On Second Thought
Colleges looking to expand their online course offerings have often enlisted help from education-technology companies. A college might buy a learning-management system from Blackboard, e-tutoring software from Pearson, and so on. Coursera, the Silicon Valley-based company that specializes in massive open online courses, recently became the latest technology firm to offer services aimed at credit-bearing online programs at large universities. Now the provosts in a consortium of major research universities are considering whether their group should build its own online infrastructure that would enable the universities to share courses, digital resources, and data without ceding control to outsiders…
Full story at http://chronicle.com/article/Universities-in-Consortium/139919/
Suddenly, the “free” services offered by the commercial providers apparently don’t look so good and the universities are willing to let them take back their offers:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSmo53CR1Cw?feature=player_detailpage]