Rokovania s CC

Rokovania s CC: Sir John Daniel zo spoločenstva learningu: Otvorené vzdelávania a politiky

Timothy Vollmer, 27.července 2011

Sir John Daniel pracuje v otvorenom vzdelávania od jeho prvých dní. "Otvorenosť je v mojich génoch," hovorí. Sir John je predsedom a výkonným riaditeľom spoločenstvo učenia alebo COL. COL je medzivládna organizácia zložená z 54 členských štátov. Zastrešujúcim zaostrovacie pole pre COL je "učenie pre rozvoj." Jej cieľom je pomôcť jeho členských krajín, najmä rozvojových krajín, použitia technológií a vývoj nových prístupov k rozšíreniu a schvaľovať vzdelávania na všetkých úrovniach. Sir John prvý interakciu na COL sa stalo viac ako 20 rokmi, keď bol predsedom jeho výboru plánovania. V tej dobe bol prezidentom Laurentian univerzity Kanady. On šiel odtiaľ viesť Open University vo Veľkej Británii, a potom slúžil ako vedúci na školstvo UNESCO . Sir John kolega, Dr Venkataraman Balaji , je riaditeľom pre technológie a riadenie znalostí, a viedol úsilie v tvorbe COL nedávnej otvorených vzdelávacích zdrojov politiku .

Aké boli hlavnou motiváciou pre vypracovanie politiky OER na COL? Aké prekážky (právne, sociálne, kultúrne) ste mali prekonať, a to ako v rámci organizácie a medzi členskými štátmi?

Sme vo voľnej podnikania, tak to dávalo zmysel komunikovať formálne otvorenú politiku výrazne na našich webových stránkach. Je to naozaj nebol žiadny problém, a tam bolo niekoľko prekážok vnútri COL. Máme vypracovaný politiku, prešiel niekoľkými iterácií v našich zamestnancov, a potom sme ho prijala. To znamená, že by sme mali byť jasné, že to neberie politiku členských štátov o preskúmanie. Sme malá organizácia, a my nemáme valného zhromaždenia nášho členstva. Takže sme nemuseli brodiť politike dostať všetky štáty na podpis. Avšak sme sa nevyvíjal OER politika len pohladiť si na chrbte. Chceme ukázať svetu, že podpora otvoreného vzdelávania je to, ako sme sa všetci mali správať v týchto dňoch.

Práce medzivládnych organizácií (IGOs) je veľmi dôležité, ale pre vonkajšieho pozorovateľa je to niekedy nie je zrejmé, čo IGOs ​​robiť. Čo urobiť pre to, COL "povzbudzovať a podporovať vládu a inštitúcie zriadiť podporné politické rámce, aby zaviedli postupy týkajúce sa OER"?

Ak môžem byť tak smelý, myslím, že vaša otázka odráža americkú zaujatosť. Spojené štáty a ďalšie veľké a silné krajiny majú tendenciu fungovať obojstranne. Menšie krajiny preferujú prostredníka, spolupracujúci prístup pracuje cez medzivládnych organizácií. UNESCO je extrémny príklad, kedy 193 krajín pôsobí demokraticky, a každý hlas je aspoň v princípe rovnaké. Keď som pracoval v UNESCO, bol som prekvapený, ako vážne sa medzi členskými štátmi odporúčanie, ktoré boli vyvinuté. Verí, že akýsi proces viac ako smerníc, ktoré prichádzajú na ne bilaterálne.

Všeobecne platí, že proces IGO snaží dostať krajín, aby spoločne robiť veci, ktoré nemožno robiť oddelene. Jedným z príkladov je virtuálna univerzita pre malé štáty v rámci spoločenstva. Vzhľadom k tomu, dve tretiny z 54 členských štátov sú štáty s populáciou 2.000.000, alebo menej, majú menej prostriedkov na výdavky na vytváranie obsahu. Môžete si predstaviť, keď dot com boom prišiel malé štáty boli obavy, ako by mohli prísť k termínom so všetkými potenciálnymi prínosy (a riešiť problémy) v tomto rýchlo sa meniacom digitálnym a prepojenom svete. Tak ich ministri školstva sa pozrel na výzvu a povedal: "keď nemôžeme rozlúsknuť ho osobne, prečo nie rozlúsknuť to spoločne?" COL im pomohla spustiť 'virtuálnu univerzitu', ktorý nie je nová inštitúcia, ale spoločná sieť kde štáty a inštitúcie môžu spolupracovať na výrobe študijné materiály ako OER, že všetko môže upraviť a používať. Tento virtuálna univerzita vyvinula učebné osnovy v rôznych oblastiach, ako je diplom v oblasti trvalo udržateľné poľnohospodárstvo pre malé štáty. Môžete si predstaviť, že poľnohospodárska prax v mieste, ako atolov na Maldivách sú veľmi odlišné, než poľnohospodárstvo v sopečných ostrovov Dominika. Avšak, vytvorenie vanilkový verzia učebných osnov a potom dovoliť každý región prispôsobiť prostriedky na špecifiká ich vlastné poľnohospodárske ekosystému sa ukázalo ako oveľa efektívnejšie, než si každý štát od nuly. Podmienkou účasti na virtuálnej univerzite je, že všetko, čo vytvoríte, musí byť prepustený ako OER.

COL zvolil CC BY-SA licenciu pre svoje vlastné materiály. Môžete popísať, ako sa organizácia rozhodne túto licenciu pre svoje zdroje?

No, naša politika jednoducho hovorí plk uverejní svoje vlastné materiály za najschodnejšie otvorenou licenciou, ktorý zahŕňa Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike. Chápeme, prečo MIT OCW prijala nekomerčné licenciu na svoje materiály, oni boli prví na to a nevedel, čo sa bude diať. Ale teraz sme sa povzbudiť ľudí, aby nepoužívala nepodnikateľské, ak môžu vyhnúť, a budeme sledovať naše vlastné odporúčania. To nebolo až do Dr Balaji prišiel, že sme schopní usporiadať právne a technické problémy, ktoré COL, ako medzivládna organizácia, stál pri prijímaní otvorenú licenciu.

Mnoho z Col členských štátov sa nachádzajú v globálnom juhu. Ako OER politika ovplyvniť globálnu južné štáty inak, než globálne sever?

