The Open Learning Initiative (OLI) frequently publishes its findings in journals, conference proceedings, and other educational publications.

Recent Publications

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  CHANGING THE PRODUCTION FUNCTION IN HIGHER EDUCATION

  This is the second essay in a series that seeks to provide campus leaders with the latest scholarship and perspectives in the topic of academic productivity.

  Thille, C. (2012). Changing the Production Function in Higher Education. Making Productivity Real. American Council on Education 2012.
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  GAMES CHANGERS: EDUCATION AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES

  This is a collection of chapters and case studies contributed by college and university presidents, provosts, faculty, and other stakeholders. Institutions are finding new ways of achieving higher education’s mission without being crippled by constraints or overpowered by greater expectations.

  Strader, R. & Thille, C. (2012). The Open Learning Initiative: Enacting Instruction Online. In Oblinger, D.G. (Ed.) Game Changers: Education and Information Technologies (201-213). Educause.
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  COLD ROLLED STEEL AND KNOWLEDGE: WHAT CAN HIGHER EDUCATION LEARN ABOUT PRODUCTIVITY?

  How is teaching introductory statistics like producing a high-quality coil of cold rolled steel? Can educators learn techniques from the manufacturing sector that make instruction more productive? Such questions typically create immediate controversy when raised with an academic audience. Indeed, almost any suggestion that there may be analogies between instruction and the production of goods is met with unease.

  The unease is appropriate, because the mechanisms by which humans develop knowledge and skills are far more complex, non-linear, and—as of now, at least—less well understood than the processes for producing cold rolled steel or any other manufactured good. However, the time has come to get past the discomfort: there is something to be gained by exploring the potential similarities.

  Thille, C. & Smith, J. (2011). Cold Rolled Steel and Knowledge: What Can Higher Education Learn about Productivity? Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning. March/April 2011.

All Publications

2011

• Bier, N., Lovett, M., & Seacord, R. (2011). An Online Learning Approach to Information Systems Security Education. Proceedings of the 15th Colloquium for Information Systems Security Education. Fairborn, OH: CISSE.

2010

• Thille, C. (2010). Educational Technology as a Transformational Innovation. The White House Summit on Community Colleges Conference Paper.

• Thille, C. & Smith, J. (2010). Learning Unbound: Disrupting the Baumol/Bowen Effect in Higher Education. Futures Forum. American Council on Education 2010.

2009

• Schunn, C. D. & Patchan, M. M. (2009). An Evaluation of Accelerated Learning in the CMU Open Learning Initiative Course “Logic & Proofs”. Technical report by Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh., Pittsburgh, PA.

• Steif, P. S. & Dollár, A. (2009). Web-based Statics Course: Study of Usage Patterns and Learning Gains. Journal of Engineering Education, 98, 321-333.

2008

• Bajzek, D., Brooks, J., Jerome, W., Lovett, M., Rinderle, J., Rule, G. & Thille, C. (2008). Assessment and Instruction: Two Sides of the Same Coin. In G. Richards (Ed.), Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2008 (pp. 560-565). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.

• Davenport, J., Yaron, D., Klahr, D., & Koedinger, K. (2008). When do diagrams enhance learning? A framework for designing relevant representations. International Conference of the Learning Sciences, 2008.

• Davenport, J., Yaron, D., Klahr, D., & Koedinger, K. (2008). When do diagrams enhance science learning? First Annual Inter-Science of Learning Center Conference.

• Dollár, A. & Steif, P. S. (2008). An interactive, cognitively informed, web-based statics course. International Journal of Engineering Education, 24, 1229-1241.

• Evans, K. L., Leinhardt, G., & Yaron, D. (2008). Learning stoichiometry: A comparison of text and multimedia formats. Chemistry Education: Research and Practice, 9, 208-218.

• Jerome, W., Rinderle, J. & Bajzek, D. (2008). Tools for Constructing Targeted Feedback in Online Instruction. In G. Richards (Ed.), Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2008 (pp. 3753-3759). Chesapeake, VA: AACE

• Lovett, M., Meyer, O., & Thille, C. (2008). The Open Learning Initiative: Measuring the effectiveness of the OLI statistics course in accelerating student learning. Journal of Interactive Media in Education. http://jime.open.ac.uk/2008/14

• Thille, C. (2008). Creating open learning as a community based research activity. In Iiyoshi, T. & Kumar, V. (Ed.), Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge. Cambridge, MA. MIT Press.

