Archive for the ‘Open Access’ Category

The Adoption of an Open Textbook in a Large Physics Course: An Analysis of Cost, Outcomes, Use, and Perceptions

Assigning open textbooks in college and university courses can help students save money on increasingly expensive commercial textbooks, and recent research shows that this savings can often be achieved with little to no sacrifice in textbook quality or student learning outcomes. We add to this body of research by examining the use of an open […]

Measures of student success with textbook transformations: the Affordable Learning Georgia Initiative

In 2014, the state of Georgia’s budget supported a University System of Georgia (USG) initiative: Affordable Learning Georgia (ALG). The initiative was implemented via Textbook Transformation Grants, which provided grants to USG faculty, libraries and librarians, and institutions to “transform their use of textbooks and other learning materials into using lower cost options”, in other […]

Portfolio, text, data, page

Opening the Publication Process with Executable Research Compendia

A strong movement towards openness has seized science. Open data and methods, open source software, Open Access, open reviews, and open research platforms provide the legal and technical solutions to new forms of research and publishing. However, publishing reproducible research is still not common practice. Reasons include a lack of incentives and a missing standardized […]

Web Strategies for the Curation and Discovery of Open Educational Resources

For those receiving funding from the UK HEFCE-funded Open Educational Resource Programme (2009–2012), the sustainability of project outputs was one of a number of essential goals. Our approach for the hosting and distribution of health and life science open educational resources (OER) was based on the utilisation of the WordPress.org blogging platform and search engine […]

In Search for the Open Educator: Proposal of a Definition and a Framework to Increase Openness Adoption Among University Educators

The paper explores the change process that university teachers need to go through in order to become fluent with Open Education approaches. Based on a literature review and a set of interviews with a number of leading experts in the field of Open Educational Resources and Open Education, the paper puts forward an original definition […]

Learning and Digital Environment of Dance – The Case of Greek Traditional Dance in YouTube

The incorporation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in education has changed the educational procedures through the creation and use of new teaching and learning environments with the use of computers and network applications that afford new dimensions to distance education. In turn, these emerging and in progress technologies, render new practices in many fields […]

Development of Open Textbooks Learning Analytics System

Textbook costs have skyrocketed in recent years, putting them beyond the reach of many students, but there are options which can mitigate this problem. Open textbooks, an open educational resource, have proven capable of making textbooks affordable to students. There have been few educational development as promising as the development of open textbooks to lower […]

Open access and piracy threaten science

A recent announcement by the European Commission calls for all research to be freely available online by 2020, a system called ‘open access’. Where there are no widespread library paper archives, this action threatens to undermine science research. University World News

Meeting Teacher Expectations in a DL Professional Development Programme – A Case Study for Sustained Applied Competence as Programme Outcome

Meeting teacher expectations for a professional development programme (PDP) is expected to strengthen sustainable applied competence as programme outcome since teachers will be more motivated to apply the programme content in practice. A revised distance learning (DL) programme was augmented by a practical component comprising a work-integrated portfolio and audio-visual material, aimed to support the […]

Open access journals in educational technology: Results of a survey of experienced users

As the academic publishing industry evolves, there has been an unprecedented growth of open access journals (OAJs). In educational technology alone, with an estimated 270 associated journals, nearly one-third are designated as open. Though OAJs are lauded for what their availability can contribute to social justice issues (reduction of subscription requirement barriers), some remain suspicious […]