Že preháňam trochu tu, ale sme pozorovali, že na severe ľudia sú viac zameraná na výrobu OER a že v južných ľudia sa viac zameriavajú na to, ako môžu využiť OER. Ešte pred niekoľkými mesiacmi som bol na konferencii Open Courseware v Bostone. Možno, že tri štvrtiny z prezentácií so zameraním na výrobu OER a len malý počet bol o re-purposing OER a opakované použitie obsahu. To sa musí zmeniť na OER hnutia vzlietnuť.

Na juhu, tam je opatrný postoj "je tu veľa vecí k dispozícii, prečo ju používať?" Boli sme podporu na sever, aby sa viac univerzálny prístup a myslím, že multidirectionally. To je dôvod, prečo to sme radi, že škola ako University of Michigan používa OER z Malawi a Ghany vo svojich zdravotníckych programoch. Prečo by University of Michigan vytvoriť OERs o tropických chorôb, keď tam sú ľudia, ktorí žijú v trópoch, ktorý môže robiť lepšie? Takže, odporúčame, aby ľudia videli OER výrobu a použitie ako multi-riadiaci tok.

Môžete diskutovať ciele a výstupy z Vezmeme-OER mimo Spoločenstva OER projektu organizovaného COL a UNESCO. Čo bude ďalej?

Tento projekt má dlhú históriu, a naozaj sa vracia až k pôvodu termíne otvorených vzdelávacích zdrojov. Ale v poslednej dobe, v roku 2009 UNESCO konala svetová konferencia o vysokoškolskom vzdelávaní . Táto udalosť nie prehrabať perie na severe toľko, ale ovplyvnil myslenie na juhu. Zdôraznila význam otvoreného dištančného vzdelávania, komunikačných technológií, a najmä zdôraznila globálne zdieľanie OER rozšíriť kvalitné vysokoškolské vzdelanie. COL zdvihol práci s UNESCO. Uvedomili sme si, že ak tam je oveľa širšie zhodnotenie toho, čo OER je, že nikam nepôjde. A ako už názov projektu napovedá, naším cieľom bolo presadzovať, aby ľudia mimo už usadené otvorené vzdelávacie komunity. Sme usporiadali šesť tvárou v tvár seminára v Afrike a Ázii. Tie boli predovšetkým zamerané na prezidentov univerzity, skupiny zabezpečovania kvality, a tí sa zaujímajú o otvorené dištančné vzdelávanie.

V decembri minulého roku sme usporiadali politickú fóra pri UNESCO v Paríži vytiahnuť tieto vlákna dohromady. Rozhodli sme sa, že by bolo užitočné vytvoriť súbor OER pokynov zameraných na hlavných skupín zainteresovaných strán. Jednalo sa vlády, vysokoškolské inštitúcie, učiteľom a študentom skupiny, zabezpečenie kvality agentúr a kvalifikačné subjekty. Boli sme iterácií na týchto pokynov od tej doby, a oni sú teraz rozdelené na rozsiahlych konzultáciách. V októbri tohto roka bude ďalšie politické fórum, kde budú OER pokyny pre vysokoškolského vzdelávania do finálnej podoby. Dúfame, že sa predstaví tieto odporúčania na Generálnej konferencie UNESCO v novembri spolu s OER platformy UNESCO bude tiež začatie v tej dobe.

Cez zimu chceme urobiť pomerne rozsiahly prieskum vlád celého sveta, aby zistili, kde sú na politiky týkajúce sa OER s otvoreným prístupom, otvorených formátov a ďalších súvisiacich témach. Geodetické vlády nie je ľahká úloha, najmä keď nie vždy chápe otázky, ktoré ste sa pýtala. Ale ak všetko pôjde dobre, budú tieto výsledky prieskumu sa stiahlo, do konca roka pracuje na aktualizácii do Kapského Mesta o otvorenom vzdelávaní vyhlásení . Je tu túžba po COL a UNESCO pri príležitosti 10. výročia od vypustenia pojmu "Otvorených vzdelávacích zdrojov" sa na konferencii v júni 2012, keď krajiny môžu prihlásiť aktualizovaný vyhlásení.

Čo si predpovedať, bude dosah tejto politiky OER plukovník, a čo by si prial, aby sa z toho? Čo môžete odporučiť iné IGOs, ktoré začínajú premýšľať o rozvoji otvorené vzdelávacie politiku?

Moja rada je, aby to jednoducho urobiť a nenechať sa príliš rozčuľoval o licenciu na začiatku. Dúfame, že naša malá organizácia, ktorá sa zdá mať vplyv väčší, než je jeho veľkosť, bude zrnko piesku v ustríc pre iné IGOs. UNESCO sa snaží dostať na pravej strane, vzhľadom na ich mená by sa mohlo zdať zvláštne, ak nie sú viac do otvoreného 'podnikania. Ale chápem, že problém s veľkými organizáciami. Keď sa pozriete na UNESCO, máte zhromaždenie, s množstvom ľudí, ktorí nemajú radi veci, ak to tam vymyslel. Napríklad, každý na svete chce, aby existoval normalizácie v elektrických zásuviek, ak štandard, ktorý je prijatý, je ten, že používajú. Tieto organizácie majú záujem o prijatie otvorenú politiku by mala začať v malom, a prácu si cestu cez problémy, ako oni idú. Ak sa snažiť, aby celá vaša staršia katalóg k dispozícii, budete stratení. Tie veľké medzivládne organizácie by mal hovoriť, "odteraz budeme mať tak otvorený, ako môžeme byť." Dôležité je prijať filozofiu otvorenosti.

Rokovania s CC: Pete Forsyth a Wikimedia verejná politika iniciatíva Otvorené vzdelávania a politiky

Timothy Vollmer, 06.6.2011

Rokovania s CC: Paul Stacey z BCcampus: Otvorené vzdelávanie a politika

Timothy Vollmer, 28.března 2011

Paul Stacey od BCcampus / CC BY

Paul Stacey je riaditeľ komunikácie, zainteresovanými subjektmi a akademické vzťahy na BCcampus . So sídlom vo Vancouveri, BCcampus poskytuje služby na podporu vzdelávacích technológií a on-line vzdelávanie do 25 Britskej Kolumbie verejných vysokých škôl a univerzít, ich študentov, učiteľov a administrátorov. BC Ministerstvo školstva Advanced poskytuje finančné prostriedky na vzdelávacie programy. V roku 2003 sa presunula finančné prostriedky na podporu nový tematický Smer-line vzdelávania. Prostredníctvom tohto posunu v prioritách, BCcampus videl príležitosť pripojiť sa k rastúcej otvoreného vzdelávacieho priestoru, vidieť zaujímavé príklady ďalších projektov, ako je MIT OER OpenCourseware a Connexions. Paul podporuje strategický rozvoj pre-on-line kreditnou učebných osnov, v podobe OER prostredníctvom partnerstiev medzi verejnými inštitúciami BC pomaturitnom. On tiež pomáha koordinovať rad otvorených on-line komunít, ktoré podporujú rast a akademickej fakulty rozvoj v BC a mimo nej.

