Always good to see another major university making a contribution to the open course movement. The Open Learning Initiative undertaken by the Harvard University Extension School now offers eight free courses. This cluster of courses – the first Harvard has put forward – covers a nice range of topics.

Since 2007, Apple has offered universities around the world a way to distribute educational media via iTunes U.

Lecture 3 of Michael Sandel’s ever popular course on Justice is now online. Here’s the summary of material covered by the newly added lecture.

That’s the question that The Ethicist asks in The New York Times. Below, I present the issue and part of the answer. Read through it all and tell us where you stand on the issue.
The Issue
The fiscal year for major university endowments ended June 30, and schools have been reporting their results: not good.

The folks who publish the Harvard Business Review have conducted a study of Twitter, surveying 300,000 Twitter users in May 2009 to see how people are using the service. And here are the top level findings:

“Although men and women follow a similar number of Twitter users, men have 15% more followers than women.

In the latest edition of The New York Review of Books, Robert Darnton, a prominent French historian who now runs Harvard’s Library system, puts out a tantalizing idea: “Google can make the Enlightenment dream come true.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who chronicled the abuses of the Soviet regime and gained worldwide fame with A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, has died at 89. (Get the New York Times obit here.

Here’s J.K. Rowling speaking with eloquence at Harvard’s graduation, 2008. You’ll find a little wit (although far different than the kind on display when Sacha Baron Cohen — a.k.a. Ali G & Borat — spoke at Harvard graduation festivities in 2004). And then there’s the sage advice that she dispenses.

The open access movement keeps rolling along. See here.

Yesterday, Harvard University passed a motion (see proposal here) that will require its faculty members to publish their scholarly articles online. On the face of things, this marks a big victory for the open access movement, which is all about making information free and accessible to all.