Harnessing Openness in Higher Education

A new report from CED on improving Research, Teaching and Learning in colleges & universities. [19nov09]

Recently the Committee for Economic Development (CED) released a new report: Harnessing Openness to Improve Research, Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. Its core recommendation is that colleges and universities should embrace the concept of increased openness in the use and sharing of information to improve higher education.

The report was produced by CED's Digital Connections Council (DCC), a group of information technology experts that advises CED's business leaders on cutting-edge technologies. They emphasized the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) for "future gains in the efficiency of teaching and learning" and their value as material easy to customize "even for an individual student."

The CED report produced also some main policy recommendations, including (among others): funding research on comparative studies digital material, including OER and facilitate the non-commercial use of materials for educational purposes (for governments); and establish open-source digital repositories and require faculty to provide the institution with non-exclusive license to the product of their research (for universities).

Learn more about the report.

CED is a US-based, non-profit, non-partisan business led public policy organization. Launched in 1942, CED is dedicated to policy research on the major economic and social issues of our time and the implementation of its recommendations by the public and private sectors.

More info on CED: http://www.ced.org/about/about-ced