Nadácia financovaný vs verejne financovanej OER

V minulom roku, Paul predniesol referát s názvom Nadácia Finančné OER vs platiteľom dane Finančné OER-Príbeh dvoch mandátov v otvorenej konferencii Eda v Barcelone. V tejto prezentácii prirovnal ciele a atribúty nadácie financovaných a verejne financovaných projektov OER. Súkromné ​​dobročinné nadácie poskytla najväčšie investície do OER za posledných 10 rokov, ale stále rastú príklady financovaných daňovými poplatníkmi OER politík. Stacey konštatuje, že zakladanie a verejného sektora ciele sú podobné, ktorí chcú rozšíriť prístup ku vzdelaniu, ale prostriedky, ktoré, ako to dosiahnuť sa líšia. "Nadácia je primárnou zodpovednosťou je zakladateľ, zatiaľ čo vládne ministerstvá primárne zodpovednosťou je svojim platiacim dane občanov," hovorí Paul. Zatiaľ čo základy majú často globálne a humanitárnu mandátov a ciele, ministerstva vlády na strane druhej, majú tendenciu byť viac geograficky lokálne pre určitý národ, provincie, alebo štátu. Sú zamerané na poskytovanie verejnej služby, ktorá je prospešná všetkým občanom daného regiónu skôr než celý svet. "Verejný sektor podpora OER často ekonomickej efektívnosti cieľov viac než humanitárna ty," hovorí Paul. S verejným sektorom tak tesné, štátne orgány chcú investovať do svojej peniaze z najúčinnejších spôsobov možné, a zabezpečiť prístup k vzdelaniu pre čo najväčší počet členov jeho verejnosti ako je to možné. Prebiehajúce otázka pre OER je, to môže robiť oboje?

Pavel uvádza ďalšie rozdiely medzi základom financovaný a verejne financované OER. Nadačný príspevky sú primárne šli do jednotlivých renomovaných inštitúcií a boli použité pre publikovanie existujúce kurz prednášok, poznámok a vzdelávacie aktivity spojené s campus-založené triedy činnosti. Nadačný príspevky majú definovaný začiatok a koniec dátum a nie sú všeobecne stanovené prebiehajúce operácie. Vládne ministri sa primárne investované do OER pre formálne kreditného systému akademické účely, ktoré spĺňajú vzdelávacie prístup, spoločenské a potreby trhu práce svojho regiónu. Štátne dotácie sú uvedené, a nie jednotlivé renomovaných inštitúcií, ale i partnerstvo pre spoluprácu škôl a inštitúcií v ich právomoci, často za účelom vývoja nových vzdelávacích programov určených pre dodávky po internete. Vládne ministerstvá častokrát sa zaujímať o to ako start-up a prebiehajúce operácie financovania.

Spektrum licencií: Ak chcete vybrať alebo si vybrať?

Paul postavená zaujímavý graf, ktorý pozemkov rôznych OER projekty, vrátane ich licenčnými podmienkami.

Stacey konštatuje, že nadácia financované projekty zvyčajne vyžadujú OER jedinej licencie Creative Commons (obvykle CC BY alebo CC BY-NC-SA). Ale pre verejne financovaného OER, tam sú zvyčajne viac licenčných možností. Jedným z odporúčaní je Paul je pre OER projekty ponúka rad možností licencovania po "otvoriť" kontinua. "Viac možností zaistenie vyššej buy-in a nižší prah pre účasť OER," naznačuje Pavol. Pripúšťa, že aj svoje tienisté stránky jednotlivých projektov umožní zvoliť si vlastnú licenciu: rôzne licencie, aby remixovaná a prispôsobenie OER zložitejšie, a môže vyvolať otázky interoperability a siled obsah. Zatiaľ čo on už si všimol, že žiadny projekt OER umiestnenie obsahu do verejnej domény, Paul si myslí, že tento prístup by mohol byť testovaný.

BC Commons a návrhy na Creative Commons

Stacey hovorí, že Creative Commons hral ústrednú rolu pri vytváraní OER čo na prvom mieste. Aktuálne licenčné riešenie používa BCcampus intuícia, BC Commons, je postavený na Creative Commons. BC Commons licencie je iný ako CC licencií. V prípade, že Creative Commons licencie sú platné po celom svete, je BC Commons licenciu žiada, aby obsah pre používanie a zdieľanie medzi inštitúcie, fakulty a študentov s firmou BC verejné post-sekundárneho systému. BCcampus prijal BC Commons licenciu pre podporu pedagógov pozvoľným vstupom do vody otvorenosti. "Keď to hovoríte na člen fakulty, ktorý chcete, aby sa podelili o svoje zdroje s kýmkoľvek, oni sa obávajú, že by mohli stratiť kontrolu integrity zdrojov, ktoré vytvárajú," hovorí Paul. "Aj s BC Commons licencie, tieto obavy nezmizne úplne, ale obáva sa zmierňuje, pretože zdieľanie je obsiahnutý v provincii." Stacey si myslí, že čím viac presvedčivý dôvod na rally v okolí BC Commons licencie je miestna spolupráca vytvorené jeho použitie. "Pri vytváraní licenciu, ktorá podporuje miestne zdieľanie, vytvoria miestne commons," hovorí Paul. Miestne väzby medzi pedagógmi sú mnohokrát oveľa silnejšie ako väzby mimo obce. A BCcampus aktívne rozvíja partnerstvo na podporu niekoľkých inštitúcií spolupracovať na vývoji obsahu "sme sa spoločne rozvíjať a spoločne znovu použiť prostriedky," hovorí Paul.

Paul ponúkol niekoľko odporúčaní pre Creative Commons:

• Rozvíjať sledovanie kus kódu vložený do každej licencie CC, ktorá poskytuje späť na OER tvorca na opakované použitie. My vieme to od sociálnych médií, že vidieť používanie je stimulom pre to viac.

