities’ Small Grant program.   Each community proposed an outstanding project that uses open textbooks or open educational resources to improve teaching and learning for their students.    Disciplines ranged from the highly enrolled general education subjects of Chemistry, Physics, and Math to American Government and Developmental Reading & Composition.  Professional and career disciplines were also represented…

Make sure your students’, faculties’, and administrators’ voices are heard!  The Florida Distance Learning Consortium will administer two surveys. One is for college and university students on textbooks, open textbooks, and OpenCourseWare (OCW). The other survey is for faculty and administrators on digital textbooks, open textbooks, open educational resources (OERs), and OCW. These will be administered to all of Florida’s 28 public colleges and 11 state universities. This is our…