OER@UCT

Having read the Yuan, Macneill and Kraan article titled "Open Educational Resources - Opportunities and Challenges for Higher Education" this morning I identified the following interesting extracts.

Initially I considered OER resources to only include lecture material such as powerpoint presentations, articles, links, etc.  However the OECD definition includes a much broader range of material and could probably increase even more in scope with time depending on the mode of delivery.

In terms of OER, with regard to this working definition, it is important to note that “resources” are not limited to content but comprise three areas (OECD, 2007):

Learning content: Full courses, courseware, content modules, learning objects, collections and journals.

Tools: Software to support the development, use, reuse and delivery of learning content, including searching and organisation of content, content and learning management systems, content development tools, and online learning communities.
 
Implementation resources: Intellectual property licenses to promote open publishing of materials, design principles of best practice and localise content. (OECD, 2007)


Some of the strategies proposed by the OECD to increase the effectiveness and reach of OER.  These certainly come with a range of concerns and challenges:

Encourage educators and learners to actively participate in the emerging open education movement. Creating and using open resources should be considered integral to education and should be supported and rewarded accordingly;

Open educational resources should be freely shared through open licences which facilitate use, revision, translation, improvement and sharing by anyone. Resources should be published in formats that facilitate both use and editing, and that accommodate a diversity of technical platforms.

Governments, school boards, colleges and universities should make open education a high priority. Ideally, taxpayer-funded educational resources should be open educational resources. Accreditation and adoption processes should give preference to open educational resources.

And certainly I foundmost interesting the drivers and inablers, especially in the context of short and long term.  

Drivers vs. Inhibitors

Short-medium term (to 2009)
Drivers/enablers:

• International organisations’ promotion and funding available
• Competition among leading institutions in providing free access to educational resources as a way to attract new students
• Success of open access initiatives and repository projects;
• Rapid development and wide use of Social Software tools and services and emergence of personal learning environment;
• Licensing open content will become easier as plug-ins for widely used authoring software packages become available.

Inhibitors:

• Growing competition for scarce funding resources
• Difficulty in finding a balanced approach to open and commercial educational offerings;
• Copyright issues
• Fears of low recognition for OA publications, particularly among young researchers
• Lack of policies for the development and use of repository at institutional level
• Lack of communication and cooperation between system and tool developers and educators;

Long-term (to 2012)
Drivers/enablers

• Policies emphasise educational innovation and organisational change in educational institutions
• ICT-based lifelong learning and personalised learning needs
• Opportunities for co-operation and collaboration between institutions around the world
• Global competition in Higher Education and decline in student numbers in Europe due to demographic trends;
• Creative Commons licensing is firmly established and is being used increasingly.
• New systems for creating and handling group-based Learning Designs may become more widely used;
• Semantic applications will provide new ways to access knowledge resources.

Inhibitors

• Business models in OER will remain tricky
• Lack of institutional policies and incentives for educators to excel in OER
• Models that build on teachers in the creation and sharing of OER will need to invest considerable effort in training and support;
• Creation of educational metadata will remain costly
• Need more advanced tools and services for educational repository;

Motivations for the use of OER

OECD motivations for institutions in using OER

• The altruistic argument that sharing knowledge is in line with academic traditions and a good thing to do.

• Educational institutions should leverage taxpayers’ money by allowing free sharing and reuse of resources.
• Quality can be improved and the cost of content development reduced by sharing and reusing.
• It is good for the institution’s public relations to have an OER project as a showcase for attracting new students.
• There is a need to look for new cost recovery models as institutions experience growing competition.
• Open sharing will speed up the development of new learning resources, stimulate internal improvement, innovation and reuse and help the institution to keep good records of materials and their internal and external use.

OECD motivations for individuals in contributing to OER

• The altruistic motivation of sharing (as for institutions), which again is supported by traditional academic values.
• Personal non-monetary gain, such as publicity, reputation within the open community (egoboost).
• Free sharing can be good for economic or commercial reasons, as a way of getting publicity, reaching the market more quickly, gaining the first-mover advantage, etc.
• Sometimes it is not worth the effort to keep the resource closed. If it can be of value to other people one might just as well share it for free the most commonly reported motive for lecturers was to gain access to the best possible resources and to have more flexible materials

References: Kraan, W, MacNeill, S, Yuan, L (2008) Open Educational Resources - opportunities and Challenges for Higher Education. Educational Cybernetics: Reports University of Bolton 2008

I stumbled upon this article and thought it rather poignant following a recent meeting.  Likely one of the greatest challenges we will face throughtout this project is the issue of licensing.  This article does a nice job of laying down some of the motivations specific to academia.  We will likely be conducing our own seminars on the Creative Commons License in the near future. 


