The Obama administration is putting the final touches on a proposal to award federal funds to high schools and community colleges to develop free online courses. The program is part of a series of efforts to help community colleges
reach more students and to link basic skills education to job training. A formal announcement could come in the next few weeks. Read the full article.
The University of Kansas is becoming the first public university–following moves by all or parts of institutions such as Harvard and Stanford Universities and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology–to make all faculty journal articles available free in digital form. Chancellor Robert Hemenway proposed the policy, which was endorsed by the Faculty Senate. The articles will be placed in KU ScholarWorks, a digital repository. Open access advocates see the creation of such repositories as a way to spread knowledge at a time that many journal subscriptions are too expensive for many academic institutions or individuals.
On July 27, 2009, a federal appeals court invalidated Blackboard Inc.’s 1999 patent for its learning management software, overturning a lower court’s decision last year finding that the Blackboard competitor Desire2Learn had infringed the giant’s intellectual property.
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Monday’s ruling by the appeals court is the latest development in a several-year court battle initiated by Blackboard in July 2006. The behemoth accused Desire2Learn of infringing dozens of Blackboard patents for online course management and e-learning technologies, and sought $17 million in damages and an injunction barring the Canadian company from continuing to infringe the patent.
After a two-week trial in Lufkin, Texas, a jury in a district court seen as friendly to patent holders ruled that Desire2Learn’s learning platform used technologies for which Blackboard received U.S. patents, known collectively as the ” ‘138 patent,” in January 2006. But its verdict gave the company far less than it was asking for, awarding Blackboard $2.5 million for lost profits and $630,000 in royalties. The district court invalidated 35 of the 38 claims that Blackboard made against Desire2Learn, but backed three other claims related to what constitutes a “user” of a learning management system.
Both companies appealed the parts of the case they’d lost to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which has nationwide jurisdiction over U.S. patent claims. Its highly technical decision upheld the lower court’s conclusion that Blackboard’s claims 1-35 were invalid. But the three-judge panel rejected the lower court’s finding that Blackboard’s patented learning system had originated the approach of giving a single user with a single log-in multiple roles, such as being a teacher in one course and a student in another.
But Blackboard has already initiated another lawsuit against Desire2Learn, accusing the Canadian firm in April of infringing new U.S. patents that the company received on its software. So while company officials continue to reassure higher education technology officials and others that Blackboard has no intention of asserting its patent rights against “open source or home-grown course management systems that are not bundled with proprietary software,” they show no signs of retreating in the wake of Monday’s stinging defeat.
Read the full article.
At an open “listening session” with top executives of Blackboard on July 15 at the company’s annual conference, college officials
expressed frustration with many of the system’s fundamental characteristics. At times, the meeting seemed to turn into a communal gripe session, with complaints ranging from the system’s discussion forum application, to the improved–but still lacking–user support, to the training materials for faculty members. Participants’ concerns were often greeted with nods of agreement and outright applause from their peers as they spoke of their frustrations with the system.
“Every time we have a migration [to an updated version of Blackboard], we have new features to figure out. You should be
providing us workable faculty materials with your product,” one commenter said amidst applause by those in the audience. “You put the burden on ourselves … and then create the documentation and then train. That’s why so many of us struggle to move forward to the next [version]. We are Blackboard on our campuses, and for us to be advocates, you have to give us the tools to be successful — training.” She emphasized that she would rather see more of a focus on fundamentals like training than updated versions of the software. The commenter also mentioned technical issues with the system that she believes need fixing.
Read the full article.
In discussing the impact of the financial crisis on international education at the annual conference of NAFSA: Association of International Educators, John K. Hudzik, vice president for global engagement and strategic projects at Michigan State University, pointed out that, by 2020, “many predict that … global higher education demand for seats will double to 200 million. This suggests to me that we are in a growth market,” Hudzik said. “We’re at about 110 or 115 right now, there’s a lot of growth and maybe we won’t hit 200, but it’s still growing.”
In anticipation of such growth, Hudzik’s co-presenter Hans de Wit, an international higher education consultant based in Amsterdam, suggested international educators should be thinking about such things as expanding online delivery, developing joint and dual degrees with institutions abroad, and creating global experiences close to home to supplement experiences abroad.
Hudzik suggested that colleges look beyond China to consider other countries that are poised to play a bigger role in the global
higher education scene in the future. “Growth in higher education is global,” Hudzik said. “You can’t manage well too many partners abroad, but thinking strategically about diversifying the countries with which your institution engages itself is probably a very good thing to think about right now.”
Read the full article.