• Podporovať CC licencií výber po otvorenom kontinua a uľahčujú ľuďom začať s jednou licenciu a potom prechod alebo preniesť prostriedok na viac otvorených licencií pozdĺž kontinua, ako sa dostať pohodlne zdieľanie.

• Práca s tými, sa snaží vytvoriť regionálnu verzia CC licenciou, (ako sme robili v BC s BC Commons licencie), na utváranie regionálnu licenciu byť podobne ako CC, ako je to možné. Podľa našich skúseností jeho zásadný význam pre doplnenie globálne zdieľanie voľby s miestnymi regionálnymi.

• Upresniť rozhodnutia spojená s možnosťou CC licencie. Priznanie, komerčné / nekomerčné, deriváty a nekomerčné použitie ísť dlhú cestu, ale môže byť doplnený o ďalšie rozhodovacie body špecifické pre OER.

• Zvážiť pridanie metadát poľa do CC licenciu, aby tvorca pridať ďalšie informácie o zdroji, vrátane ich záujmu o spoluprácu s ostatnými na zlepšenie a úprav.

• Práca s národné, štátne a iné inštitúcie verejného sektora a organizácií Creative Commons licencie obsahujú voľby do vzdelávacej politiky, ktorá riadi IP a autorské práva tak, aby vychovávatelia CC možnosti zabudovať do svojich zmlúv.

• Pokračovať v práci so softvérovými spoločnosťami, ktoré vyvíjajú aplikácie používané pre vytváranie a poskytovanie vzdelávacích zdrojov začleniť CC licencie ako predvolené možnosti v rámci žiadosti.

Budúcnosť OER

Stacey špekuluje, že zatiaľ čo vládne ministerstvá ešte byť presvedčený, že robiť všetky ich verejne financované vzdelávacie zdroje prístupné na svete je v najlepšom záujme svojich občanov, on predpovedá, že to bude nakoniec ukázať ako prípad. "Základy a subjekty verejného sektora budú spoločne pracovať na definovanie hodnoty OER ponuku tak, že spĺňa obe sady mandátov a cieľov a je obojstranne výhodné regionálne i globálne," hovorí Paul.

Paul si myslí, že tak zriadenie a financovanie verejného sektora budú stále vyzerať na dosiahnutie formálny vzdelávací výsledok, kde je úver spojený s OER, "hovorí. OER bude pomôcť urýchliť ďalšie zmeny v našom vzdelávacom systéme tiež, a naďalej ovplyvňujú dynamiku vyučovania / učenia prostredia. Stacey predpovedá: "Študent-k-študent a siete založenej na učenie bude vytvárať globálnej siete OER vzdelávania, ktoré sa nakoniec ukážu poskytnúť lepšie vzdelanie, než je v súčasnosti dostupný prostredníctvom existujúcich tradičných poskytovateľov vzdelávania." Stacey posilňuje potrebu zapojiť študentov do OER proces tvorby, lebo oni sú hlavnými príjemcami otvorených výukových materiálov. "My sme skôr vidieť študentov ako spotrebiteľa OER," hovorí Paul, "ale verím, že študenti budú v konečnom dôsledku produkovať viac ako OER pedagógov." Predpovedá, že jedného dňa budú študenti získať úver na výrobu obsahu kurzov OER. Ale dopyt po dobre vyškolených a poverené pedagógov nebude preč. Rola učiteľa bude aj naďalej vyvíjať. Prednášková činnosť je vonku. Facilitating, mentoring, connecting students together in ways most productive for their learning is in. And critically important is the need for professionals to take on the role of assembling OER into sensible curriculum, and delivering it in a way that allows for ongoing assessment to take place.

Stacey believes there's no one-size-fits-all vision for the future of OER. Open education can be transformative in a variety of ways, and it should be able to fit alongside more traditional environments too. He thinks it's exciting to imagine the various possibilities, and has described one vision for how this might look as the University of Open . He also points to the work Wayne Mackintosh is leading around an OER University . Paul thinks that a quality education is a shared aspiration for everyone around the world. “We're seeing OER change education from something defined by scarcity to something based on an idea of plenty,” he says. “OER, together with the ability to form global learning networks, makes education for all an attainable goal.”

CC Talks With: The Right to Research Coalition's Nick Shockey: Open Education and Policy

Timothy Vollmer, January 20th, 2011

Nick Shockey is the Director of the Right to Research Coalition (R2RC) and the Director of Student Advocacy at the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC). The R2RC is an international alliance of 31 graduate and undergraduate student organizations, representing nearly 7 million students, that promotes an open scholarly publishing system based on the belief that no student should be denied access to the research they need for their education because their institution cannot afford the often high cost of scholarly journals. We spoke to Nick about similarities in the open access and open educational resources movements, the worldwide student movement in support of access to scholarly research, and the benefits of adopting Creative Commons tools for open access literature.

Nick Shockey by Right To Research Coalition / CC BY

“It all started in a hotel room in Paris,” explains Shockey, who while studying abroad at Oxford and on a brief trip to France happened to catch a CNN special about MIT's OpenCourseWare (OCW) program. Nick was immediately impressed by the idea of OCW, and upon his return to Trinity University campaigned to get his school to implement a similar program. For a number of reasons, OCW didn't catch on at Trinity, but the experience Shockey gained in advocating for it provided him with two crucial pieces that led to his work at SPARC: a deep interest in opening up the tools of education, and an introduction to Diane Graves, Trinity's University Librarian and then SPARC Steering Committee member. Shockey began advocating for open access to research at Trinity, and convinced the student government to pass a resolution supporting the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), as well as a later resolution endorsing the Student Statement on the Right to Research. The statement calls for students, researchers, universities, and research funders to make academic research openly available to all. These principles formed the foundation for what was to become the Right to Research Coalition.

Growth of R2RC

In the summer after Shockey moved to Washington DC, he was able to add new signatories to the Student Statement on the Right to Research, including the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students (NAGPS) and the National Graduate Caucus of the Canadian Federation of Students. It soon became clear that a larger impact could be made by organizing as a coalition that actively advocated for and educated students about open access, and Nick joined SPARC full time to lead the Right to Research Coalition.