Source: C&RL News, November 2008
Vol. 69, No. 10

by Molly Kleinman

These are difficult times when it comes to copyright on campus. Big music companies are suing fans, publishers are suing librarians, and the principle of “fair use” is under siege everywhere. Litigation-happy content holders have fostered a climate of fear in which every student is a music pirate and every professor a book thief. While I don’t doubt that there is some copyright infringement happening on university campuses, the bigger problem by far is the chilling effect of all these lawsuits and “copyright awareness campaigns.”

Scholars and students are afraid to do the one thing that copyright law has intended from the beginning: “Promote the Progress of Science and the Useful Arts”1 by creating new works and building on the works of those who came before. Every academic librarian knows at least one sad story about a professor who couldn’t include necessary illustrations in her book because her publisher was worried about a copyright lawsuit, or a digitization project that couldn’t get approved because the copyright status of the materials was uncertain.

Additional problems result from major changes to copyright law over the last 40 years. Until recently, creators had to register their copyrights to receive protection and mark their works with a properly formatted copyright notice or the work entered automatically into the public domain, where anybody was free to reuse it however they wished.

That all changed in 1978, when the United States dropped the registration requirement; since then, copyright automatically occurs the moment a work is “fixed in a tangible medium of expression.” Now, every new work is copyrighted—lecture notes, e-mails, snapshots, doodles, presentation slides. And where once copyright lasted for 14 years, with the option to renew for another 14, now copyright lasts for the lifetime of the author, plus an additional 70 years after the author’s death, for an average duration of more than a century. That’s a very long time, and it leaves thousands of works orphaned: under copyright but without a locatable copyright holder. Between the fear and the orphans, life is hard for an ordinary academic who just wants some pictures to liven up her classroom presentations, or the student who would like to add a soundtrack to his final project.

Enter Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that created a set of simple, easy-to-understand copyright licenses. These licenses do two things: They allow creators to share their work easily, and they allow everyone to find work that is free to use without permission. The value of those two things is enormous. Before Creative Commons licenses, there was no easy way a creator could say, “Hey world! Go ahead and use my photographs, as long as you give me attribution.”

Similarly, there was no place for members of the public to go to find new works that they were free to reuse and remix without paying fees. Creative Commons changed all that. As it says on its Web site, “Creative Commons defines the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright—all rights reserved— and the public domain—no rights reserved. Our licenses help you keep your copyright while inviting certain uses of your work—a ‘some rights reserved’ copyright.”2

The licenses come in three languages: Human Readable, which is a very brief and easy-to-understand summary of what is permitted and under what conditions; Lawyer Readable, which is a legally binding three-page deed; and Machine Readable, which is the metadata, a little snippet of code that makes it possible for search engines like Google to search by Creative Commons license, and return only those works that are free to reuse.

There are six major Creative Commons licenses that all include different combinations of four basic requirements:

Attribution: You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work—and derivative works based upon it —but only if they give you credit the way you request. This element is a part of all six licenses.

Non-Commercial: You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work —and derivative works based upon it—but for noncommercial purposes only.

No Derivatives: You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only exact copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.

Share Alike: You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

Founded by a group of intellectual property and technology experts in 2001, Creative Commons has emerged as a major player in the growing movement to provide an alternative to “All Rights Reserved.” Their goal is “to build a layer of reasonable, flexible copyright in the face of increasingly restrictive default rules.”3 They appear to be succeeding. As of this writing, Creative Commons licenses are available in 44 countries, with 9 more on the way. There are more than 60 million photographs available under Creative Commons licenses on the popular photo sharing Web site Flickr (flickr.com); nearly 10,000 sound clips, samples, and remixes on the music site ccMixter (ccmixter.org); and materials from 1,800 undergraduate and graduate level MIT courses in the MIT OpenCourseWare program (ocw.mit.edu).

