The case of the disappearing journals - open is not forever

"erasing" (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) by mbanere6

Printed documents from hundreds of years ago are still accessible and stored in museums and library archives. Digital resources can simply disappear forever if the site is taken down and no-one has thought of making a copy. This includes many scientific articles according to a new article, Open is not forever: a study of vanished open access journals. Open access publication has significantly widened access to scientific research articles and offered alternative channels for many researchers around the world. However, open access journals are often run on a low budget within universities or by organisations with little funding but high levels of enthusiasm and dedication. Unfortunately, some of these organisations eventually run out of steam and have to close down, leaving their journal unprotected and vulnerable. This study has examined the fate of these journals.

We found 192 OA journals that vanished from the web between 2000 and 2019, spanning all major research disciplines and geographic regions of the world. Our results raise vital concern for the integrity of the scholarly record and highlight the urgency to take collaborative action to ensure continued access and prevent the loss of more scholarly knowledge. We encourage those interested in the phenomenon of vanished journals to use the public dataset for their own research.

The authors claim that there are over 1,000 open access journals today that are inactive and whose material risks disappearing if nothing is done and this trend is likely to continue. Journals published by scholarly societies or research organisations are at most risk since they operate on low budgets. There are a number of international preservation services that save copies of journals but the article shows that a large number are not preserved and the risk is that if a journal closes down then all articles are lost.

If there is no general agreement whose responsibility it is to preserve electronic resources, no one will be responsible, and we risk losing large parts of the scholarly record due to inaction. Exactly how much digital journal content has already been lost is unknown since the data needed to assess the gravity of the situation is not collected anywhere, which also complicates assessing the risk of journals vanishing in the future.

Presumably there are similar concerns for the many repositories of open educational resources that have been established, often thanks to project funding. If the responsible organisations close down what will happen to these collections? I wonder if there are schemes to preserve even OER collections. The article closes with a plea for more collaboration.

As we have highlighted throughout the discussion, open is not forever, and so we close with a note on the urgent need for collaborative action in preserving digital resources and preventing the loss of more scholarly knowledge.

Reference
Laakso, M., Matthias, L., Naiko, J. (2020) Open is not forever: a study of vanished open access journals. Cornell University. arXiv:2008.11933.

The lies are free

"Fake Watches Look Real" (CC BY-SA 2.0) by Dick Thompson Sandian

In theory the internet could give everyone access to all the knowledge of humankind. Access to information would be a basic human right and there would be structures to support this in terms of compensating those who create the content. However, that concept is only a dream since so much valuable content is locked away behind paywalls and copyright restrictions. We have the illusion of access to everything, but once you start digging you soon run up against the walls. 

Quality content requires skilled authors and time-consuming investigation, and that costs money. Thus we have tabloid newspapers, full of biased and misleading content, on sale for free or at a trivial cost (subsidised by a multi-billionaire), whilst quality journalism is forced to charge for its content in order to survive. If you want a more balanced view of the world based on scientific evidence rather than opinions you will often have to pay for it and often it is much harder to find than the vast quantities of lies and nonsense that is available for free and often turns up high on your search list. This is the topic of an excellent article by Nathan J Robinson in Current Affairs, The Truth Is Paywalled But The Lies Are Free. 

... it costs time and money to access a lot of true and important information, while a lot of bullshit is completely free.

Current Affairs is a magazine that offers investigative journalism but of course depends on subscriptions to survive. The revenues from web advertising can't cover the costs for such publications so an increasing number of quality news channels are forced to set up a paywall. This in turn reduces their ability to attract new readers. In the last few years, I have begun subscribing to several magazines and newspapers (including the printed versions) but there is a limit to the number I can afford to pay for. Some have simply disappeared from my view. There are, of course, exceptions to this in the form of all the independent bloggers and journalists who publish for free but they all have bills to pay and there is a limit on how long they can afford to continue working for no reward. It's hard to compete against "free".

In the academic world we have the major scientific journals who still dominate despite significant inroads from the open access movement. If you don't belong to an institution that can afford to pay the high subscription rates you cannot access the latest research. This is a major handicap for researchers from developing countries who cannot read the relevant research in their field. 

Robinson tries to imagine what the internet could be like if it was run for the common good rather than for profit. Just imagine this!

In fact, to see just how much human potential is being squandered by having knowledge dispensed by the “free market,” let us briefly picture what “totally democratic and accessible knowledge” would look like. Let’s imagine that instead of having to use privatized research services like Google Scholar and EBSCO, there was a single public search database containing every newspaper article, every magazine article, every academic journal article, every court record, every government document, every website, every piece of software, every film, song, photograph, television show, and video clip, and every book in existence.

That was indeed one of the visions put forward in the early days of the internet but then the corporations took over. The article argues that such a universal database is technically possible but some mechanism is needed to fund it and also to compensate the content producers. Taxation could be way of dealing with this in the same way as some countries offer free or cheap healthcare but at the same time paying the doctors and nurses. Content providers would be compensated according to how many people access their work. Utopian indeed, but sometimes we need to question the system we have. 

But we are working on it. We are a long way from the world in which all knowledge is equally accessible. Hopefully someday our patchwork of intentionally-inefficient libraries will turn into a free storehouse of humanity’s recorded knowledge and creativity. In the meantime, however, we need to focus on getting good and thoughtful material in as many hands as possible and breaking down the barriers we can.

 

Digital or print course literature - it's complicated

CC0 Public domain on Max Pixel

Do you prefer to read print or digital books and articles? To me this sort of question is largely irrelevant because it all depends on the context and which form is most fit for purpose. I read enormous amounts both in print and online and switch from one medium to the other many times a day. I still love the feeling of reading a print newspaper or having a printed book to read in bed or while travelling. I have many packed bookshelves at home and the collection continues to grow. I even save years of back issues of the magazines I subscribe to and get satisfaction from my groaning bookshelves. At the same time I read a wide variety of online news sites, e-books and journal articles on my computer, tablet and mobile and I see these two forms of reading as complementary and not as an either/or conflict.

