Rich Content vs Content Rich

The content for an online course should be semantically enabled, consistent and efficient to produce and maintain.

Quick! How do we put this course online?

If you’re at all involved in higher or further education, in the last couple of weeks you’ll have heard the above question being asked numerous times and with increasing urgency. You may well have asked it yourself. The COVID-19 pandemic has meant face-to-face teaching needing to be replaced with online delivery, and from a standing […]

Keith Lumsden – an appreciation

Professor Keith Lumsden, founder and Academic Director of the Edinburgh Business School, has passed away at the age of 84. A graduate of the University of Edinburgh, he went to Stanford University in California on a scholarship in 1959 and stayed to complete research into programmed learning techniques in higher education. Some of the most […]

Briefing Paper: using – private companies to develop or expand online programmes or courses

Laura Czerniewicz and Sukaina Walji at the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching at the University of Cape Town, recently published (Feb 2019) an interesting briefing paper on the issues to be thought about, and the implications of decisions made, in universities choosing an online programme manager or enabling company to work with. The […]

EdX Tweaks its Business Model

Interesting to read Lindsay McKenzie’s recent Inside HigherEd article about EdX, which more closely analyses the potential relationship between MOOCs and OPMs. For the record, CAPDM agrees that MOOCS should be open and free to all, and disagrees with the recent emergence of paywalls for assessment and retained access to courses. This article suggests EdX […]

Where next for FutureLearn and the OU?

I’ve been watching FutureLearn evolve over the past few years with great interest and if I’m honest, a touch of relief. As a Brit, it’s been my kind of MOOC provider – one with early “BBC levels” of production quality, and an increasingly interesting catalogue of simpler courses from around the world, that appealed more […]

General content standards for learning materials

I’ve recently been challenged to clarify what I mean by open standards for education content. There are indeed lots of open standards around: HTML, ePUB, ODT, PDF, MP3, MP4, SCORM, xAPI/Tin-Can or IMS Common Cartridge. They all tend to be used for very specific purposes, which is part of their value. The standards I was […]

Staff and students in struggle: help to reform

Paul Greatrix, Registrar at The University of Nottingham, recently wrote a thought provoking article in the WonkHE blogsite reviewing Derek Bok’s 2017 book “The Struggle to Reform Our Colleges” which focuses on why efforts to improve American higher educational attainment haven’t worked. Bok’s book has some thoughtful comments including: “Few undergraduates today are clamouring for […]

Opposites attract in Online Program Management

In May 2017 Purdue University, the traditional US public research university with 40,000+ on-campus students, announced its intention to acquire the wholly online, for-profit school Kaplan University, also with its own 40,000+ students. Purdue spent a nominal fee of $1 to complete the acquisition. In return, Kaplan received a 30-year, contractual commitment to the new […]

Become your own online program manager

I recently came across a June 2016 article in The Atlantic magazine on online program managers (OPMs), and how much money they are making from marketing student enrollments in the USA. OPMs offer Colleges modern marketing tactics such as websites that collect information to generate marketing leads, text message follow-ups to inquiries, and phone banks […]

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