Altmetric Unveils Top 100 Research Papers of the Year

Altmetric released its annual Top 100 list of published research papers that have generated significant online attention and discussion from all over the world, including from post-publication peer-review forums, patient advocacy groups, mainstream news media, and social media. 


Article #1 - United States Health Care Reform: Progress to Date and Next Steps
Article #2 - Medical error—the third leading cause of death in the US
Article #3 - Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger

In the past year, Altmetric has tracked over 17 million mentions of 2.7 million different research outputs. These are the top 100 most-discussed journal articles of 2016. 

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

Ebook Trends in 2013

E book prices continue to fall:

In the past few months, pricing of ebooks and issues of competition are coming into sharper focus. Changes are coming much faster in the publishing world today—prices for titles are dropping and we are seeing the development of new models and channels for publishing, distribution, and sales.

Read full article by N. K. Herther.

Taken from http://goo.gl/D0QAY   

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.

Google starts Course Builder an open source project

From the post: The Course Builder open source project is an experimental early step for us in the world of online education.

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

Kindle Fire: Amazon's tablet is out!

Amazon announced yesterday the release of the Kindle Fire, its new tablet. It will be available on November 15 at $199.  

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.

New player in digital content access and management

Official press release
Related HBR article discussing The Present and Future of Digital Publishing

Kindle DX project

In August 2009, 7 schools started a project to experiment using the Kindle as a platform for course reading.

• June 10, 2010 article from Business week: E-Book Readers Bomb on College Campuses
• September 5, 2010 FT article: E-books fail the classroom test

Princeton final survey results. (41p. PDF)

Darden survey results:

• Would you recommend the Kindle DX to an incoming Darden MBA student? A total of 75 to 80 percent answered “no” 

• Would you recommend the Kindle DX to an incoming MBA student as a personal reading device? A total of 90 to 95 percent said “yes” 

Participating schools