Blended Learning Resources

The Open Learning Initiative, or OLI, is a group based out of Carnegie Mellon University geared towards creating and and distributing online education courses and conduct further research into maximizing the effectiveness of online higher education. Their courses and materials are freely accessible and shareable, in part because the OLI aspires to create a community of users providing continuous feedback and thereby supporting continuous improvement. Student use and interaction with OLI materials...

ICPSR's Data-Driven Learning Guides are among their resources for students and instructors. They are constantly adding and updating the guides to be useful to the broadest audience possible, but as of now they focus on key concepts in the social sciences. While the topics are specific, they are roughly the level of introductory courses. The guides can be sorted by subject, dataset, and analysis type.

Piazza creates wiki-style questions and answers that can keep up with a traditional classroom, updating in real time. Students can ask and answer questions, including anonymously, and then instructors can highlight their responses and endorse selected student responses.  Piazza can also be used to get anonymous feedback from the class, and to stay in constant contact, including using mobile apps.

Jing is a free tool for enhancing online conversation. It allows users to quickly and easily share modified screenshots and recorded screencasts. It isn't built as a strictly academic resources, but could be extremely helpful for instructors who want to share demos and teach students to use software functions.