Yahoo! News - Online School That Gave Cat an MBA Is Sued

Online School That Gave Cat an MBA Is Sued

Yup, one of those shady "get your diploma online" programs has been busted. What's really bad about this is that stuff like it gives GOOD online programs a bad name. My only question is, is this cat a Republican or a Democrat?

Well, it was bound to happen--rowdy e-fraternities are causing the same types of problems for online learning environments that traditional "wild" frats have caused for college campuses all these years. This report certainly comes as no surprise to people like us, who deal with online communities on a regular basis.

"There's no place for this sort of activity at Capella," Albertson said. "Students should be focusing on getting the real-world skills they need to advance their careers, not getting drunk and leaving profane postings on bulletin boards hours after curfew."

My article making the case for open source and open content in composition studies, Copyright, Access and Digital Texts, has just been published in Across the Disciplines, a new peer-reviewed journal hosted at the WAC Clearinghouse:

As consumers of text, we make selections which either support or deny the proprietary publishing model. As producers of text, we can decide how our writing is to be published and accessed by others.

• If we create open content, we are making materials available to all, setting an example which resides in contrast to one of control, creating an alternative metaphor to the domineering one of property, ownership.
• If we advocate open content and open source, we will gain more supporters of open content as the "right way" of creating texts for both education and our society, building a larger political base for eventually reforming intellectual property laws.
• If we use open content and open source in our classes, we can discuss sharing, pointing out to students how the principles of peer-to-peer are aligned with our concerns about access.

Well, here goes...The latest effort in Matt Barton's efforts to harness the power of WIKIS in the courseroom: Matt's TIKI WIKI. What we have here is an entire CMS based on a wiki. I procrastinated awhile to let the TIKI team release the new version, but it's now on my server and running quite nicely. The students have already commented that it's much better than the old, patched-together site.