University Business - November 2012 - (Page 53)

2013 of those cases, people pay for the service of getting a paper version or a Kindle version. A portion of that money goes to sustain the project long-term. Q: Do authors get paid for their work? Baraniuk: Connexions authors do not get paid. They are essentially trading royalties for impact. With OpenStax College, we use philanthropic money from the Gates Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, Rice University and others to pay authors up front. They get paid a fee before the book is sold. They are data mining what you click on, what you buy, what movies you watch. Then they feed that into these algorithms and what comes out is a prediction about what you might like to do next. Q: Do they retain any content control? Baraniuk: When you contribute to Connexions, all you are doing is putting a Cre2013 Just imagine applying those same ideas ative Commons license on your material and it goes into the repository. You own it. to learning. You open your text and it says, But if Rice University is providing funds “Given what you did yesterday and how to help develop content for OpenStax, you performed, and given what we need to learn by next week, I suggest you do they own the copyright to that material. the following lessons today.” The lessons Q: You’ve noted that e-textbooks can use you get will be different than the ones I data and machine learning algorithms get. There are unlimited opportunities to to learn about students as they learn bring the best of personalized tutoring into the textbooks. from the book. How does that work? So the textbooks of the future—and by Baraniuk: Machine learning is something 2013 you use every day. Google is basically a future I mean three years from now—are machine learning company. They mine not going to be just flat PDF files that are the web and match the words you type electronic pictures of what you’d find in in the search bar with their huge index of a paper text. They will be an immersive, what they think you mean. It’s all about interactive, adaptive experience. I believe looking at data. If you’ve ever had Netflix this is one of the most exciting ways to recommend a movie, or Amazon recom- really bring up the standard of education mend a book, that’s all machine learning. worldwide. I think just about everyone agrees that open education is a disruptive force, but I don’t think anyone really knows how it is going to play out yet. Speaker opportunities are now open! See page 61 Vanishing Boundaries... ubtechconference.com Q: Badge-based certification and stacked credentials are a big component of the open education initiative. Will traditional colleges and universities begin to recognize these as part of their degree requirements? Baraniuk: I think just about everyone agrees that open education is a disruptive force, but I don’t think anyone really knows how it is going to play out yet. There are three kinds of institutions out there. First, there are those that absolutely embrace this and ride the wave. Then there are organizations like Coursera, which is a consortium of institutions that offer MOOCs. These institutions don’t necessarily want to take a leadership role, but want to get involved and be in the game. Finally, there are the institutions that are turning a blind eye to this and hoping it all goes away. I think history shows that they are going to be surprised, unfortunately. The certification area is where there is the most chance for unintended consequences. I agree with people like Clayton Christensen, who feel that we’re going to go from a country with thousands of twoand four-year colleges to an order of magnitude smaller number within a couple of decades. That’s because of economic factors, but also the fact that once everything goes online and people figure out how to really certify these online courses, it will be very hard for some of these schools to compete. I’m not saying that’s a good thing—it could be a very bad thing—but I believe it’s an economic inevitability. 2013 ...Emerging Opportunities ubtechconference.com november 2012 | 53 universitybusiness.com http://www.ubtechconference.com http://www.universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - November 2012

University Business - November 2012
Contents
Editor’s Note
College Index
Ad Index
Behind the News
Financial Aid
Viewpoint
Internet Technology
Security: Show and Tell?
P byo Dasvidt Gieenr g a Threat
Inside Look: Residence Halls
Education Innovators
12 Options for IT Project Funding
What’s New
End Note

University Business - November 2012