I suspect this is the same even for students. The growth of digital course literature, both from commercial publishers as well as free open textbooks from sites such as BC Open Textbooks (University of British Columbia), prompts frequent media interest often promoting the idea of a battle between print and digital. A new article by Andy M Benoit in the Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Textbook Affordability and Student Acceptance of eTextbooks: An Institutional Case-study, sheds light on this issue and shows that the choice between print and digital is complex and there is no clear "winner" or "loser". The abstract summarises the study as follows:

There is significant interest among institutions of higher education in the potential of digital textbooks to enhance student learning and to address issues arising from textbook affordability. Innovations in digital textbook design and delivery infrastructure and the emergence of exemplary practices from early adopters signal that digital reading may be a practical alternative to print. Less well understood, however, is students’ experience of textbook affordability, their experience of print and digital textbook utilization, and factors that might influence their acceptance of digital textbooks. This paper explores the results of a semester-long eTextbook research project at a Canadian college and shares six suggestions grounded in student feedback.

Several issues are relevant here. Firstly there is the high cost of buying printed course literature and the study shows that many students do not buy all the required reading because of this. Many share books and I'm sure that many pages are copied and scanned to save money. The students in the study are particularly critical of teachers' underutilisation of some "required" reading in the course itself. Required reading must be an integral part of the course, otherwise it should be described as optional or recommended reading. Interestingly, despite the students belonging to the supposed digital generation, 65.8% of them stated that they prefer printed course literature. At the same time the cost savings of lower price or free digital literature are also extremely attractive and this leads to students having an ambivalent attitude to the print-digital dilemma. Even when the digital option is chosen there are issues around format and readability. The reading experience depends so much on which device is used and whether there is sufficiently good resolution, accessibility options, device portability and battery life.

The article makes a number of recommendations urging universities to offer more support to help students chose the best option for their course literature. If they choose digital material they need help to choose the right option for their device, or in some cases choose the right device to read the literature. Vendors of e-books should be able to offer a variety of formats adapted to different devices (as many already do). The author makes the following recommendations to universities and publishers.

• Strengthen the value proposition for “required” textbooks to inform student purchasing decisions
• Support students in identifying the medium that meets their needs
• Provide information to ensure personal devices are conducive for eReading
• Ensure eReader applications meet performance expectations
• Develop vendor partnerships and relationships
• Support students in developing medium appropriate reading strategies and study skills

The important point here is that there is no "right" answer; it all depends on context and ease of use. Sometimes I want the print version because I know I will refer to it for many years to come and I want it on my bookshelf. Other literature can be accessed digitally. Some literature will be read on a mobile device and other works will be read on my laptop or desktop computer. When I read digital material I want optimal resolution and the ability to annotate easily as well as being able to look up terminology and easily create references. Let's make sure that students are able to make informed choices and are able to read the course literature according to their own preferences.

Reference
Benoit, A. M. (2018). Textbook Affordability and Student Acceptance of eTextbooks: An Institutional Case-study. The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 9(2). Retrieved from https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cjsotl_rcacea/vol9/iss2/3

Beyond the horizon

Educause,
Photo: CC BY Some rights reserved by Vancouver film school

The annual NMC Horizon reports on trends in educational technology have been eagerly awaited and intensively debated over the past decade or so. Last year New Media Consortium unexpectedly went out of business and it looked as if the reports would also disappear. However Educause were able to acquire the rights to the report and the back issues and have also succeeded in finalising this year's report, though understandably a few months behind normal schedule. They have just released a preview of the higher education report, NMC Horizon Report Preview 2018, with the full version promised by the summer.

As usual, the report has been written by about 70 experts from around the world and identifies key trends and challenges in educational technology in higher education from a short, medium and long-term perspective. This year, as before, contains few real surprises since all the technologies mentioned have been on the radar for some time and many of them never really become mainstream, despite all the predictions and innovative initiatives.

The full report will contain detailed analyses of the trends and valuable links to current initiatives in each area. Here are the trends in brief:
Driving educational technology adoption

• Short-term: Growing focus on measuring learning, Redesigning learning spaces.
• Medium-term: Proliferation of open educational resources, New forms of interdisciplinary studies.
• Long-term: Advancing cultures of innovation, Cross-institution and cross-sector collaboration.

Challenges impeding technology adoption

• Solvable: Authentic learning experiences, Improving digital literacy.
• Difficult: Adapting organizational designs to the future of work, Advancing digital equity.
• Wicked: Economic and political pressures, Rethinking the roles of educators.

Important developments in educational technology for higher education

• Short-term: Analytics technologies, Makerspaces.
• Medium-term: Adaptive learning technologies, Artificial intelligence.
• Long-term: Mixed reality, Robotics.

For me the most intriguing category is the wicked challenges impeding technology adoption. Rethinking the role of the teacher doesn't seem to be so radical an idea, considering the wide adoption of collaborative learning, flipped classroom, project-based learning, peer assessment and so on. The transition from lecturer to facilitator is still controversial and even when the teachers are positive there are significant barriers in the form of regulations, efficiency demands and the most wicked of all - tradition. Unless the new role(s) of the teacher is accepted then the other trends may not play out as predicted.

The other wicked challenge only hints at what I see as the biggest threat to all these developments. Economic pressures on universities are growing and governments are increasingly focused on accountability, financial efficiency and simplistic league tables and rankings. However the last two years have shown us that changes in government can quickly reverse years of educational progress, especially when populist cries to return to the "good old days" become educational policy. Further personal data scandals could quickly undermine all trust in the companies who have driven the edtech movement. We have learnt that development is neither linear nor predictable and that just about anything can happen to upset the trajectory. That is probably the most wicked challenge.

How inclusive are your networks?

CC0 Public domain by geralt on Pixabay

We all live in filter bubbles, no matter how hard we try to widen our horizons. Information in languages we don't understand are automatically filtered out and we tend to rely on a limited number of trusted sources and contacts even in academic work. There are many studies on citation bias showing that authors of articles in scientific journals tend to cite sources in their own country or in culturally similar countries. Added to this is the tyranny of rankings and impact factors that give greatest weight to articles published in the major American and European journals. How often do you cite work by academics active in China, Russia, India, Africa or South America? How is the gender balance? A similar bias is evident in our networks. Have a look at who you follow on various social media: how diverse are they? If you can see that they are nearly all white Europeans and Americans then maybe it's time to widen your scope.

I was alerted to this problem by a fascinating article by Maha Bali in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inclusive Citation: How Diverse Are Your References?. Inclusive citation involves searching outside your usual sources and actively connecting with colleagues from different parts of the world and with different cultural backgrounds to yourself. The article gives some practical advice about expanding your horizons by reviewing your present networks and sources and then connecting with people outside that sphere. Even if you have one contact from outside your standard sources, find out who they network with and cite and work from there. You will undoubtedly expand your horizons by doing so.

