The "Instructional Design Bibliography" resource guide (http://its.unc.edu/tl/guides/irg-22.php) maintained by this newsletter's editor is in need of updating. If you are involved in ID and have recommendations for additions to this bibliography, please email your suggestions to carolyn_kotlas@unc.edu. Thank you!

BLENDED LEARNING RESOURCES

Blended learning is a combination of face-to-face instruction with online components. In response to the increasing use of blended learning experiences in higher education, Sloan-C has launched a website with free resources for blended-learning educators. "Sloan-C Blended Learning" includes discussion forums, chapters from the book Blended Learning: Research Perspectives, and videos of the Sloan-C Online Seminar Series "Blended Learning: What the Research Says." The website is at http://www.blendedteaching.org/.

Sloan-C is a consortium of institutions and organizations committed "to help learning organizations continually improve quality, scale, and breadth of their online programs according to their own distinctive missions, so that education will become a part of everyday life, accessible and affordable for anyone, anywhere, at any time, in a wide variety of disciplines." Sloan-C is funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. For more information go to http://www.aln.org/.

WHAT MAKES ONLINE STUDENTS STAY THE COURSE?

While much has been written about why students drop out of online courses, the authors of "Surviving the Shipwreck: What Makes Online Students Stay Online and Learn?" (by Johannes C. Cronje, et al., Journal of Educational Technology and Society, vol. 9, issue 4, 2006) wanted to know what keeps students in these courses. For their study of the issue they set up a six-week, graduate-level course using a game metaphor based on the television program "Survivor." "Twenty-four students were put into tribes and allowed to vote one another off the island at the end of each week. Students who were voted out of their tribes, were still on the course, but could no longer rely on the support of their peers." Fifteen students completed the entire course. The researchers concluded this was due to three factors: "the game metaphor, the roles and competencies of the facilitator, and the affective dimensions of peer support in a non-contact environment." Their paper is available online at http://www.ifets.info/journals/9_4/16.pdf.

The Journal of Educational Technology and Society [ISSN 1436-4522]is a peer-reviewed, quarterly publication that "seeks academic articles on the issues affecting the developers of educational systems and educators who implement and manage such systems." The journal is published by the International Forum of Educational Technology & Society. Current and back issues are available at http://www.ifets.info/.

CMS/LMS READINGS

"Peer Comparison of Course/Learning Management Systems, Course Materials Life Cycle, and Related Costs. Final Report"
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, July 19, 2006
http://web.mit.edu/emcc/www/MIT-WCET-C-LMS-Final-Report-07-19-06.pdf
"MIT contracted with WCET's EduTools to survey ten selected peer institutions regarding their use and support of C/LMS products and the Course Materials Life Cycle used by each institution. The data gathered in this survey is intended to benchmark these services at peer institutions and to collect information that will inform future decision-making."

"Considering Open Source: A Framework for Evaluating Software in the New Economy"
by Lois Brooks
EDUCAUSE, 2007
http://www.educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=ERB0701
"Open source software and the community source movement are raising questions for administrators about whether and when to adopt or devote resources to software development projects, provoking questions of sustainability, future directions, and total cost of ownership. This research bulletin frames the issues an institution should consider with respect to adding community source products to the portfolio of software, infrastructure, and services that constitute the IT environment." [Please note that you will need to register with EDUCAUSE to read the paper. There is no cost for registration.]

"Slightly Tongue in Cheek Presentation on 'The Future of CMS'"
WCET 2006 Conference presentation by Scott Leslie
EdTechPost, November 6, 2006
http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000828.html
"In a presentation involving the Magic 8 Ball, Leslie makes the argument that CMS software may have been a false start and that the future lies in the Web 2.0/social software realm."

[Editor's note: Thanks to Lori Mathis for pointing out this collection of information. Lori Mathis is a former colleague of this newsletter's editor. For many years she has reviewed my drafts of Infobits, and she continues to catch my typos, grammatical errors, and confusing phrasing before I send it out. Lori currently works for the University of North Carolina General Administration's Teaching and Learning with Technology Collaborative (http://www.unctlt.org/).]

V&A MUSEUM MAKES DIGITAL IMAGES FREE TO SCHOLARS

Beginning in early 2007, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London drops the fees for reproduction of its collections' images in scholarly books and magazines. Part of the rationale for this move is because, although reproduction fees have brought more then 250,000 Pounds annually, administration costs eat heavily into these revenues. The upside for scholars is access to more than 25,000 of the museum's images online (http://www.vam.ac.uk/). It is hoped that V&A's move will encourage other museums to also afford the same privileges to scholars.

MLA REPORT ON SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING FOR TENURE

"In 2004 the Executive Council of the Modern Language Association of America created a task force to examine current standards and emerging trends in publication requirements for tenure and promotion in English and foreign language departments in the United States. The council's action came in response to widespread anxiety in the profession about ever-rising demands for research productivity and shrinking humanities lists by academic publishers, worries that forms of scholarship other than single-authored books were not being properly recognized, and fears that a generation of junior scholars would have a significantly reduced chance of being tenured. The task force was charged with investigating the factual basis behind such concerns and making recommendations to address the changing environment in which scholarship is being evaluated in tenure and promotion decisions." The MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion report is available online at http://www.mla.org/tenure_promotion/.