One year with MOOCs, research findings from the first 17 edX classes

Courtesy of: MOOCs.com

Professors from MIT and Harvard report on their first year in MOOCs and the edX project: 

MITx working papers
HarvardX Working Papers

• There were 841,687 registrations from 597,692 unique users
• Only 5 percent earned a certificate of completion.
• One-third of users never viewed any course materials.
• More than half of those who completed at least half of the course went on to earn a certificate of completion

See also:
Education Week article from one of the authors, 

The First Year of edX: Research Findings to Inform Online Learning

HBR's fee policy questioned

Found on Flickr - CC

Joshua Gans, chaired professor at the Rotman School of Management in Toronto questions whether changes to Harvard Business Review article fee policy should impact their participation to the FT's business school rankings.

While this is a long shot - FT has already said that they would keep HBR on the list of publications used for their ranking - the article raises good questions about access to research content.

Links to his original post, his article in FT and HBR's answer are available from his Digitopoly blog.

Update: Librarians chime in via Chris Flegg's [Bodleian Business Librarian at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford] article in the Financial Times (Oct. 23, 2013):
Access to research comes at a price

Undergrads and IT - 2012 survey

EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research has released its annual survey of undergraduates' attitude towards technology in Higher Education.

Click on the image for the full infographic.
Read the entire report.

Tablet ownership triples among college students

The Pearson Foundation recently released their second annual survey on Students and Tablets.
Key findings:

• Tablet ownership has more than tripled among college students since March 2011, with one-quarter of students now owning a standard tablet (25%), compared to only 7% in March 2011.
  
•  Ownership of standard tablets among college-bound high school seniors has quadrupled from 4% in March 2011 to 17% in January 2012.
  
• Among college students, one-third (35%) of those who own a standard tablet also own an e-book reader or small tablet device.
  
• Almost one-half of current tablet owners (46%) say that they intend to purchase another tablet within the next six months.

For more information, read the Pearson Foundation Survey on Students and Tablets 2012

E-textbooks: another project

Indiana University has released a summary of two years of research on their E-Textbook project.

About 60% of the students surveyed said they preferred the e-textbook to a paper textbook, although this ranged from a high of 84% to a low of 36% depending upon the course.

Factors influencing preference for e-textbooks:
Ability for instructor to annotate and share with the class:	69%
Sustainability (reducing paper)	67%
Cost	64%
Weight of Books	61%
Student Annotations	60%

See also Chronicle article on the topic:

The university requires certain students to purchase e-textbooks and negotiates unusually low prices by promising publishers large numbers of sales—now has the participation of major textbook publishers, and university officials plan to expand the effort.

The Case Study and the Tablet

The B-School Case Study Gets a Digital Makeover

'Tablet technology is beginning to transform case studies from straightforward narratives into complex and changeable plots—a metamorphosis nearly a century in the making.'

This BusinessWeek article describes how some B-schools are using digital tablet platforms (iPads, Kindles) to deliver course materials and case studies in particular.

Ruling in Georgia State U. Lawsuit vs 3 publishers over E-course packs.

In April 2008, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and Sage Publications sued Georgia State University officials for “systematic, widespread and unauthorized copying and distribution of a vast amount of copyrighted works” . NYT article reporting on lawsuit.

On September 30, 2010, the judge issued a ruling in favor of Georgia State on 2 of the three counts. See this summary from Duke's Scholarly Communications blog

The Judge has granted the defense motion for summary judgment on two of the three claims — direct and vicarious infringement — and denied it in regard to the third claim, which is contributory infringement. The plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment has been denied in its entirety. The net result is that the case will go forward on the single issue of contributory infringement.

Related post on LibraryLawBlog with every legal things you ever wanted to know about copyrights and e-reserves but were afraid to ask. Nov. 2009.

                       vs