R2RC has grown to include 31 member organizations and now represents nearly 7 million students worldwide. “The incredible diversity of our membership speaks to how important access to research is to students,” says Shockey. R2RC's members range in size from groups with less than a hundred students to organizations with more than a million. But Nick notes that all the member groups have two things in common: they believe students should have the benefit of the full scholarly record (not just the fraction they or their institution can afford), and they recognize that the Internet has made unfettered access possible by driving down the marginal cost to distribute knowledge virtually to zero.

Federal open access advocacy

SPARC and the Right to Research Coalition have been supportive of the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), a law which would require 11 US government agencies with annual output research expenditures over $100 million to make manuscripts of journal articles stemming from research funded by that agency publicly available via the Internet. While FRPAA didn't pass in 2010, Shockey's very happy with the remarkable progress made, which culminated last year in the Congressional hearing on the issue of public access to federally funded research. Shockey, colleague Julia Mortyakova, and R2RC members have been advocating in support of FRPAA in various ways, such as letter-writing campaigns and in-person office visits. Shockey estimates his membership has reached out to well over two hundred Congressional offices.

Student support for OA around the world

Shockey describes that the current situation of limited access to academic research is a widespread problem that affects students all around the world. But, he explains that the real difference isn't between the United States and the rest of the world, but between the developed and the developing world. “Paying $30 for access to one article is expensive even for many researchers in the US,” says Nick, “but when you realize that $30 is an entire average month's wage in Malawi, you can see the huge disparities in access faced by huge swaths of people around the world.”

At the end of last summer, R2RC began a concerted effort to expand their coalition to incorporate international student groups, and launched their Access Around the World blog series to feature stories and activities from students across the globe. In fall 2010, Shockey pitched the importance for student access to scholarly research to the European Medical Students' Association's General Assembly in Athens and the European Students' Conference in Berlin. “The students understood the issue right away and have gotten involved immediately,” says Nick. The President of the European Medical Students' Association has already made a presentation on Open Access and the R2RC at a major international medical conference, and just this month, the coalition welcomed the International Federation of Medical Students' Associations (IFMSA), the world's largest medical student organization, which operates in 97 countries around the world.

Access is crippled by cost; OA enables novel downstream benefits

The high cost to users to access academic journals and educational materials is a criticism shared by advocates of open access (OA) and open educational resources (OER). Scholarly journal prices have increased at 200% the level of inflation, similar to that of college textbook prices. Shockey believes that the that the greatest value of open access is to help knock down the prohibitive barriers that high prices pose to individual users. “A singe US university we studied spent about $900,000 for only 96 journal subscriptions–and that was at a well-funded school,” says Shockey. “At less wealthy institutions, or those in the developing world, the price barriers often prove insurmountable. Students and researchers must make do with what their school can afford rather than what they need.”

Nick explains that through open access, the entire scholarly record could be available for anyone to read and build upon, leading to innumerable public benefits. But he's most excited by the uses of open access scholarship we can't even think of at the moment. “Lawrence Lessig points out that the real 'secret sauce' of the Internet is that you don't need anyone's permission to innovate on it,” says Shockey, “and I believe open access will finally bring this ability to academic research.” Nick describes a world of open access in which researchers will not only be able to read any article, but also be permitted to perform semantic text mining to uncover trends no one person could discover and connect together. But for this promise to be fulfilled, he reinforces that researchers need access to the entire scholarly record, not just a selected subset, and the rights necessary to reuse these articles in new and interesting ways.

Open access and Creative Commons

Shockey explained that Creative Commons plays a crucial role within the OA movement by providing a standard suite of prepackaged open content licenses. “To make an obvious point,” he said, “very few researchers are also copyright lawyers, and the CC licenses make it simple for scholars and journals to make their articles openly available. CC also helps prevents a patchwork system where it's unclear which uses are allowed and which are not.” Nick notes that this sort of ambiguity can be very harmful–particularly to reuse of content, so it's important that the open access community leverages CC to ensure access and communicate rights.

Shockey says that the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license has become the gold standard for open access journals. In general, scholars want recognition for their work, and the CC BY license ensures attribution to the author while allowing anyone to read, download, copy, print, distribute, and reuse their work without restriction. Shockey notes that several studies have shown a strong increase in article views and citations when an article is made openly available. “This makes intuitive sense,” Nick says. “If an article is available for more people to read and build upon, it's unsurprising that it will also tend to be cited more often. Given the importance of citation counts in academic advancement, the citation increase can be an important benefit that flows from open licensing.”

OA support via the university

Open access (and increasingly, OER) initiatives at universities have been promoted in part through the university library. For example, at some schools librarians help educate faculty and students about the options available to them for scholarly publishing, including administering the Scholar's Copyright Addendum . Shockey thinks that the library is a natural central organizing venue for OA and OER work, and meshes well with the library's fundamental mission to provide their community with access to the educational resources they need. Nick also noted that libraries are perfectly positioned to play an OA/OER organizing role because they are one of the only institutions that reaches every department and every member of the campus community. Shockey said that some libraries have already taken the lead by supporting initiatives such as the Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity (COPE), which sets aside money to pay for the publication fees that some open access journals charge, in order to help transition to an open model.

OA and OER working together

Open access advocates argue that access to scholarly literature should not be limited to scientists and academics, but available to patients, parents, students at all levels, entrepreneurs, and others. Shockey believes that since the OA and OER movements are both working to enable free access to the tools of education, it's important to explore the ways in which these movements can work together. Even though the R2RC is centered on open access, it's begun to weave OER into its messaging alongside open data and open science. Nick thinks it's important for R2RC members to see the larger network in which they work. “When we hit roadblocks in one area,” said Shockey, “there are often opportunities in others, and advancing one of these pieces (be it OA, OER, open data, open video, etc) opens the door for further progress in other areas. Furthermore, once you've convinced someone about one of these issues, be it a friend, colleague, or the US Congress, it's much easier to engage them on the others.”

Shockey is optimistic with regard to the future of the student open access movement, but stresses the need to move ahead with the clear vision that advancements in education, science, and scholarship require access to raw research materials. “We must always remember what it is we're fighting for,” said Shockey, “academic research is the raw material upon which not only education but also scientific and scholarly advancement depend. When we allow these crucial resources to be locked away, it hinders the entire mission of the Academy – student learning suffers, scholarly research is impeded, and scientific discoveries are slowed.” Nick says that widespread open access promises to benefit science and scholarship in radical ways that are almost unimaginable today. “Open access will improve how we teach, learn, and solve problems in ways that are impossible within a closed system.”