Hello,
My name is Mary Allen and I am an enrollment Counselor with eCornell. I am often asked how much time does it take to complete a Cornell University Certificate online. Most courses are 2 or 4 weeks in length and your average weekly time commitment is around 3-6 hours per week. Very Manageable. I have earned 3 certificates from Cornell University online. I gave up TV in the evenings (Okay I did not give up my Thursday Night TV) 🙂 and I also did the courses on the weekends. Some students are even allowed to do the courses at work. How cool is that? Depending on the number of courses in a certificate program you can earn a certificate in just a few months time.
For more information contact enroll@ecornell.com or visit our course catalog.
Free videos of Stanford’s wildly popular course on creating applications for the iPhone and iPod touch have now been downloaded a remarkable million times from Stanford’s site on iTunes U in the iTunes Store.
And all of the million downloads have come in just seven weeks, since the course began on April 1. This makes the iPhone Application Programming videos the fastest to reach the 1 million milestone in the history of iTunes U.
Apple engineers teach the live version of the course to Stanford students in a small auditorium in Stanford’s Quad. The rest of the world can take the course online for free by downloading videos of all the class lectures and the slides used by instructors. (The videos and slides are available at http://itunes.stanford.edu.)
Only Stanford students enrolled in the classroom version of iPhone Application Programming will receive credit for the course, however.
Cornell University’s Project Leadership Certificate launched in the late fall of 2008. Here’s some feedback from a few of the students who have taken courses in this certificate.
“One of the best Courses I have ever taken. Opened my eyes to ideas, myself and my-co-workers I have never considered. Will be a huge benefit to me and my company.”
“Very interesting course. I always focus on the functional requirements of tasks and the assignment of people to those tasks. This course will help me look at cultural and learning style differences as well. Each module is more rewarding than the last. I believe that, thus far, the course has been presented in the best way to help me improve my leadership skills. I look at the course, not just from a traditional project” standpoint, but also from an everyday magagement standpoint. Employee development, building an ethical and profitable culture, and other everyday management challenges, are all projects, in a sense. ”
“Great insights and course material. I love the continued focus of this overall certificate program on leadership rather than management. Well done!”
“Great course. Expertly designed. Class material was invaluable.Systematic and easy for the participants to go to one chapter to another easily. Graphics, work-flow illustrated in the course makes the course content more interesting.”
“Good exposure to models and techniques. As from now on after having been introduced with the tools and techniques necessary to spearhead my next project and bring it on time, on budget and at performance levels that will add directly to my company’s bottom line. I must say that even though I work a full time job and do night get home to study until 930 pm Italian time, the division of information and the use of real world examples has help me fit this into my already tight life schedule. Real life experiences work well, especially since they help to reduce my doubt that cannot be aided by asking a direct question in person.”
“Beautiful content, eye-opening and I particularly enjoy the practical nature. It captures a lot of work place realities. I practice most of what has been taught but I gathered more details and a reason behind it.”
Please contact info@ecornell.com for more information.
On Tuesday April 7, eCornell will be co-presenting with IBM India on the success of IBM’s blended learning program Bright Blue. The presentation, titled Accelerating the Development of the Executive Leadership, will be delivered by Radhika Singh, IBM India’s Growth Markets Leader, Executive Development, Centre for Learning & Development.
The presentation will discuss how the Bright Blue program is designed to build and strengthen IBM’s pipeline of executive leaders in line with the company’s rapid growth into the future. Bright Blue integrates online financial management and leadership training from eCornell with the strategic use of IBM’s existing global learning assets. Ms. Singh will discuss the strategy, approach and results of this innovative program that already has trained more than 120 managers and how it has improved business acumen, provided exposure to industry expertise and best practices, delivered quantifiable ROI in its first six months, significantly increased key leadership competencies and helped fill the leadership pipeline.
eCornell is a proud sponsor of the Spring 2009 CLO Symposium: Beyond Boundaries: Learning’s Impact Across the Organization being held April 6 – 8 at the Lowes Miami Beach Hotel, Miami Beach, Florida.
Faculty members at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have voted to make all of their scholarly articles available to the public, free and online. MIT and faculty members will let others use the articles in any way except to make a profit. Individual authors may opt out on an article-by-article basis. “The vote is a signal to the world that we speak in a unified voice; that what we value is the free flow of ideas,” said Bish Sinyal, chair of the MIT Faculty and the Ford International Professor of Urban Development and Planning.
Read the full article.
Powered by eCornell, this site is a great way to stay on pulse with insights from Cornell faculty and thought leaders. As Cornell University’s online learning unit, eCornell expands the reach of Cornell to professionals and organizations worldwide via online learning.