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"In the online world you don't need to fill buildings or lecture theatres with people and you don't need to be trapped into a lecture timetable," says Peter Scott, director of the Open University's Knowledge Media Institute.The Open University, the UK's open access university, which allows people to study from home in their own time, has been an international pioneer of degree courses online. The university, with more than 263,000 students in 23 countries, has become a record breaker on the iTunes U service, which provides a digital library of materials for university students and staff. > But it's not...

Scholars who go against the academic grain and suffer the consequences for their apostasy have pinned some hopes for change on developing technology. “Already I have begun to encounter university colleagues, marginalized for their conservative views or for their dissatisfaction with the way things are done, who are looking for other ways of continuing the great tradition of higher learning, and of passing on to the next generation some of the knowledge that was passed onto them,” Roger Scrutton writes in the September 2010 issue of The American Spectator. “Such is the prevailing spirit in America, that I suspect the...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/statement-president-national-broadband-plan Home • Briefing Room • Statements & Releases The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release March 16, 2010 Statement from the President on the National Broadband Plan America today is on the verge of a broadband-driven Internet era that will unleash innovation, create new jobs and industries, provide consumers with new powerful sources of information, enhance American safety and security, and connect communities in ways that strengthen our democracy. Just as past generations of Americans met the great infrastructure challenges of the day, such as building the Transcontinental...

In urging professors at Southern Methodist University to “teach naked,” José A. Bowen is not suggesting they doff their pants. Instead, SMU’s dean of the Meadow School of the Arts is asking teachers to shed classroom computers, tedious PowerPoints and long-winded lectures. Nor should his decision to strip computers from SMU classrooms be considered evidence of a lunatic anti-technology bias. A jazz musician by training, Bowen is a longtime champion of smart technology on campus, penning a compelling article on the topic for the National Teaching & Learning Forum (www.ntlf.com/html/ti/naked.htm). Last week, Bowen revisited the theme in an interview with...

Gilbert Strang is a quiet man with a rare talent: helping others understand linear algebra. He's written a half-dozen popular college textbooks, and for years a few hundred students at the elite Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been privileged to take his course. Recently, with the growth of computer science, demand to understand linear algebra has surged. But so has the number of students Strang can teach. An MIT initiative called "OpenCourseWare" makes virtually all the school's courses available online for free — lecture notes, readings, tests and often video lectures. Strang's Math 18.06 course is among the most popular,...

As important as school vouchers are, the greatest progress toward choice probably isn't taking place in Utah right now. I say this not to minimize the efforts being made there, but to remind reformers the solutions to traditional questions may not have traditional answers. Instead, the most exciting progress in education reform is in technology and distance learning. Education technology does not merely mean having a computer (or computers) in the classroom. It is simply a computer, the student--and, depending on the format, the tutor--all connected by Internet technology. On the surface, it might not seem very revolutionary, but the...

In another innovative move to share its intellectual treasures with the public, the University of California, Berkeley, announced today that it is delivering educational content, including course lectures and symposia, free of charge through Google Video. Because of the quality and quantity of these video offerings, UC Berkeley will be the first university with its own page on the Google Video Web site: http://video.google.com/ucberkeley , campus officials said. The campus is making more than 250 hours of content available to the public through Google Video. "Google appreciates the opportunity to partner with progressive universities like UC Berkeley to make undiscovered...

"When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course." — Peter Drucker For-profit educational services. Capitalizing off of instructional training. Bankrolling tutelage on a gravy train. Go ahead and sneer; cringe and shudder — get it out of your system. Oh the horror, running a profitable business that includes many of the facets of a traditional higher education.[1] Perhaps this is one of the reasons that a disproportionate amount of the Ivory Tower is socialistically inclined; subconsciously they may fear that the market value of their research, teaching and professional existence subsists among relatively strange bedfellows, those...

*VANITY* Hello-- I am an electrical engineer, and am thinking of advancing my career to improve my ability to get into engineering management. I have BS in EE, but I am thinking of getting a Masters. A Masters in EE doesn't do a heck of a lot for a career apart from a little more salary, but I think an MBA would really help me along. Since I have a kid and it's lots of time to go to classes, I am thinking of doing an online MBA from home. So far, I am considering Liberty University and University of...

Nearly 50 Republican state lawmakers have signed a letter calling Sen. Tom Daschle's campaign ad about the state's distance learning program misleading. The 60-second spot features a Rapid City master's student thanking Daschle for securing nearly $900,000 for a Dakota State University program in Madison. The lawmakers, in a letter signed this week, contend Daschle is taking credit for work done by former Gov. Bill Janklow and the South Dakota Legislature. The letter also notes that although Daschle added the funding during Senate appropriations hearings, he ultimately voted against the overall 2003 Omnibus Bill. ''The feeling we got is that...