While there are many ways to get involved with the Open Access movement, Shockey stressed that the most important was simply to learn about this issue of access to research and start conversations with friends, colleagues, mentors, and students to raise awareness. The R2RC website has an individual version of their Student Statement on the Right to Research open for anyone to sign, as well as a host of other education and advocacy resources for those interested in Open Access.

CC Talks With: Mark Surman from the Mozilla Foundation

Cameron Parkins, December 13th, 2010

The Mozilla Foundation is unabashedly committed to a free and open web. They see it as a vital part of a healthy digital ecosystem where creativity and innovation can thrive. We couldn't agree more. And we couldn't be prouder to have Mozilla's generous and ongoing support. We were recently able to catch up with Mark Surman, the Foundation's Executive Director, who talks about Mozilla and its myriad projects, and how his organization and ours are a lot like lego blocks for the open web.

Mark Surman by Joi Ito / CC BY

Most people associate Mozilla with the Firefox but you do much more than just that – can you give our readers some background on the different arms of Mozilla as an organization? What is your role there?

Mozilla's overall goal is to promote innovation and opportunity on the web — and to guard the open nature of the internet.

Firefox is clearly the biggest part of this. But we're constantly looking for new ways to make the internet better. Our growing focus on identity, mobile and web apps is a part of this. Also, we're reaching out more broadly beyond software to invite people like filmmakers, scientists, journalists, teachers and so on to get involved.

Personally, I'm most active in this effort to reach out more broadly and to get many more people involved in our work. Much of this is happening through a program I helped start called Mozilla Drumbeat. As Executive Director of Mozilla Foundation, I also manage the overall umbrella legal structure for all of Mozilla's activities.

What is the connection between Mozilla and CC? Do you use our tools in your various projects?

At the highest level, Mozilla and CC are both working for the same thing — a digital society based on creativity, innovation and freedom. And, of course, we use CC licenses for content and documents that we produce across all Mozilla projects.

Mozilla has given generously to Creative Commons – what was the motivation behind donating? What is it about CC that you find important?

I think of both organizations as giving people 'lego blocks' that they can use to make and shape the web. Mozilla's lego blocks are technical, CC's are legal. Both help people create and innovate, which goes back to the higher vision we share.

What do you see as CC's role in the broader digital ecosystem? How does CC enable Mozilla to better innovate in that space?

We need an organization like CC to make sure that the content layer of the web is as open and free as the core tech upon which it's all built. It's at this content layer that most people 'make the web' — it's where people feel the participatory and remixable nature of the web. Keeping things open and free at this level — and making them more so — is critical to the future of the open web.

Help ensure a bright future for the open web and donate to Creative Commons today .

CC Talks With: Jeff Mao and Bob McIntire from the Maine Department of Education: Open Education and Policy

Timothy Vollmer, December 8th, 2010

Maine has been a leader in adopting educational technology in support of its students. In 2002, through the Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI), the state began providing laptops to all students in grades 7-8 in a one-to-one laptop program. In 2009, Maine expanded the project to high school students. The one-to-one laptops paved the way for open education initiatives like Vital Signs , empowering students to conduct their own field research in collaboration with local scientists, and make that research available online. Recently, Maine has been engaged in some interesting and innovative projects around OER as a result of federal grant funds. For this installment of our series on open education and policy, we spoke with Jeff Mao and Bob McIntire from the Maine Department of Education. Jeff is Learning Technology Policy Director at MLTI, and Bob works for the Department's Adult & Community Education team.

One part of the $700 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was dedicated to creating technology-rich classrooms. This funding was distributed through the existing No Child Left Behind Title IID program. With their one-to-one student laptop program, Maine was already ahead of the game with regard to technology in the classroom, so they decided to focus the ARRA funding on OER projects. “We wanted to create something that had a longer shelf life,” said Bob. Maine's grants were broken into two initiatives: research to identify and annotate high quality OERs, and the creation of professional development models using OER.

Curate metadata, don't stockpile resources

Maine is a “non-adoption” state, which means that teachers at the local level determine the educational resources they wish to use in their classrooms. Most other states adopt educational materials at the state level. For instance, for a class like 9th grade world history, states will approve multiple textbook titles from multiple publishers, and schools will be able to choose from among the state approved list. Since it's up to local teachers to determine which educational resources are good for their teaching, part of the Maine OER grants is devoted to researching the rough process that teachers step through when evaluating content. MLTI has been working on a type of educational registry. This registry will be a website that can house the metadata teachers collect around the resources they wish to use. This website–still in development–will help teachers to be able to find, catalog, categorize, and add other informative data to quality resources. Perhaps as important, it will allow teachers to share with others what they did with the content, whether the material worked (or bombed), and other sorts of useful descriptive information. Right now the team is using the social bookmarking service delicious to add metadata to high quality OERs that they find online. This project is coordinated by the Maine Support Network, a professional development and technical assistance provider, and all the resources are linked through one delicious site at http://www.delicious.com/syntiromsn .

Weaning teachers off of printed textbooks

Jeff talked about a way to restructure the traditional textbook adoption cycle that would result with an end product of 100% OER. Currently, the Maine textbook adoption process goes something like this: After six years of using the same textbook, teachers realize their turn is coming up to place an order for a new textbook. In the springtime, they call publishers and ask for demo copies of new books to potentially be used the following fall. Teachers peruse the books sent to them, and settle for the one that is the least flawed. Teachers use the book for five and half years, after which the process repeats itself. Jeff hopes this inefficient process can be changed. He suggests that rather than waiting until the final year to seek out new, pre-packaged educational materials, why not spend the interim years seeking out individual learning objects to replace every piece of their static textbooks?

Such a process could work to improve some of the content that teachers don't like (and don't use) in their traditional textbooks. And, through this iterative, piecemeal process, they can share their illustrative discoveries (and dead ends too) with other teachers. The Department itself could pitch in providing the tools, software, and other infrastructure to help teachers keep track of which resources have been reviewed, replaced, or modified. Jeff thinks that enabling teachers to operate in a constant revision mode is a better way to structure the acquisition of teaching and learning materials, rather than reviewing textbooks only once every five or six years.

As most open educational resources are digital, Jeff said there's an increasing need to be able to deal with strictly digital materials. Digital materials can be leveraged better because Maine students and teachers already have the laptops to access and manipulate the content (which can't be done with physical books), digital materials can help integrate other best-of types of technology and interactive pedagogy into their lessons, and digital materials helps set up the conditions to support embedded assessment mechanisms.

