Hybrid Education 2.0

You’ll want to read this provocative Inside Higher Education article.

"What if you could teach a college course without a classroom or a professor, and lose nothing?

According to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, there’s no "what if" about it."

With Their Whole Lives Ahead of Them (report)

News release / Report

• The cost of textbooks and other fees besides tuition affected students financially:
  
  
  
  • 60% of students who did not graduate
  • 58% of students who did graduate
   
  
  
  
• How would the following help someone whose circumstances are similar to yours... in getting a college degree? Percent who say the following will help a lot:
  
  
  
  • Did not graduate: Cut the cost of attending college by 25 percent = 78%
  • Graduated: Cut the cost of attending college by 25 percent = 83%
  • Note: WA Community and Technical College tuition, for full-time students, is roughly $3000/year & textbooks are roughly $1000/year = 25 percent
  
  
  
  

• "Most young adults who started college but didn’t finish left because they needed to work more to make ends meet, according to a recent survey of more than 600 individuals aged 22 to 30 by Public Agenda."
  

Flat World and Bookshare To Deliver Accessible Open Content Texts to College Students

Campus Technology Article:

Chronicle

Open-content publisher Flat World Knowledge has announced it will supply college textbooks to Bookshare, the free online library for people with print disabilities. Flat World will be the first publisher of post-secondary texts to contribute material to the organization.

Although many colleges and universities make special accommodations for students with print disabilities, including the blind and visually impaired and those with dyslexia, financially challenged institutions are struggling in the current economy to provide all the necessary materials in formats that accommodate such students.

Flat World and Bookshare said they expect the new agreement will begin to relieve some of that burden. Schools will no longer each have to do their own conversions of commonly used texts, saving time and money, and students requiring materials in special formats will have a one-stop, online destination to meet their needs.