Have a look at the reading lists you recommend for students. Are we reinforcing a cultural bias and demonstrating to students which types of academic sources are the "right" ones to cite.

If you teach, check your syllabus. How diverse is your reading list? How is the White of your reading list compared to the diversity of your student body? Will a student taking your class find someone like them in the reading list, and imagine themselves as scholars of this field one day?

We need to widen our perspectives and acknowledge that there is excellent research and academic work in all parts of the world. Much of it is written in languages other than English and this of course limits its impact. Maybe translation software will soon be able to help us access these sources but until then it is difficult to be truly inclusive. We can at least review our own biases and try to offer more diverse perspectives.

If your citations aren’t diverse and inclusive enough, chances are, you’re missing some valuable perspectives. Chances are, you’ll learn something new and it will resonate with you. And eventually, it will become habit, and you won’t have to count references any more because you will naturally already have a diverse list of authors whom you respect and read regularly.

Open distance learning is thriving in Pakistan

The more you travel the more you learn that the world is so much more complex and fascinating than you could ever grasp by staying at home. By meeting and discussing with people you realise that we all have so much in common even if we live in different circumstances and have been raised in different cultural frameworks. Our news feeds present an extremely narrow window on the world and only by visiting and meeting people can you uncover some of the complexities and begin to build bridges. The only way forward is through meetings and discussion rather than confrontation.

Campus

I have just returned from Islamabad, Pakistan, where I was privileged to be invited to speak at a conference held at the world's fourth largest university, Allama Iqbal Open University. The image of Pakistan presented in western media is rather negative and that makes me curious to find out more. The contrast between media image and reality could not have been greater and I was warmly welcomed everywhere by friendly and very gifted colleagues. Even when wandering around the city and the sights there were always people who wanted to take selfies with us and there was a genuine curiosity to find out who we foreigners were.

Allama Iqbal Open University, founded in 1974, is the second oldest open university in the world (after the UK pioneer) and has an annual enrollment of 1.3 million students, 56% of whom are women. Their main objective is to provide education for all those who would not otherwise have access, in particular the rural and urban poor, a particularly marginalised and massive group in Pakistan. The rural/urban student balance is 58% against 42%. Anyone can study and students can also study at their own pace since the majority of them also work. Women in poor rural areas are a particular focus area and many qualify for free tuition, as do prisoners and transgenders (possibly a unique initiative in higher education). The university's social responsibility agenda is impressive and demonstrates a commitment to transforming the country by offering education for all.

Textbooks everywhere

Packaging

The logistics of offering education at all levels, from basic literacy training to doctorate level, to over a million students spread all over a vast country like Pakistan are daunting indeed. They do this by operating both as an online institution and by the massive physical distribution of books and course materials by post. They have the largest publishing house in the country with over 1.8 million books printed per year and the Islamabad campus has, not surprisingly, its own postal office sorting office to deal with the astounding volume of parcels. The printing, binding and distribution operations are still very labour intensive and the equipment was rather old but that made it all the more impressive. We toured the printing and distribution facility where roughly 120 employees make sure that the right books and materials are delivered to the right student at an institution with such a vast number of admissions each term. Although so much of the process is still manual, the address labels have digital codes and students can track their parcels on the website if they have access. 
Of course, a large number of the students do not have access to the net and so the textbooks are vital. Those who do have access can read the books online since they are all available as open educational resources, something rather few western institutions can boast.

Radio studio

There is also a large media production and educational technology department producing video lectures, discussions and seminars as well as audio material to supplement the course material offered via Moodle. The university produces TV and radio programmes that are broadcast nationally as well as running an FM radio station.

Distance and online education requires support, especially when so many of the students are completely unfamiliar with this form of education, and the university has built up an extensive support organisation that reaches out to even the most remote regions.  This consists of 9 regional campuses, 33 regional centres, 41 approved study centres (for face-to-face programs) and 138 part-time regional coordinating offices. Here students can meet for workshops, classroom sessions, tutoring and examination. The physical meeting spaces are essential for student success because few would be able to complete the courses solely by self-study.

The conference I attended had the theme of connecting collaborative communities and there is a clear commitment from the top management to move towards more collaborative forms of online education. I sensed a clear interest among the faculty to adapt teaching practices to accommodate more collaborative digital tools and platforms. This starts with teachers learning by collaborating, both within the university and internationally and I hope that we three invited guest speakers were able to contribute to this process.

How open? How flexible? It's not so simple

"Flexible Woman" (CC BY-SA 2.0) by Kurayba

We use words like open, free, flexible and personalised and assume that are positive and desirable. Who doesn't want to be described in those terms? The problem is that in practice these concepts can prove to be very complex and the effects can sometimes be counter-productive. Moving from the highly structured world of traditional education to flexible, open and learner-centred education based on digital media is a rather daunting process that requires a complete overhaul of your practice and theoretical base.

A new post by Martin Weller (possibly the most cited person on this blog), Maybe more isn't better, questions the concept of flexibility. It sounds great but the question is when does flexibility turn into chaos.

The second assumption is that “People want more flexibility”. Again, this seems obvious, and indeed may well be correct in many instances. But at the EADTU conference I was struck by a presentation from Rieny van den Munckhof, from the OU Netherlands. They found that, echoing some of the sentiment around personalisation above, that their previously highly flexible model (start any time, take exam when you want), was in fact, too flexible. It worked for highly independent learners, but they’ve switched to a more structured approach. This has improved retention and allowed for more interactive pedagogy.

Flexibility depends on perspective. Increased flexibility for the learner may cause headaches for the teacher or the administrator and has to be balanced between the different interested parties, otherwise it can backfire. Flexibility must be introduced in small measures and everyone needs to learn to deal with it. I've also experienced courses where we tried so hard to offer full flexibility that most learners simply didn't understand the course structure (or possibly the lack of it). A certain degree of flexibility, but within a given overall structure, would seem to be the answer. Total flexibility generally results in confusion.

Openness is another concept that sounds so good but becomes complex when you try to implement it too quickly. I believe that the use of open educational resources and practices can radically improve teaching and learning as well as making quality education accessible for all. However the road is bumpy and traditional practices are hard to break, especially when they offer the comfort of trusted structures and routines. An article from the Norwegian public service TV channel NRK last week (Norge kaster bort millioner på noe elever og lærere ikke vil ha - Norway wastes millions on something neither pupils nor teachers want) gives plenty food for thought for those of us who promote OER and OEP. Since the article is in Norwegian I will paraphrase the main points.

