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Author Archives: Ahrash Bissell

Globally democratized learning is indeed a good thing

Thursday, July 1, 2010

I’m blogging over at P2PU these days, mostly about issues of specific relevance to that project, but I posted a response to a Chronicle of Higher Education piece today that is equally at home here. Apologies for the cross-posting.

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Health care reform at last! Score one for “open”

Monday, March 22, 2010

The US Congress finally – finally! – passed a comprehensive health care reform package yesterday. This is fantastic news for all Americans, and indeed perhaps the globe. We can quibble about details of how it could have been even better, but the fact is that this legislation contains many crucial facets that should be part [...]

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New models for advanced education?

Monday, March 8, 2010

A recent editorial in Nature is entitled “Do scientists really need a PhD?” Briefly, the vaunted status of a PhD as the ticket to running interesting research projects and being a part of the global academic enterprise is being questioned. Indeed, in some places, such as the BGI (a genomics institute) in Shenzen, China, the [...]

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All educational use as “fair use”?

Monday, November 9, 2009

Something I hear frequently is this wish that all “educational uses” be considered “fair uses,” thereby presumably freeing the resources from the usual constraints of copyright. How shall we count the ways that this seemingly simple idea is confused at best, and horribly wrong at worst? Let’s see…
1. Define “educational use” for me. Does it [...]

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OER and the gender divide

Thursday, October 22, 2009

One of the most frustrating aspects of working in the education field is those persistent performance gaps that seem so resistant to change. Over the decades, there has been no shortage of specific cases where traditionally intractable differences were erased, at least for a time, whether we are talking about the comparatively poor performance of [...]

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