Interested in learning more about initiatives working to expand educational access? Then look no further! Game Changers: Education and Information Technologies, edited by Diana G. Oblinger, is a new and free e-book that brings together some of the most innovative organizations at the front line and highlights their efforts and models of success.

To develop Game Changers, college and university presidents, provosts and others interested in education shared their ideas on how technology and our changing environment are influencing the way we view education. Each author not only tackles the complex issues surrounding education, but he or she also examines where the future of education is heading and how people will use information technology to lead the way.

Oblinger sums up the theme of technology in the Introduction of the text: “The most important drivers of innovation are the models that harness the power of IT to deliver educational value. Beyond delivering information, IT can power recommendation engines, co-creation, and analytics and enable the unbundling and rebundling of traditional processes.”.

Other overarching themes include the need for lowering the costs of education, serving all students including nontraditional students, diversifying institutions, reducing the time to earn a degree, tailoring courses to individuals and creating a different credentialing system.

Saylor.org is the focus of a case study entitled,“The Saylor.org Model” by our own Content Development Manager Jennifer Shoop. She focuses on the efforts the Saylor Foundation has made to cultivate partnerships so students can eventually receive transferable credits from Saylor.org courses, publish full courses built from freely available educational materials, and share our course development model with other organizations.

In the case study, she writes: “We believe that our open courseware project is game changing in its scalability: because our courses are designed to be autodidactic and self-paced and all course content is cost-free and open-access, we can serve any English-speaking learner in the world with Internet access and a desire to learn.”

Appropriately, the book is licensed under a Creative Commons license, so you can read and download the free e-book here or select specific chapters to download. Enjoy!