Norwegian schools have for several years collaborated in building a national OER repository, NDLA, where teachers' resources are tagged, linked to the national curriculum and used in schools all over the country. This has lead to many schools using NDLA instead of traditional course books. Now an increasing number of schools and local authorities would like to revert to course books and are critical that the open platform has to a certain extent become a monopoly that marginalises publishers and other suppliers of digital resources. Some teachers and pupils see a clearer structure in traditional course books and find them more reliable than collections of resources created by teachers.This is very understandable and a weakness with OER is that teachers need to be very skilled in finding the right resources for each lesson instead of simply moving on to the next chapter or module of a published course book. Pupils too need to learn how to find and use these resources and this process takes time. Maybe the Norwegian model needs to be revised and there must still be a role for professionally produced course literature (printed and digital). Hopefully the two models can find a happy medium.

So we maybe have to be more careful with words that sound so beautiful but have many hidden consequences. It's a question of how open/flexible/free is appropriate in any given situation and realising that there are many layers in each concept. In certain circumstances it may even be best to be closed, restricted or rigid.

The lure of free and escaping the productification of scholarship

"Free (but at what price?)" (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) by mistersnappy

Words like free and open can mean almost anything today and we need to be much more critical whenever we hear them. Global corporations offer enticing and exciting collaborative tools for free but slowly tighten the belt around the part that is free of charge until you are finally forced to pay for the premium version or you find that your free profile, content and interactions are being monetised in some other way. We are all more or less locked into Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft generally because the tools and services they offer are professional, attractive and in many cases even addictive. The alternative is to use only open source solutions or do it yourself and the results may not be as easy to use or as attractive than the commercial alternatives but you have the security of not being monitored or monetised.

But starting open alternatives to the giants is easier said than done. Mastodon has been around for a while now as an open non-commercial alternative to Twitter, with the attractive claim that, in Mastodon, you are a person not a product. I've been tempted to join but the problem is starting to build up a network all over again and I have thankfully so far avoided any problems in Twitter. It is an attractive alternative but a quiet backwater compared to the flood surge of Twitter. Another attractive alternative is the ad-free search engine Duckduckgo that doesn't track you or remember what you've searched for previously. I use it now and then but I admit I still rely on Google even if I'm aware of the implications. It's hard to escape.

In the field of research however there is a growing discontent with the commercial platforms of ResearchGate and Academia.edu as they become increasingly commercial. This is highlighted n an article in Times Higher Education, Scholars launch non-profit rival to ResearchGate and Academia.edu. ResearchGate and Academia.edu are used by many academics to share research and network but fears are that they are aligning with major publishers and mining researchers' data in what can be termed as the productification of scholarship.

An alternative is now being launched in the form of  ScholarlyHub, a non-profit platform that does not sell data or track its users. It's about academics running a service for academics but of course this cannot be done completely for free. The commercial platforms' "free" services come, as we know, with a price; generally your data. So ScholarlyHub has to charge its users from the very start and the proposal is to take $25 a year to cover the costs of running the service. This is always a hard sell in the world of "free" but the hope is that many enlightened users will see the benefits of not being tracked. Once there are enough users they have more ambitious plans according to project leader Guy Geltner:

Another plank of the plan is to make ScholarlyHub a publishing platform. “Without that we won’t be sustainable,” he said. The site would not charge article processing charges, but instead would allow academic communities to move their publishing away from for-profit journals to the platform. They could make the switch without changing their brand or journal “one iota”, Professor Geltner continued. "The network will become a resource that could (and I believe should) provide mentoring as well as quality control. And that may well take the form of a traditional pre-publication peer review," he explained.

The greatest challenge for all these alternative services is reaching a critical mass where it will be attractive for users to switch. Plus persuading people that you actually have to pay to be free.

Combating academic spam

CC0 Public domain on Max Pixel

One of the week's most interesting stories is the disappearance of Jeremy Beale's (University of Colorado at Denver) excellent watchdog site on predatory journals and publishers. According to an article in Inside Higher Ed, No More 'Beall's List', the site was suddenly taken down and replaced with a notice "This service is no longer available" and since then Beale has not been available for any comment, leading to speculation in social media and news sites. According to an article in ScienceInsider:

Beall declined to comment. But a CU Denver spokesperson told ScienceInsider that Beall made a “personal decision” to take down his list of low-quality journals that charge authors a fee to publish, often with little or no review or editing. The spokesperson says the blog was not hacked, nor was it taken down as a result of legal threats, and Beall will remain on the school’s faculty. The spokesperson could not confirm whether the blog's removal is permanent.

Beale's list has become an important monitor of publications that spam academics, offering publication at a price and falsely claiming to use peer review, as well as a myriad of bogus conferences that invite academics to contribute (at a price) and then at best only offering a token event. Academic spam is a major issue and it can be hard for many to tell between the serious journals and conference organisers and the bogus ones. I'm not a very significant name in the academic community but even my in-box receives several academic spam mails per day offering me the chance to publish in some obscure journal or an appearance at a conference on a theme that I don't even work with. The extremely long list of so-called open access publishers in Beale's lists could be seen to discredit the open model but at the same time there are thousands of serious peer-reviewed open access publications. Whenever new models are tested there will be people who will try to exploit new freedoms and therefore it is vital to have watchdogs and whistle-blowers who can expose the less serious actors.

According to some reports, the site and its related Facebook group has been withdrawn due to pressure or threats, though there are no precise details on this. Anyone providing such a watchdog service risks the fury of those who are blacklisted and Beale has certainly had to put up with considerable opposition over the years. At the same time there is always the risk of accusing an innocent party. This is a major undertaking and is simply not sustainable if it is run by an individual, not matter how dedicated. A better solution would be an international organisation with high credibility to take over the role but more in terms of quality assurance rather than as whistle-blower. A colleague of mine suggested that the list could instead be one of approved journals and conferences and that a quality assurance framework and certification could make it clear which journals were serious and which were not. We need to build on and promote internationally recognised quality labels for open access publications to make it easier to spot the fraudsters.

Not surprisingly Beale's list has now been republished on a number of sites but such measures are only a temporary solution. The list must be continually updated and reviewed and it is also essential that those on the list are given a fair chance to improve and be taken off the list. Jeremy Beale has done a great job over the years but one pioneer cannot keep such a service going. Which organisation can step up and take over?

