FLOSS In School - Open Source Software in the Education System

Steve Carson announces that MIT OCW was listed by Time magazine as one of the best websites of 2010. From the post:

“It’s truly remarkable to see MIT OpenCourseWare listed beside these other well-known sites,” says Professor Shigeru Miyagawa, chair of OCW’s Faculty Advisory Committee. “It really speaks to the impact the site is having not only on the individuals who use it, but on the culture of the Web as a whole.

Jane Park has a new post noting that the Peer-2-Peer University is starting its third round of courses. One of the courses is “Copyright for Educators.” From the post:

Sign-ups for all other courses are available at http://p2pu.org/course/list. The deadline to sign up is September 8, and courses will run until October 27th.

Taulant Ramabaja has a new post on open educational resources at the American University in Kosovo. From the post:

Another big issue, or at least an issue for me, was the lack of coherent OER platforms and standards. Most of what has gotten out onto the web has s far been driven by personal initiative of some open minded intellectuals.

Columbia Univesity has posted a panel discussion on paying for open access on YouTube.

David Wiley has a new post summarizing the state of open education in Utah. From the post:

Open education seems to be getting some traction here in Utah.

Rodd Lucier has posted slides explaining Creative Commons to educators.

Officials at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said Thursday that a continuing inquiry into its football program had uncovered evidence of "possible academic misconduct" by a former undergraduate tutor and an as-yet-undetermined number of players. At a hastily called news conference last night, Chancellor Holden Thorp, clearly troubled by the burgeoning evidence of troubles in the Tar Heel sports program, said that the extent of the academic wrongdoing remained unclear. But he promised a thorough investigation by a team of faculty members and administrators. "Academic achievement and fairness are at the heart of the University of North Carolina and the Department of Athletics," said Thorp. "We are treating this issue with the seriousness that you would expect. It's a privilege to put on the North Carolina uniform and to represent this University, and it's our job to make sure that the people who do so have earned that privilege."

The University of California has appointed an official to manage the costs associated with the home of Mark G. Yudof, president of the university, The New York Times reported. The move followed reports of hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses and the involvement of senior university officials in disputes over his previous rented home.

Five years after storm, New Orleans colleges work to rebuild enrollment, faculty and – in some cases – trust.

David Galef describes U of All People's love/hate relationship with Ennyville, the place it calls home.

Even in fields where it is not the norm, co-authoring papers can be a great way to learn the ropes of academic publishing, writes Eszter Hargittai.

Faculty groups are urging the University of Louisiana Board of Supervisors to reject a proposal, on the agenda for a meeting today, to modify tenure protections for faculty members. The proposals come at a time that the state is preparing for major budget cuts and university administrators are calling for maximum flexibility in responding to those cuts. But faculty groups say that in the name of flexibility, the proposal would gut tenure protections. A letter from the Louisiana Conference of the American Association of University Professors notes, for example, that the plan would appear to let tenured professors be dismissed not only when programs are completely eliminated due to financial exigency (the status quo) but because programs are reduced in size. That would be a huge shift, the letter notes, calling the idea "a slap in the face of all faculty throughout academia."

Officials at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said Thursday that a continuing inquiry into its football program had uncovered evidence of "possible academic misconduct" by a former undergraduate tutor and an as-yet-undetermined number of players. At a hastily called news conference last night, Chancellor Holden Thorp, clearly troubled by the burgeoning evidence of troubles in the Tar Heel sports program, said that the extent of the academic wrongdoing remained unclear. But he promised a thorough investigation by a team of faculty members and administrators. "Academic achievement and fairness are at the heart of the University of North Carolina and the Department of Athletics," said Thorp. "We are treating this issue with the seriousness that you would expect. It's a privilege to put on the North Carolina uniform and to represent this University, and it's our job to make sure that the people who do so have earned that privilege."

Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert took a look at the growing scrutiny of for-profit higher education on Wednesday's episode of "The Colbert Report" and found that he liked what he saw, at least when it came to filling his own wallet. Noting Goldman Sachs's major investment in Education Management Corp., he introduced Stephen Colbert "University," which he described as "the number one place for higher 'education.' " To enroll, he said, prospective students would need an Internet connection and a letter of recommendation from Benjamin Franklin (or two from Ulysses S. Grant). He said the "university" would offer programs preparing students for careers as nurse impersonator, Googler and Stephen Colbert organ farm. "Just remember at SCU, we put the 'U' in 'we make money off you,' " he said.

The University of California has appointed an official to manage the costs associated with the home of Mark G. Yudof, president of the university, The New York Times reported. The move followed reports of hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses and the involvement of senior university officials in disputes over his previous rented home.

The University of Notre Dame has responded to a suit by a fired tenured professor by detailing the reasons it dismissed Oliver M. Collins as an engineering professor, The South Bend Tribune reported. While Collins said he was fired inappropriately, the university says that he used more than $190,000 in grant funds on unauthorized equipment, including digital cameras used to take pornographic pictures.

Baker College incorrectly identified when as many as 20 percent of its distance education students began and stopped participating in their online classes, errors that resulted in ineligible students receiving nearly $10,000 in federal financial aid funds, the Education Department's inspector general said in an audit this week. The audit -- the conclusions of which Baker officials strongly disputed -- criticized the college's record keeping and said that of 100 randomly selected students (who received a total of $257,000 in federal aid), department officials were unable to find evidence that 22 of them had been enrolled in their courses long enough to qualify for their full allotment of financial assistance.

The journal Nature and the University of California appear to be making progress in dealing with charges by faculty leaders that the journal's pricing policies are so expensive that it was time to consider a boycott, USA Today reported. A joint statement said that the two parties were working together on "licensing challenges as well as the larger issues of sustainability in the scholarly communication process."

Delgado Community College has finally passed its pre-Katrina enrollment levels — only to face massive budget cuts that could reverse the progress.