2007

• Davenport, J., McEldoon, K., & Klahr, D. (2007). Depicting invisible processes: The influence of molecular-level diagrams in chemistry instruction. 29th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.

• Davenport, J., Klahr, D., & Koedinger, K. (2007). The influence of molecular diagrams on chemistry learning. European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction.

• Dollár, A. & Steif, P.S. (2007). Enhancing traditional classroom instruction with a web-based statics course. Frontiers in Education, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, October 2007

• Easterday, M.W., Aleven, V., & Scheines, R. (forthcoming). Tis better to construct than receive: The effects of diagramming tools on learning to analyze social policy. Proceedings of 13th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED- 2007).

• Pagliano, O., Brown, W. E., Rule, G., & Bajzek, D. (2007) Improving animation tutorials by integrating simulation, assessment, and feedback to promote active learning. Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education. Reprinted with permission of AACE (http://www.aace.org).

• Scheines, R., Easterday, M., & Danks, D. (2007). Teaching the normative theory of causal reasoning. In Gopnik, A. and Schultz, L. (Eds.) Causal learning: Psychology, Philosophy, Computation. New York: Oxford University Press.

• Sieg, W. (2007) The AProS project: Strategic thinking & computational logic. Logic Journal of IGPL, 359-368.

2006

• Arnold, A., Scheines, R. & Beck, J. E. (2006). Feature discovery in the context of educational data mining: An inductive approach. Proceedings of the AAAI2006 Workshop on Educational Data Mining, Boston, MA.

• Bajzek, D., Burnette, J. & Rule, G. (2006). Constructing computer models to provide accurate visualizations and authentic online laboratory experiences in an introductory biochemistry course. In G. Richards (Ed.), Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2006 (pp. 14-19). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.

• Brown, W. E., Lovett, M., Bajzek, D., & Burnette, J. M. (2006). Improving the feedback cycle to improve learning in introductory biology using the digital dashboard. Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education. Reprinted with permission of AACE (http://www.aace.org).

• Yaron, D., Evans, K., Cuadros, J., & Karabinos, M. (2006). Creation of an online stoichiometry course that melds scenario based leaning with virtual labs and problem-solving tutors. CONFCHEM. Online Conference, Spring 2006.

2005

• Arnold, A., Scheines, R., Beck, J., & Jerome, B. (2005). Time and attention: Students and tasks. AAAI-05: Educational Data Mining, Technical Report WS-05-02 AAAI Press.

• Scheines, R., Leinhardt, G., Smith, J., & Cho, K. (2005). Replacing lecture with web-based course materials. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 32, 1, 1-26.

• Sieg, W. & Cittadini, S. (2005) Normal natural deduction proofs (in non-classical logics). Mechanizing Mathematical Reasoning, LNAI 2005, 169-191.

• Sieg, W. & Field, C. (2005). Automated search for Gödel’s proofs. Annals of Pure and Applied Logic, 133, 319-338.

• VanLehn, K., Lynch, C., Schulze, K., Shapiro, J., & Shelby, R. (2005). The Andes physics tutoring system: Five years of evaluations. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education. 2005.

• VanLehn, K., Lynch, C., Schulze, K., Shapiro, J., & Shelby, R. (2005). The Andes physics tutoring system: Lessons learned. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 15 (3). 2005.

• Yaron, D., Cuadros, J., & Karabinos, M. (2005). Virtual laboratories and scenes to support chemistry instruction. In About Invention and Impact: Building Excellence in Undergraduate STEM Education. 2005. Pages 177 – 182.

2003

• Scheines, R. (2003). Causal reasoning: Disseminating new curricula with online courseware. American Education Research Association, Presented April 2003.

2001

• Wheeler, W., D. Danks, J. Ramsey, R. Scheines, J. Smith, & A. Thompson, (2001), Developing and deploying online courses with Jcourse. Proceedings of the Association of the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).