A detailed chronicle of this story is given in this blog post, What Happened to Jeffrey Beall’s List of (Allegedly) Predatory Publishers?

Amazon goes OER

"openness" (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) by coolnalu

Are we in the midst of a major change in the distribution and sharing of open educational resources?
Just as I had published my previous post on the platform panOpen, I read that even Amazon are entering the OER arena. Amazon have announced a new platform called Amazon Inspire that will allow schools to search for, share and manage resources in an environment that will to some extent resemble the massively successful Amazon website. They promise that the service will be completely free for all schools and a beta version will come online for pilot testing in the next few weeks.

An article on Edweek Market Brief, Amazon Education to Launch New Website for Open Education Resources, describes the platform:

- Users of the site will be able to add ratings and reviews, and to receive recommendations based on their previous selections. Educators will be able to curate open resources, self-publish material they have developed, and put a school’s entire digital library that is open and freely available online.

This sounds very similar to the platform offered by panOpen except there's no mention of the twist that they offer; charging students for access and offering revenue sharing to contributing teachers. The difference is of course the sheer clout behind Amazon in terms of being able to sweep the board if their idea hits the soft spot. Schools and teachers can upload their resources and make them available to all, assumedly with Creative Commons licenses, and Amazon offers powerful search, analytics and safe storage. The problem with OER has always been the lack of consistent metadata making many resources extremely hard to find as well as the lack of efficient search tools that can harvest suitable material from the myriad of OER repositories that exist. If anyone is able to pull it all together then Amazon seems like a good bet given the success of their business so far with recommendations based on previous searches and preferences.

Matt Reed in Inside Higher Ed is enthusiastic about the new venture, Amazon OER? He sees a similarity between Amazon's interest in OER and Apple's interest in podcasting when it launched iTunes and the iPod. Most of the podcasts available on iTunes are, like OER, largely free and produced by enthusiasts but the impact of some podcasts is global thanks to the power of the iTunes platform. Similarly hundreds of universities already offer over 2 million lectures free to download on the iTunes U channel. 

In the best of all possible worlds, the podcast analogy comes to fruition. Apple was the first to bring podcasts to scale, and itunes is still the most popular place to find and distribute them. But there’s no shortage of alternatives. (I’m a fan of Pocket Casts, fwiw.) It’s easy now to listen regularly to a host of podcasts without ever dipping a toe in the Apple universe. If enough alternatives come along to Amazon that it can’t control the market, even if it remains prominent within it, we could all win.  

The inevitable question is what Amazon gets out of offering this platform. There must be a business model in there despite their insistence that they will never put it behind a paywall. The logical conclusion is that they will try to sell commercial resources based on your preferences and this was indeed the logic behind Pearson's Open Class venture a couple of years ago. It will be up to the user to decide whether the openr resource is better than the commercial one but I don't think it needs to be an either-or issue. In some cases the commercial resource will offer opportunities that no open reosurce can match and then the price is justified. There must be room for commercial high-quality material as long as we can make wise choices. The other attraction for Amazon must be big data. A platform like this if it takes off will get millions of clicks and the user data must be worth quite a bit for developers. Amazon, like the other giants (Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook etc), are drilling for the new oil, data. The rewards are in how you refine that crude oil into new products and services.

Could 2016 be the year OER go mainstream and at what cost?

Swedish MOOC report is published

"Network" (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) by Anacin Extero

Slightly revised version 2 Feb 2016.
Sweden has been rather late in reacting to the MOOC boom and only in the last two years have a handful of universities started offering courses both on the major MOOC platforms Coursera and EdX but also more home grown channels. Last spring the government commissioned the Swedish Higher Education Authority the task of writing a report with recommendations on how MOOCs could be promoted within the framework of Swedish higher education, outlining opportunities as well as barriers. I was invited to join the reference group for this report and on 27 January it was time to publish the report with an accompanying seminar for invited guests in Stockholm. The report is at present only available in Swedish so I will provide here a summary of the main findings as well as adding my own comments and conclusions.
Download the report here (in Swedish).

Background

The report was based on a survey that was sent to every state-funded higher education institution in the country during autumn 2015 asking about experience with MOOCs so far, plans to launch MOOCs, motives for investing in MOOCs (or not) as well as potential benefits and drawbacks. Six institutions have so far officially offered MOOCs but there are several others who have offered massive open courses without actually labeling them as MOOCs. There is still considerable uncertainty as to what exactly a MOOC is. Swedish universities have for the last 20 years offered a wide range of short online for-credit courses (usually 7-15 credits) as part of the higher education system. There are no fees but you have to apply for admission and fulfil the prerequisites for admission. Many understandably see MOOCs as simply massive versions of what we have been doing for years and wonder what the fuss is all about.

The question to be answered in the report is really about whether MOOC development should be financed by tax-payers' money, how they can be incorporated into the educational system and if so how much funding should go to this new area. The report offers the following recommendations to the government (my own abridged translated summary).

The report is positive to the development of MOOCs within the state-funded education system and Swedish institutions should be encouraged to develop open courses in line with international development. The main reasons for this are to showcase and raise the international profile of Swedish universities and higher education, reach out to new student categories and contribute to lifelong learning. Furthermore, it is hoped that MOOC development can lead to improvements in universities' regular online courses, both technically and pedagogically. The report also recommends a greater focus on pedagogical development in e-learning.

Proposals to the government

• Institutions should be free to develop MOOCs and other open courses and therefore new regulations concerning this form of higher education should be drawn up. However MOOC participants cannot be considered as students in the legal sense of the term and there is no question of participants gaining credits from Swedish MOOCs.
• Institutions are allowed to use a certain amount of their state financing to develop and run MOOCs. It is up to each institution how much of this should go towards MOOC development. 
• All institutions should be able to develop open online courses and to achieve this funding should also be available to cover professional development in digital pedagogy.
• Although MOOCs are free it should be possible for institutions to charge fees for certificates, as often required in many international MOOC consortia.

Proposals to higher education institutions

Existing experience of developing and running MOOCs should be shared between institutions. The report identifies three possible lines of development for open online education:

• Institutions who wish to develop and offer MOOCs should be free to do so.
• Institutions may also develop hybrid courses which are available both as part of regular for-credit courses and as open non-credit courses (MOOCs).
• Institutions should be encouraged to collaborate to produce open, national versions of introductory courses and skills courses that today are duplicated by many institutions. The common online course material can then be complemented at each institution by on-site seminars and support.