Share your process as OER; everything is miscellaneous

Maine hopes its work on OER can be used by other states and communities, considering the research and resources will be produced using federal dollars. They will publish their process and offer the resources they create as OER itself online. Jeff said, “the more we can demonstrate this process is effective, the better it speaks to the efficacy of OER.” And, publishing information about resources and processes should be something natural to share. “If a teacher expends six hours finding a great OER for teaching students polynomials,” said Jeff, “it just needs to be done once.” But at the same time, with the diversity of resources available online–and with clear rights statements through the use of Creative Commons–variations on the sets of resources can be nearly infinite. Teachers can have their own educational “iMixes,” just as iTunes users create playlists of their favorite music.

The future classroom

As Maine continues its work on OER research and professional development, Jeff and Bob offer a vision of a classroom where students gather in small groups, talking, exploring and building projects and investigating ideas together. There is no lecturing, and open educational resources integrate with classroom instruction seamlessly. As most kids are naturally inclined to try to find information online, teachers can guide students in using high quality, adaptable OER. Jeff also suggests that we should be investing time and effort into more direct support for students, building or extending the tools being built for teachers, and proactively including students in the resource evaluation and review process.

The success of Maine and others' OER projects is not assured. Dwindling budgets will remain an ongoing challenge, and while there's been some recognition of OER in policy initiatives such as the National Education Technology Plan, Jeff and Bob question whether current budget woes will derail national and state efforts for change. Teachers are increasingly overburdened, and the development and support for a hands-on process like Maine's requires ongoing teacher participation, feedback, and practice.

In the long run, Jeff thinks that OER will challenge the educational content industry in much the same way that the music industry was challenged by–and eventually succumbed to–Apple's “buy-whatever-you-want” model of music distribution, where users could break apart the album format and simply purchase the songs they wish. Jeff predicts that the textbook industry will be forced to break apart their offerings too, and sell individual chapters or lessons, where before they offered only packaged content to a captured education audience. And Jeff says the benefits apply to publishers too–“If they sell you Chapter 1 and it's really good,” he said, “maybe you'll want to buy the whole book.”

CC Talks With: Robert Cook-Deegan of the Center for Genomics at Duke

Cameron Parkins, November 11th, 2010

Sharing becomes a slippery slope when it comes to genomics: we need massive amounts of data in order to understand the human genome, but issues of privacy, abuse, and the distrust of institutions stand in the way. So how do we resolve this?

We talked to Robert Cook-Deegan, the director of the Center for Genomics, Ethics, Law & Policy at Duke University , about how the field of genomics is poised for takeoff, the challenges it faces as it scales, and how CC can step in as a neutral institution that will save the day.

Robert Cook-Deegan
by Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy / CC BY

What is the link between GELP and CC?

Genomics is completely dependent on a healthy mutualism between discovery science and practical application, yet the field is rife with conflict and deeply held ideologies and is rarely fertilized with empirical facts. Creative Commons is all about finding solutions that reduce friction in the intellectual property (IP) system and facilitate sharing of data and materials. So our roles are complementary and mutually dependent.

GELP is a corporate sponsor of Creative Commons–why do you think CC is important?

There are many academic centers with talent–we publish our own research at Duke, but we're just not that good at putting things into action–but Creative Commons is the only place that is actually trying to get things done as a trusted nonprofit intermediary and catalyst.

I'm reminded of the epitaph on Buffy the Vampire Slayer's grave: “She Saved the World. A Lot.” That's what CC has begun to do in the world of art and writing; it's helping save our culture from some of its own worst pathologies. It has the potential to do the same in science.

What do you see as CC's role in the broader digital ecosystem? How does CC enable GELP to better innovate in that space?

The field of genomics is poised for takeoff. This is not pure hype. In 1999, there was no published human genome; by 2003 we had a reference human genome; by 2007 Craig Venter and Jim Watson's genomes were on the Internet. Nature estimates that today, several thousand people have been fully sequenced.

But that information is useless if it is not compared to sequences of other people and organisms. What matters is genetic variation and how that maps to phenotype–whether a person is likely to get a disease or is prone to certain risks. If there was ever a field that depended on network dynamics, this is it. I can't predict who will make the most valuable contributions to understanding my genome, but I sure want them to do a good job. And they can only do a good job if they have access to lots of other peoples' genomes. This is hard because many people have the same concerns for privacy, fears of abuse, and distrust of institutions that I do.

How in the world are we going to solve this problem? I don't know. But I do know that most research institutions and private firms are more concerned with mining what's under their control already, rather than sharing and creating value collectively. The real value of genomic data is going to require information vastly beyond the control of any single institution.

We need Creative Commons because it is a trusted intermediary non-profit institution that will enable the dangerous dark innovation jungle to thrive despite the entrenched ideologies and conflicting interests of all the critters that live in it. We're depending on you. May the force be with you.

Join Robert and GELP in supporting Creative Commons and help ensure a bright future for sharing in the field of genomics by donating to CC today !

CC Talks With: Flat World Knowledge's Eric Frank: Open Education and Policy

Timothy Vollmer, November 4th, 2010

At the beginning of this year we announced a revised approach to our education plans, focusing our activities to support of the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement. In order to do so we have worked hard to increase the amount of information available on our own site – in addition to an Education landing page and the OER portal explaining Creative Commons' role as legal and technical infrastructure supporting OER, we have been conducting a series of interviews to help clarify some of the challenges and opportunities of OER in today's education landscape.

One major venue for the advancement of OER is through the development and support of businesses that levage openly licensed content in support of education. Eric Frank is Founder and President of Flat World Knowledge , a commercial publisher of openly-licensed college textbooks. We spoke with Eric about faculty perceptions of open textbooks, customization enabled by open licensing, and the future of “free online and affordable offline” business models.

Eric Frank by Flat World Knowledge / CC BY

Why did you start Flat World Knowledge and how did you decide to approach this business using open content?

My co-founder Jeff Shelstad and I come out of a long history in textbook publishing. We left a major textbook publisher because of what we perceived as exceedingly-high dissatisfaction levels among the primary constituents in that market—students, faculty and authors. These groups were scratching their heads wondering if the print-based business model was going to be able to serve them going forward. When we began thinking about how to build a new business model, we didn't actually know that much about open educational resources and open licensing. We started to bake a business model based on bringing prices down and increasing access for students; giving faculty more control over the teaching and learning experience; and providing a healthier and more sustainable income stream for authors. And then we started to meet people in the open community. We spoke to Open Education scholar and advocate David Wiley (and Flat World's Chief Openness Officer) who said, “It's funny, you sound a lot like me, except we use different words.” This pushed us a little bit further. Ultimately, through a very pragmatic approach to solving real problems that customers were facing, we arrived at this open textbook model.

