Runtah

Link to article (By Judith V. Boettcher)
"Does it cost less to design and develop online teaching and learning today than it did a few years ago? Are the categories of cost different today from the past and from what the costs might be in the future? The costs of developing online programs are significant, yet there are few resources to help planners. Here, Judith Boettcher proposes a few guidelines for predicting the costs involved in the design and development of online instruction."

• Rule of Thumb #1: A Learning Management System Reduces Costs for Design, Development, and Delivery?Use an LMS
• Rule of Thumb #2: The More Hours of Instruction to be Designed and Developed, the Higher the Cost of Design and Development. Adopting a textbook for a course that has extensive online content for faculty and students saves design and development time.
• Rule of Thumb #3: Design and Development of Online Degree Programs Can Cost Up to $25,000 Per Credit Hour.
• Rule of Thumb #4: Instructional Costs Shift with Technology Developments and Models of Instruction."

"Gapminder is a non-profit venture for development and provision of free software that visualise human development. This is done in collaboration with universities, UN organisations, public agencies and non-governmental organisations. Gapminder is a Foundation registered at Stockholm county administration board (Länstyrelsen) (reg. nr. 802424-7721). It was founded by Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund and Hans Rosling on 25 February 2005, in Stockholm. Gapminder Foundation will advance software development that have been done earlier by the non-profit company Gapminder Ltd. Funding has been and is mainly by grants from Sida for the Trendalyzer project. Being a producer of global public goods Gapminder benefit from free and creative inputs from pilot-testers and other end-users in many institutions and organisations."

"Why are Gapminder doing this? Gapminder work are due to a feeling of filling a gap. There has been a market failure in distributing global data. A lot of people are interested in the data, but do not get access to it (if they manage to access the data, they need to be advanced skilled statisticans to analyse it). Gapminder want´s to make the data more accessible and easier to use for instant analysis. There is no political agenda behind the work. The idea is that all people, independently of their political agenda, can use of this tools to easily improve their understanding about the complex society

Gapminder visualizes and brings life to human development data over the last decades, and you can actually download the the different tools, presentations and documents (for free), which can for example be used in class to engage your students into understanding and caring more about this vital topic. It is simply awesome!