The authority believes that these recommendations will lead to higher quality and increased efficiency however it will be up to each institution to decide the extent to which they will follow the guidelines.

Discussion points

This report offers universities the opportunity to develop MOOCs and join international consortia but does not dictate exactly what they should do or how they should do it. The authority simply wants to remove potential barriers to MOOC development in Sweden but leave the strategic decisions up to the institutions. Many are wary of entering the MOOC arena due to uncertainty about legal aspects such as where course material and student information are stored and how that information can be used by third parties. These issues are still unresolved but maybe the coming debate around the report will result in some new initiatives.

The report finally gives MOOCs official recognition in Swedish higher education and that the further development of such courses can benefit regular degree programmes, reach out to new groups of learners and showcase Swedish education on a global level. I suspect however that the report will loosen the lock on Pandora's box and that there will then be a number of important issues to resolve such as openness, sharing, recognition of prior learning, competence-based degrees etc. The report does not offer any new guidance in terms of copyright issues (that was not within the scope of the commission) but points out some of the areas that need further investigation and urges universities to work together to find a common praxis. This, I think, is a pity because I don't think that type of collaboration will happen without a catalyst from above. I believe we need a national policy on openness recommending that educational resources financed by the state should be available to all under a Creative Commons license. Without that we will continue to produce hundreds of variations on the same theme and reinvent the wheel at the taxpayers' expense. However, the report opens the door to universities collaborating to produce national MOOCs in subject areas that are common to all students, eg study skills, academic writing, scientific methodology.

One of the trickier points in the report is allowing universities to charge fees for MOOC certificates. This breaks a central principle of Swedish higher education, that it should be free from tuition and examination fees. Many will feel that this move could set a dangerous precedent but the reason for the change is to allow universities who are part of the major consortia like Coursera, EdX and FutureLearn to follow consortium policy. Most MOOC consortia today charge for certification and allowing learners with Swedish universities to get free certificates would create conflict within those consortia. This issue is likely to become even more complicated with Coursera's recent moves to make many of its courses fee-paying by default with free participants only entitled to view a restricted amount of the course content (see article in Inside Higher Ed, Limits of open).

In addition many institutions are worried about the implications of awarding certificates in their name to MOOC participants where it is almost impossible to verify that the participant has actually done the coursework themselves. Secure forms of online examination are still an issue and as a consequence the recognition of MOOC certificates for students applying for regular university courses presents challenges that require national and international coordination.

Finally many of the unresolved issues here boil down to a crucial issue; quality. If we can agree to implement existing quality assurance guidelines on all open online courses we can establish criteria by which to assess the validity of courses and set requirements for recognising certificates.

An English summary of the report will be available in the near future but otherwise you'll need to run the present version through Google Translate to get the gist of it. I hope my summary here has at least given you the main points.

Credit for peer review

"365: day 141" (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) by Nick in exsilio

As researchers gain more visibility by publishing articles in open access journals and expand their networks through social media and research communities it's time the reviewers also received more public recognition. Peer review is the foundation of all scientific research but those who do the work get little reward for their efforts apart from a thank-you e-mail from the publisher. Being asked to review for a scientific journal is a considerable merit but it has so far been difficult to show publically. Reviewing is a demanding and time-consuming unpaid task often squeezed into reviewer's evenings and weekends. Can peer review be made more open and can reviewers get visible credit?

One solution to this that has been in operation for a few years now is called Publons. This is a community of over 50,000 reviewers who can register their verifiable peer review assignments and make their experience visible in their profiles (so far 281,239 reviews in 16,192 journals). Publons' aim is to allow members to:

Record, verify, and showcase your peer review contributions in a format you can include in job and funding applications (without breaking reviewer anonymity).

Most reviews are of course anonymous and cannot be published publically except when all parties agree and such cases can be read on Publons. Otherwise the service is based on the recognition e-mails from the publisher which are also verified in cooperation between Publons and the major publishers. Registered reviews can also have their profiles automatically updated if the review for a publication that is a Publons partner. The result is that reviewers have a verified profile that can be used in funding applications or when applying for a new position. You decide how your information is presented and the level of detail.

Services like this are giving long-awaited recognition to the vast amount of previously invisible work that lies behind every published article and even if there are still no financial rewards at least reviewers have reliable evidence of their expertise. 

Read more about Publons in an article from Nature, The scientists who get credit for peer review.

Reading around the world

  by pietroizzo

I can recommend that you watch this TED talk by Ann Morgan (below), My year reading a book from every country in the world. She decided to read a book from every country in the world and here she describes how she succeeded. It was not an easy task since only a fraction of the world's published fiction ever gets translated to English whilst the best-selling titles in English tend to be translated to almost every other language. She considered herself very well read but realised that her perspective was of course almost exclusively that of the English speaking countries, in particular the UK and the USA. Her challenge was a daunting one since many countries had little or no accessible literature for speakers of English or other major western languages. She succeeded thanks to networking, spreading the word on social media and benefitting from some remarkable crowd-sourcing when stories were translated into English but volunteer enthusiasts.

This is a heart-warming success story and a tribute to the collaborative and open culture on the net that so seldom gets media coverage. It also highlights the potential of crowd-sourced translation to bring literature from developing countries to a global audience. Very few, if any, commercial publishers will risk commissioning English translations of works from, say, Burkino Faso, Kazakhstan or Laos but groups of students, teachers or writers could share the task and produce open e-books, not for commercial gain but as showcase for the country's writers. It's a similar model to sites like Jamendo that offer free music with Creative Commons licenses that can be downloaded and reused. The musicians make no money from this but can gain global reputation and recognition that may result in commercial opportunities later on. Time for an open literature movement to promote world literature?



Another difficulty in reading around the world is that the vast majority of world languages are not even on the net yet according to an article in The Atlantic, The Internet Isn't Available in Most Languages.

At the moment, the Internet only has webpages in about five percent of the world's languages. Even national languages like Hindi and Swahili are used on only .01 percent of the 10 million most popular websites. The majority of the world’s languages lack an online presence that is actually useful.

