The long-awaited showdown between Blackboard Inc. and Desire2Learn Inc. began this month in a federal courtroom here as lawyers described the humble beginnings of two of the fiercest competitors in the classroom-software industry. The presidents of both companies, flanked by teams of lawyers, listened intently as their lawyers described how young…

Although there have been a number of studies on large scale implementation of proprietary enterprise information systems (EIS), open-source software (OSS) for EIS has received limited attention in spite of its potential as a disruptive innovation. Cost saving is the main driver for adopting OSS among the other possible benefits including security…

In this paper we quantify the extent and magnitude of agglomeration spillovers from a formal institution whose sole mission is the creation and dissemination of knowledge--the research university. We use the fact that universities follow a fixed endowment spending policy based on the market value of their endowments to identify the causal effect…

This article talks about Professional Science Master's (PSM) program. PSMs are gaining momentum across the nation. These highly specialized programs require credit hours in a specific scientific discipline as well as in business courses such as intellectual property rights, ethics, or business management, and an internship or other significant…

This monograph examines in great detail two kinds of intellectual property: copyrights and patents. Though the authors recognize the significance of trademarks and trade secrets, they focus primarily on copyrights and patents in this monograph because they represent the most significant issues in higher education in the information age.…

Autonomy is a social product. Although some might view autonomy as the absence of social interference in individual action, it is in fact produced through social institutions. It enables social actors to act; it is the justification for the allocation of enormous public resources into institutions classified as "public" or "nonprofit;" it can lead…

Sri Lanka is widening its scope for vocational education sub-sector. The emerging global trends and the aspirations of the emerging Sri Lanka after defeating terrorism demands the preparation of the graduating youth at different stages of the education system for employment. Vocational education faces many challenges. Though there are…

It is hard to define a single set of ethics that will cover an entire computer users community. In this paper, the issue is addressed in reference to code of ethics implemented by various professionals, institutes and organizations. The paper presents a higher level model using hierarchical approach. The code developed using this approach could be…

The degree to which Open Educational Resources (OER) reflect the values of its institutional provider depends on questions of economics and the level of support amongst its academics. For project managers establishing OER repositories, the latter question--how to cultivate, nurture and maintain academic engagement--is critical. Whilst…

This article reports on a research project on proofreading, prompted by its proliferation in contemporary higher education. The article is framed by an academic literacies perspective and develops the concept of "writtenness", which draws attention to both the underlying culturally and socially constructed values relating to the…

"Rapidly changing" is the term most often used these days to describe the landscape of scholarly communication. Scholars have to clear new and higher hurdles as they bump up against copyright and fair-use issues, open-access mandates, and a baffling array of publication and dissemination models. Where can researchers find a guide to lead them…

Academic scholarship is a business, and just like any other business, it is driven largely by the incentive for profit. Those profits may or may not be financial in nature, but the potential for reward, whether it is measured in terms of a promotion or of intellectual property, underlies whatever people do in higher education. Academics don't…

Using data on the patent portfolios of UK universities, the paper compares the levels of patenting activity (filings), success (grants) and quality (patents with commercial co-assignees and patent citations) at Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish institutions. Patent activity, per researcher, in Wales is on a par with that in Scotland and about…

An important element of adaptive expertise involves stepping away from a routine to retool one's knowledge or environment. The current study investigated two forms of this adaptive pattern: fault-driven adaptations, which are reactions to a difficulty, and prospective adaptations, which are proactive reformulations. Graduate and undergraduate…

This paper offers seven things one should know about open textbook publishing. These seven facts are: (1) The open educational resources model, including textbooks, has emerged as a response to rising text prices, a need for greater access to high-quality learning materials, the proliferation of e-reader devices, and a trend in publishing toward…