Unlocking the Gates: How and Why Leading Universities Are Opening Up Access to Their Courses

Description

Yale offers high-quality audio and video recordings of a careful selection of popular lectures, MIT supplies digital materials for nearly all of its courses. Drawing on a wide range of sources, this title traces the evolution of these online courseware projects and considers the impact they may have, both inside elite universities and beyond.

Taylor Walsh writes on behalf of Ithaka S+R, a not-for-profit strategy and research service that supports innovation in the academic community.

Winner of the 2012 Philip E. Frandson Award for Literature in the Field of Continuing Higher Education, University Professional and Continuing Education Association "By now, books, articles and blogs about the virtues and vices of online distance learning are hardly new, and are frequently repetitive. But Taylor Walsh's Unlocking the Gates is different. She analyses in great detail the varied experiences of a small number of elite US, UK and Indian universities that, starting in 1999, began to offer some, if not all, of their undergraduate courses online to varying audiences. Walsh has done extensive research--including interviews with 87 educational and business leaders--in this pioneering, unbiased study... A solid, pioneering contribution to the study of online higher education and will surely become the benchmark for later studies."--Howard P. Segal, Times Higher Education "For anyone looking for an insight into some of the issues lying underneath western higher education, they would do well to pick up a copy of Unlocking the Gates. Taylor Walsh's work may only focus on one particular phenomenon but it acts as a lens through which to examine some key challenges facing institutions: how to have a global impact whilst also serving your local students, how to do more with less in times of reducing budgets and endowments, and how higher education can and should change to become fit for the 21st century."--Rachel Dearlove, Impact of Social Sciences, London School of Economics blog "The enabling of open access to learning materials from a range of international higher education providers, at least those that choose to share, means that, provided the technology exists to enable access, potential scholars from around the world can use them to learn and grow in ways not previously available to them. And that it why it is worth reading this book."--Kevin Ashford-Rowe, Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management "Walsh's book stimulates reflection... Too, it provides substantial reality testing with respect to the large number of practical issues spawned by the OER movement."--Donald J. Foss, PsycCRITIQUES "The book is an eye-opener, supported by ample footnotes and extensive interviews (if not with enthusiastic users like myself), as well as financial records and others sources."--John Wilinsky, Teachers College Record "The [book] is a rich portrait of the history and prospects of these courseware efforts, the aspirations and concerns of their principals, their academic content and connections to their sponsoring universities, and their contrasting business models. While the author's sensibility and vocabulary come from management (rather than, say, technology, education, or sociology), the book should be accessible to readers from a wide range of backgrounds."--Mary Taylor Huber, Change