So even if the infrastructure and technology are available there is simply very little to read there for millions of people. The popular social media lack instructions and templates in most languages making them impossible to use. We need to find innovative strategies to widen the linguistic range of the internet and ensure that there is relevant content for all. The notion that open educational resources, MOOCs and so on can make education accessible for all will not happen until those resources are available in many more languages than today. The lack of linguistic diversity on the net deserves more attention and we need to find ways to stimulate the development of digital content in all languages. A lot can be done by volunteer grassroots initiatives, providing free open platforms, training and support, but more stimulus, especially financial, is required from national and international organisations.

E-books - managing the transition

  by TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³ on Flickr

Every time a report indicates that cherished traditional concepts like classroom teaching, printed books, writing with pen and paper or reading printed newspapers are more effective than their digital equivalents you can almost hear the collective sigh of relief that maybe we can soon return to the world we once knew before all this new technology came along. We all have an instinctive fear of the new and an often illogical love of the practices we grew up with. I have my own blind spots when it comes to new concepts whereas I fully embrace some of them. Maybe the results of some studies are affected by the fact that the test group was more used to the traditional method then the digital version. In the early days of say the motor car you would probably have found that the majority preferred horse carriages until the new invention had matured and the advantages became self-evident. It's funny how we have happily abandoned some media (vinyl LPs, audio cassettes, VHS, letter writing, film cameras) but hang on passionately to others (above all books).

An interesting article by Dan Cohen, What’s the matter with ebooks? In our praise for print, we forget the great virtues of digital formats, calls for some balance in the debate between printed and digital literature. Even if reports show sales of e-books leveling off this is really a mirage since a great deal of e-reading is not traceable. There are vast amounts of e-literature available from open publishers as well as private publication and the mainstream surveys only track sales of commercially published e-books. I read vast amounts on the net but almost never commercial e-books and I'm sure millions of others do likewise. As the technology improves and new business models emerge (many present models almost actively discourage e-reading) the present analogue/digital debate will become largely irrelevant.

... jump forward 10 or 20 or 50 years, and you should have a hard time saying that the e-reading technology won’t be much better—perhaps even indistinguishable from print, and that adoption will be widespread.

Reading will become digital even if the transition will not be as abrupt as the move from analogue audio or from fixed to mobile telephony. Digital reading offers an enhanced reading experience with advanced referencing and notetaking functions as well as multimedia support. Future digital reading interfaces could well be able to reproduce the feel of leafing through a first edition or ancient manuscript in a way that would be impossible in print today unless you are privileged enough to have access to the right library. The present arguments in favour of print will probably evaporate as digital publishing matures. Cohen argues that we should shift the focus from preserving tradition to embracing digital publication and focusing more on how to successfully manage the transition.

I’m a historian, not a futurist, but I suspect that we’re not going to have to wait anywhere near forty years for ebooks to become predominant, and that the “plateau” is in part a mirage. That may cause some hand-wringing among book traditionalists, an emotion that is understandable: books are treasured artifacts of human expression. But in our praise for print we forget the great virtues of digital formats, especially the ease of distribution and greater access for all—if done right.

Horizon Report 2015

It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future, as the great baseball player and coach Yogi Berra is reputed to have said. However every year at the start of February New Media Consortium unveil the influential NMC Horizon Report on technology trends influencing higher education. Each year the eagerly awaited report features six trends, technologies and challenges and divides them according to an estimated time to implementation. This year's report has the following line-up:

Trends
Short-term: increased use of blended learning, redesigning learning spaces
Mid-term: measuring learning, proliferation of open educational resources
Long-term: advancing cultures of change and innovation, increasing cross-institution collaboration

Challenges
Solvable: blending formal and informal learning, improving digital literacy
Difficult: personalised learning, teaching complex thinking
Wicked: rewards for teaching, competing models of education

Technologies
Short-term: flipped classroom, bring your own device
Mid-term: makerspace, wearable technology
Long-term: internet of things, adaptive learning technologies

Most of these trends are no surprise to anyone involved in e-learning and regular readers of the report recognize some issues that have been on the list for many years, always just around the corner but never quite going mainstream. Concepts like flipped classroom, blended learning and open educational resources do not seem particularly new but I think the justification for including them is that they will finally move from being pioneer projects to full acceptance. The influence of the digital revolution on education does not move in a predictable linear progression but comes in fits and starts with a number of Gartner hype cycles all intertwining with each other. As a result trends that seem to be on the near horizon suddenly appear further away and other ones can suddenly appear right in the foreground from nowhere. A bit like quantum physics ...

However for me the report has two very important roles. Firstly it's a solid report that can be used to influence decision-makers, outlining clearly the key challenges for universities in the next 5-10 years without being too unwieldy. It can be read in under an hour and provides a good foundation for strategic discussions. Secondly I appreciate all the references to current projects and initiatives in each of the fields covered. Each year I discover real pearls in these lists that can be used to inspire others. I haven't clicked on all the links yet (and maybe never will) but here are some excellent take-aways from this year's report:

• Competency-Based Education Network - A network of 33 US universities working in the growing field of competency-based education - recognising workplace skills and combining academic and professional education. 
• Code of practice for learning analytics (JISC) - As the field of learning analytics finally begins to mature many institutions are concerned about student data being in the hands of commercial interests. This handbook from JISC provides a sound foundation on the legal and ethical questions involved.
• Blended Synchronous Learning Handbook - Result of a recent Australian project investigating how web-conferencing and virtual worlds can be used to unite campus and online students.
• Learning Space Rating System - The development of flexible and creative physical learning spaces is very much in focus as many universities consider redesigning their campus. This is a set of criteria for assessing how well your classrooms facilitate active learning activities.
• ePortfolios & Open Badges Maturity Matrix - Result of a recent European project (www.europortfolio.org) that provides criteria for assessing the maturity and validity of inplementing e-portfolois and badges in an institution.

The trends and challenges are of course essential reading but it's the practical examples that make it worthwhile. 

NMC Horizon Report 2015, Higher education edition.

Photo: CC BY Some rights reserved. Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., Estrada, V., and Freeman, A. (2015). NMC Horizon Report: 2015 Higher Education Edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium

Breaking up is hard to do

  by zandwacht

Tradition is a powerful factor in slowing the uptake of new methods and tools in education. It's hard to say goodbye to old trusted friends and even if new solutions are clearly more effective we simply have invested too much time and effort in the old ones to let go without a struggle. This is especially true with services like e-mail which is so ingrained into almost all workplaces as the default method of communication that we keep on using and abusing it even when more effective and communicative solutions appear. The benefits of new solutions are often only evident when the old one has been fully replaced and running two rival solutions in parallel is simply ineffective. But making the clean break with tradition is traumatic.

