MIT and Harvard announced the start of EdX. EdX will offer online instructional content from both universities, such as video lessons, quizzes, feedback, student-ranked questions and answers, online laboratories and student-paced learning. EdX will not lead to a diploma, but it will give certificates of mastery to students who have demonstrated their knowledge of the course material.

http://web.mit.edu/press/2012/mit-harvard-edx-announcement.html

"Open sesame": http://www.economist.com/node/21552574

More on Open Access for research publications:

On 14 April The Economist wrote a really interesting article about the business model for academic publications. Unfair, states the Economist. Traditional publisher make huge profit margins. For Elservier this was 37% in 2011, up from 36% in 2010. This is only possible:

"because the journals’ content is largely provided free by researchers, and the academics who peer-review their papers are usually unpaid volunteers. The journals are then sold to the very universities that provide the free content and labour. For publicly funded research, the result is that the academics and taxpayers who were responsible for its creation have to pay to read it."

In January this year, a number of academics have started a boycott of Elsevier and almost 10.000 have joined since.

Should traditional publishers and brick and mortar universities be affraid of the Open Access movement? I.e. will they lose profit (publishers) or students (universities)? Or can they find new models that embrace openness?

A committee of senior staff at Harvard University has asked academic staff to publish in open access journals rather than the traditional journals. Harvard academics who are on the editorial board of traditional journals are asked to see if articles can be published open. If that is not possible, they should consider to resign. Traditional journals have become unaffordable for the university, the email says:

Harvard’s annual cost for journals from these providers now approaches $3.75M. In 2010, the comparable amount accounted for more than 20% of all periodical subscription costs and just under 10% of all collection costs for everything the Library acquires. Some journals cost as much as $40,000 per year, others in the tens of thousands. Prices for online content from two providers have increased by about 145% over the past six years, which far exceeds not only the consumer price index, but also the higher education and the library price indices. These journals therefore claim an ever-increasing share of our overall collection budget. Even though scholarly output continues to grow and publishing can be expensive, profit margins of 35% and more suggest that the prices we must pay do not solely result from an increasing supply of new articles.

To read the email see:

http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k77982&tabgroupid=icb.tabgroup143448

Open Education has become a big thing. Participants of last week's OCW Consortium Annual Conference included universities, other educational institutions, NGO's, business, government officials, and many others.  It generated a lot of media attention. See for example these two articles in the IHT and the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2012/apr/25/open-business-universities-opencourseware

Open for business? Why universities must collaborate on OpenCourseWare

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/world/europe/building-schools-out-of-clicks-not-bricks.html

Building Schools Out of Clicks, Not Bricks

The Open Education Week in March received a lot of media coverage. I really liked Don Guttenplan's article, which was published in the New York Times and the International Herals Tribune. Have a look:

http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx

The goal of the Open Ed Week was to raise awareness and support for Open Education. THES (Times Higher Education Supplement) wrote this article on Open Education:

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=419256

Also have a look at Science Business:

The EU Open Education Week Event in Delft 07.03 was a big success. Halbe Zijlstra, Netherland's Secretary of State for Higher Education, showed his enthousiasm and support for the Open Ed movement, as did EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes.

Interesting discussions on the future of universities, the student of 2020 and the importance of government support for Open Education. Participants from several EU member states. Have a look for yourself:

http://opencourseware.eu/OEW2012

Join us at the Delft Open Education Week Event

Campus of Delft University of Technology, Mekelweg 5 in Delft.

http://opencourseware.eu/OpenEducationEvent2012 for registration and more information.

From 5-12 March 2012, the OCW Consortium will organise the first global Open Education Week. The goal of the Open Education Week is to raise awareness about the benefits of free and open sharing in education, especially Open Educational Resources (OER).

A number of events will be organised in different countries. Delft University of Technology will host the European event on 7 March 2012, together with the Open University Netherlands and SURF. The programme is supported by the Dutch Ministry of Education and the European Union. The event will take place in Delft from 14.00-18.00 h. More about the programme shortly.