Benefits of Creative Commons in academic settings
The most immediate benefit of Creative Commons licenses to academia is the wealth of new works that are available for use without permissions or fees. Instructors, librarians, and students no longer have to rely on the public domain for materials that they can repurpose without risk of copyright infringement. In the time it takes to do a Google search, members of our community can find Creative Commons-licensed photographs, illustrations, music, video, and educational resources, and they’re all free.

Creative Commons answers one of the most common copyright questions librarians get: “Is it okay for me to use this photograph/article/figure/etc. in my classroom/article/Web site/etc.?” If the photograph/article/figure is Creative Commons-licensed, the answer is always “Yes.” At the University of Michigan Library, we decided we wanted to get the word out to our faculty and librarians to encourage them to take advantage of the incredible resources available through Creative Commons, and to contribute to those resources by licensing their own work.

Teaching Creative Commons
It may be easy to see the appeal of 60 million free photos, or 10,000 free songs, but it can be hard to understand exactly what Creative Commons is without some context. At the University of Michigan Library, we have included Creative Commons in a larger copyright outreach campaign that began in May 2007. The campaign targets university faculty, researchers, students, staff and librarians, and aims to raise community members’ awareness of their rights as authors and creators, improve their understanding of fair use, and promote a balanced approach to copyright. It has involved the redesign of the university’s copyright Web site, outreach to academic departments through their subject specialists, and a series of copyright workshops offered in the library.

We offered the first Creative Commons workshops in May 2007 to all members of the university community, and followed up with a similar set of workshops designed as staff development training for librarians and library workers in January 2008.

The basic outline of the workshops is as follows:

1) introduction to Creative Commons,
2) a few key facts about copyright,
3) overview of the licenses,
4) how to use Creative Commons-licensed materials, and
5) how and why to Creative Commons license your own work.

We structured the workshops around the assumption that a person has to understand at least a little bit about copyright, and the flaws in the current copyright system, in order to comprehend and appreciate the Creative Commons licensing model. The first half of the workshop is dedicated to laying that foundation, and to explaining what Creative Commons is. We begin with a showing of the video “Get Creative,”4 which uses appealing animation and real world examples to explain why Creative Commons was founded and how it works.

Participants repeatedly mentioned the video as one of their favorite parts of the workshop. We have found that it is a very effective way to communicate the power of Creative Commons and to get the class engaged so that they will listen to the dry, copyright-related parts that come next.

After the video, the presenter explains the key facts about copyright that are integral to the functioning of Creative Commons:

• Copyright happens automatically and lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years.
• Copyright is a bundle of rights; you can sign them away exclusively or grant non-exclusive licenses that give multiple people permission to use a work.
• Most everything is copyrighted, but creators may not want or need all those rights.

This section of the presentation is not intended to be a comprehensive introduction to copyright law. The purpose is to help the class understand why Creative Commons is important and the major ways that Creative Commons licenses differ from regular copyright.

We follow the copyright overview with an examination of the four license elements and a look at all six licenses. We explain what each license permits and doesn’t permit, and emphasize that most academic uses are considered noncommercial. We also show examples of the three different kinds of language that make up a Creative Commons deed (Human Readable, Lawyer Readable, and Machine Readable). The aim here is to help get the class comfortable with the icons and terms used to represent aspects of Creative Commons licenses so that when participants encounter Creative Commons-licensed work in the future, they will be able to identify it and use it appropriately.

The second half of the workshop is comprised mainly of a series of live Web demonstrations that show off the rich deposits of Creative Commons-licensed work available on the Web. The presenter walks the participants through searches on Flickr for photos, ccMixter for music, and MIT OpenCourseWare for class materials. At this point, the class gets really excited. We suggest potential uses for these resources, but participants have no trouble coming up with their own ideas.

One librarian who works with the Communications Studies department regularly fields questions about whether students can use popular music in their multimedia projects, and he couldn’t wait to show them all the music that was available on ccMixter. A professor who likes to include a lot of images in her conference presentations was thrilled to learn about all the photographs that she could use without worrying about copyright when she posts those presentations online. The range and quality of Creative Commons-licensed material is inspiring.

Before opening up the workshop to questions, we always demonstrate how to apply a Creative Commons license to a Web site or photograph. We show them how to choose a license and where to get the code from the Creative Commons Web site. By now the participants have seen what a wonderful resource Creative Commons has provided, and we hope that they will begin using it to license their own work.