The same is true with another old friend (or enemy for some) the pdf file. Pdf is the format of choice in most scientific publications and remains firmly entrenched despite its age (been around for 24 years!) and limitations. Once an article is in pdf format it is trapped in a format that cannot be changed and which denies peers the opportunity to comment and review. In addition pdf is a proprietary format that requires users to download a reader and this can be a barrier to many. Ijad Madisch makes a plea for change in a Guardian article, Researchers: it's time to ditch the PDF.

The PDF is the digital equivalent to the desk drawer – a place where scientific results are hard to find and easily forgotten. And yet the PDF is still the default way for scholarly publishers to disseminate research on the web.

There are many much more attractive and flexible reading formats available that could allow readers the opportunity to engage with the author but once again I think tradition is the main factor for the pdf's longevity.

The solution is to embed research results into their natural – their social – context. Publications are only small snippets of a researcher’s knowledge. To get the full story you need to connect with the researcher. This way, authors get feedback on their work and readers an idea of its impact.

Proprietary formats like pdf have become so accepted that more open alternatives struggle to gain acceptance despite clear advantages (above all not requiring users to download extra software). We continue to use pdf, Word, PowerPoint, e-mail simply because we always have. I don't think there are necessarily any ulterior motives here except the power of tradition and the fact that breaking up is so hard to do.

Can universities change course?

  by wlai

Like it or not universities are going to have to face a completely new market in the next ten years. Most of them are still working in the traditional model of educating young people who come to campus for 3-5 years and then enter a career that will keep them employed till retirement. But although there may still be a place for this model there are strong signs that the concept of a university education preparing you for a career is becoming less valid. The demand for higher education among working professionals is growing rapidly and is overtaking the demand from the traditional 18-23 year old target group. The traditional target group could even shrink as more young people opt out of often over-priced higher education. In addition there is a massive demand for lifelong learning opportunities from people who have no university background but have gained equivalent skills outside the formal system. The worldwide demand for higher education is exploding and projections show an increase from 100 million today to 250 million by 2025. The traditional university system simply cannot cope with all this and unless we start building new major universities every day for the foreseeable future we will need to completely revise the provision of higher education.

The new learners are not able to uproot themselves to move to the university or commute to campus classes since most of them will be studying while working full-time. They will be more skills-focused than young students with no work experience and they may not see the point of many traditional academic concepts. The gold standard of the 3/4 year degree may not be relevant for tomorrow's professionals and traditional examination forms will be increasingly questioned in favour of various forms of skills assessment. Of course many universities already offer an extensive range of online courses and even degrees with many national open universities in the forefront, but with a few exceptions most institutions still see traditional campus education as core business and professional development and lifelong learning as a sideline at best. Higher education is also highly selective with millions of potential students being rejected every year. Where do you go if you can't get into university and should higher education be a privilege or a right?

The European Commission's High-Level Group on the modernisation of higher education has published a welcome report, New modes of learning and teaching in universities. They offer a number of recommendations for the improvement of teaching technologies and practices and stress the need for government authorities to stimulate and foster educational change rather than the present practice of delegating responsibility to grassroots initiatives alone. They call on all member states to draw up strategies to support universities in this major change in focus as well as stressing the need for coordinated teacher development and support. In addition they stress the need for quality assurance in online learning and the open availability of educational resources.

There remains a culture of conservatism within European higher education which needs to change. This demands strong leadership and vision from both public authorities and institutional leaders. While a broad range of good practice is already emerging across Europe, this is happening to a large degree in an uncoordinated bottom-up approach. It is now time for governments and institutions to develop comprehensive strategies at both the national and institutional level for the adoption of new modes of learning and teaching within higher education. 

The report makes refreshing reading and stresses what many of us have been saying for a long time, namely the need for commitment and engagement from the top level to coordinate and stimulate the important work done at grassroots level. Relying only on a bottom-up approach can only have a limited effect since sooner or later such initiatives bounce against the plexiglass ceiling of uninterested and uninformed leadership.

Our message is clear. While accepting that higher education institutions and, more particularly,
teaching staff are the main actors in delivering these pedagogical changes, it is the
responsibility of public authorities to create the environment and incentive for action.

The tricky part is how these recommendations will be received by national authorities, especially at a time when there is a high level of Euro-skepticism in most member states and where the Commission's initiatives are not always welcomed. The 15 recommendations in the report would provide the perfect platform for a major leap forward in European higher education, especially if they could be implemented across the entire EU, but first we need to replace all the shoulds with shall and will and there must be real financing behind it all. However this is a major step forward and recognition from a high level that online learning is no longer an optional extra but a fundamental element of all education. Maybe the supertanker is beginning to change course, if only marginally.

MOOC Book Project

 by Abdulla Al Muhairi

If you're going to write a book about MOOCs then the obvious method to use is to crowdsource it, in other words ask the world to help you. That's what the MOOC Book Project is all about. They propose an outline for the book chapters and invite interested authors to submit an abstract by the end of March. From those abstracts the editors, Dr. Joseph Rene Corbeil (Associate Professor, University of Texas at Brownsville), Dr. Maria Elena Corbeil (Associate Professor, University of Texas at Brownsville) and Dr. Badrul H. Khan (Honorary Distinguished Professor of E-Learning, Egyptian E-Learning University) will then select the best prospects and invite them to submit full chapters by the end of June. The chapters will be then subject to a double blind peer review as in most scientific journals. If all goes to plan the book should be out by mid-2015.

The book will examine MOOCs with case studies investigating the following eight dimensions:

• Pedagogical - teaching and learning in a MOOC.
• Technological - infrastructure, scalability etc.
• Interface design - look and feel of the platform.
• Evaluation - assessment methods etc.
• Management - maintenance and distribution.
• Resource support - online support and resources.
• Ethical considerations - diversity, accessibility.
• Institutional - administration, academic affairs.

This book will focus on cases describing issues or challenges experienced by IT and e-learning practitioners, faculty, or students during the design, development and implementation of, or participation in, a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). Using Khan’s eight-dimensional E-Learning Framework, authors are invited to submit chapter proposals for cases addressing one (or more) dimensions of the framework. Through analysis, reflection, and discussion of illustrative MOOC cases, missteps in the design and delivery of future MOOCs can be minimized or avoided.

This is an interesting venture and I look forward to following its progress.