Brandon Muramatsu

USU OpenCourseWare

So…my friend Marion (and Tom, though he’s not mentioned in the article) are trying to see if they can show that “any press is good press”… perhaps the administration will pay attention with the article they’ve had written in the Wall Street Journal about USU OpenCourseWare.

For an annual cost of $125,000, or a mere 0.05 percent of the university’s $226 million budget, Utah State’s four-year-old OpenCourseWare program attracted 550,000 page views last year, making it one of the most popular in the United States, according to Marion Jensen, its former director.

Former, because in July the university unceremoniously cut off financing for the program, citing budget constraints.

Yang, J. (2010). As Colleges Make Courses Available Free Online, Others Cash In. Retrieved on March 31, 2010 from New York Times Website: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/education/31iht-riedopen.html?ref=technology

Go, go Marion.

Update: For any number of reasons, USU OCW should continue. And while the $125k/year would make an ideal on-going support level, I think they could also make due with significantly less funding in a pinch (like $75k). The point is the OCW serves a number of good functions for the university than Marion mentions in the article and Tom mentions in his posts.

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2 replies
  1. Marion Jensen
    Marion Jensen says:

    I don’t know why the papers insist on a negative slant. Everything I said was positive. If you look at my quotes, they are all positive. But then they seem to put a negative spin on it.

  2. Tom Caswell
    Tom Caswell says:

    I don’t know why Marion always complains, just because all the cool stuff he does blows up in his face. Honestly, it makes me a little nervous to work with him on http://TwHistory.org … :P

    Just kidding Marion. You’re awesome! And so is the work you did with USU OCW. I am optimistic we will eventually see the effort continue, albeit on a smaller scale. We are making some progress with the Dean of Libraries and others to prove the value of USU OCW. We should have more to say about it later this summer, but for now it’s all very hush, hush.

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