Conclusion
In an era of increased licensing restrictions and tightening budgets, Creative Commons is an excellent resource for faculty, staff, students, and librarians looking for free, reusable content. Creative Commons is a gift to the academic community, and librarians are the ideal people to spread the word.

Notes
1. U.S. Const. art. I, �� 8, cl. 7.
2. Creative Commons, “About Creative Commons,” www.creativecommons.org/about/ (accessed May 1, 2008).
3. Creative Commons Wiki, “‘Some Rights Reserved’: Building a Layer of Reasonable Copyright,” retrieved May 1, 2008, from www.wiki.creativecommons.org/History (accessed May 1, 2008).
4. “Get Creative,“ www.mirrors.creativecommons.org/getcreative/ (accessed May 1, 2008).

 Molly Kleinman is copyright specialist at the University of Michigan Library, e-mail: makleinm@umich.edu

�� 2008 Molly Kleinman

Top of the delicious links this morning was an article summarizing a recent conference on "Hacking Education" in the US. Most of those in attendance have been actively involved with teaching with technology for the better part of their careers. A summary of the very interesting and relevant discussion points follows:

1) The student (and his/her parents) is increasingly going to take control of his/her education including choice of schools, teachers, classes, and even curriculum. That's what the web does. It transfers control from institutions to individuals and its going to do that to education too.

2) Alternative forms of education (home schooling, charter schools, online learning, adult education/lifelong learning) are on the rise and we are just at the start of that trend.

3) Students will increasingly find themselves teaching as well. Peer production will move from just producing content to producing learning as well.

4) Look for technologies and approaches that reduce the marginal cost of an incremental student. Imagine that it will go to zero at some point and get on that curve.

5) The education system we currently have was built to train the industrial worker. As we move to an information driven society it is high time to question everything about the process by which we educate our society. That process and the systems that underlie it will look very different by the time our children's children are in school.

6) Investment opportunities that work around our current institutions will be more attractive but we cannot ignore disruptive approaches that will work inside the existing system. Open courseware, lesson sharing, social networks, and lightweight/public publishing tools are examples of disruptive approaches that will work inside the existing system.

7) Teachers are more important than ever but they will have to adapt and many will have to learn to work outside the system. It was suggested at hacking education that teachers are like bank tellers in the 1970s. I don't agree but I do think they are like newspaper reporters in the 1990s.

8) Credentialing and accreditation in the traditional sense (diplomas) will become less important as the student's work product becomes more available to be sampled and measured online.

9) Testing and assessment will play more of a role in adapting the teaching process. A good example of this is how video games constantly adapt to the skill level of the player to create the perfect amount of creative tenstion. Adaptive learning systems will soon be able to do the same for students.

10) Spaces for learning (schools and libraries) will be re-evaluated. It was suggested that Starbucks is the new library. I don't think that will be the case but the value of dedicated physical spaces for learning will decline. It has already happened in the world of professional education.

11) Learning is bottom up and education is top down. We'll have more learning and less education in the future

We are using Google Docs to manage our work in progress documents.  It is a powerful tool that lets mutiple contributors write for one paper.  It will become increasingly important to see what changes have been made since last viewing the document. 

You can see who was the last two have worked on a document on the far right column.  In this case Chodkinson was the last to edit the document today at 8:55am. 



Once you viewing the document  itself you can see what changes were made during the last edit.  To do this you need to select File ---> Revision History.  Changes are highlighted as shown below. 



With help from:
www.brighthub.com/internet/google/articles/8236.aspx

Naturally we will all come upon web content which is releavent to our OER research.  The best way for us to organize and share this conent is using the popular Delicious website.  Here we can tag and store all of our discovered links regardless of which computer we are using at the time.  To make things even easier we recommend that you download and install the Delicious Toolbar for Firefox.  This tutorial coveres installing the toolbar on Firefox only but there is also a toolbar for MS Explorer fanatics here.  

To simplify the process of adding sites to your delicious links a toolbar for Mozilla Firefox is available.  Add the toolbar from the Mozilla Firefox Add-Ins website here.




Click add to Firefox then read and accept the license agreement on the following page. 

You will be presented with a dialog box to confirm the installation.



The Delicious Toolbar is now being downloaded and installed on your local machine.



Once it has downloaded you will have to restart Firefox to see the changes

For information on getting the most out of the Delicious Toolbar refer to this article.