The cost of textbooks is something that's very tangible to students. Flat World Knowledge recently released information that 800 colleges will utilize Flat World open textbooks this fall semester, saving 150,000 students $12 million in textbook expenses. And, the Student PIRGs' recent report A Cover to Cover Solution: How Open Textbooks Are The Path To Textbook Affordability found that adopting open textbooks could reduce textbook costs by 80%–to $184 per year, compared to the average of $900. Beyond the important outreach on cost savings, what are the primary questions you hear from faculty and students around “open”?

For the most part, when the average faculty member hears “open textbook,” it means nothing to them. In some cases, it has a positive connotation, and in other cases, it's negative. When it's negative, the primarily concern is one of basic quality and sustainability. Faculty question the entities making these open textbooks, and wonder whether the textbooks could be worth their salt if they're available for free under an open license. And of course, they confuse 'free' and 'open' all the time. “If it's free,” educators say, “It can't be good. What author would ever do that?” Sometimes we see the opposite problem, such as when people know a little something about the publishing ecosystem and say, “It's too good to be true.”

Through our marketing programs, we spend a lot of time educating faculty that we are a professional publisher, and that we focus on well-known scholars and successful textbook authors. We start by talking about what's not different from the traditional approach: we sign experienced authors to write textbooks for us, and we develop the books by providing editorial resources, peer reviewing, and investment. The end product is a high-quality textbook and teaching package. There's a real focus and emphasis on quality. What we change is how we distribute, how we price, and how we earn our revenue. We walk faculty through this process and let them know that 'open' is just about loosening copyright restrictions so that they can do more with the textbooks. We explain that free access is about getting their students onto a level playing field. We explain that affordable choices is about making sure students get the format and price that works for them. Once faculty understand these things and are reassured that we have a quality process in place, and that we are a real and sustainable enterprise that will be around to support them in the future, then it all starts to come together. We have to overcome either a total void of knowledge, which we prefer, or some other baggage that they carry into the conversation.

Customizability of digital textbooks is a key feature of Flat World Knowledge, enabled by the open license. How do teachers and students use this feature? And, how is Flat World's approach to remix different than other platforms and services that allow some adaptability of content without actually using open content as the base?

Of course, the license itself carries its own rights and permissions. People are able to do a lot more with open content than they can with all rights reserved materials. We keep building out our technology platform so that it ultimately enables faculty to take full advantage of that open license—to do all the things that educators might want to do to improve the quality of the material for their own purposes. Today, the most popular customization is relatively simple. For example, educators reorganize the table of contents by dragging and dropping textbook chapters into the right order for their class, and delete a few things they don't cover. This is easy and helps them match the book to their syllabus.

Then you move into exploring other areas. For example, instructors may want to make the textbook more pedagogically aligned with their teaching style. In that case, a teacher might integrate a short case study and a series of questions alongside the textbook content. Teachers may want to make the references and examples more relevant to their students by using the names of local companies. Timeliness is certainly important—something happens in the world and educators want to be able to integrate it into their teaching materials.

Educators have different teaching styles and approaches too. An adopter of one of our economics textbooks swapped out some models for other economic models that he prefers to use. An adopter at the University of New Hampshire added several chapters on sustainability and corporate social responsibility into an introduction to business book. Now, he's teaching the course through his prism and from his perspective. These are the kinds of things that people want to be able to do. The critical thing for us is to make the platform easy to use so that customizing a book is as effortless as opening up a Word document, making some changes, saving it, and delivering it to students.

Regarding how our approach differs from other platforms and services because we begin with openly-licensed content, at one level, the ability to take something and modify it is largely a technology question. We go further, and allow people to edit text at the word level. You don't see this sort of framework in other services because most of the time you're dealing with the all rights reserved mentality. Most authors sign up to write traditional textbooks with the understanding that, “This is my work and you can't do stuff with it.” I think the first big difference is when the author says, “I want people to be able to do stuff with this.” Having authors enter into a different publishing relationship by using open licenses allows us to go much further with the platform. That said, there's nothing really stopping another company from doing this with some kind of unique user license.

We see other benefits of open access when we think about outputs. You might be able to go onto a publisher's site and make modifications to a text, and maybe even integrate something that's openly-licensed on the Web. But ultimately, it's going to get subsumed into the all rights reserved framework, and won't propagate forward, so no one else can change it. And generally, these digital services are expensive and access expires after a few months, so the user no longer can get to the content. Things like digital rights management and charging high prices for print materials are fundamentally business model decisions around dissemination, but they're important.

I think the other big difference is what can happen away from the Flat World Knowledge site. Somebody could arguably come in and take our content and do something with it somewhere else. We're not locking it down and saying, “The only thing you can do is work with the content on our site, and only use our technology.” We happen to make it easy to do this sort of thing on the Flat World site, but the open license allows others to use the content away from the original website. This leads to many more options that aren't possible with content that is all rights reserved or served under a very unique license.

Flat World Knowledge licenses its textbooks under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license. What were the considerations in choosing this license? How do you see the role of Creative Commons in open textbook and open education?

One of my pet peeves about this community that we're a part of is the frequent and sometimes contentious debates over licensing. The principle of enabling a range of licenses recognizes that copyright holders have different objectives for their creations. I have my objectives and you have yours, so we may choose different licenses to reach those objectives. That's perfectly fine. This is the way the world should be. For us, the choice of a license was very much predicated on building a sustainable commercial model around open. We invest fairly heavily with financial resources, time, and intellectual capital to make these textbooks and related products something that we think can dominate in the marketplace. If we didn't use the non-commercial condition, in our view, we'd be making all the investment and then someone else could sell the content at a dramatically lower price because they didn't make the initial and ongoing investment. The non-commercial condition is the piece of the model that enables us to give users far more rights, to provide free points of access, and protect our ability to commercialize the investment we made. The ShareAlike clause ensures that this protection continues forward.

Our decision to use this license also relates to authors. The sustainability and financial success argument starts with the people who have the most value in the market: the authors who create the books. Our discussions with authors always include a financial component. They want to know how we are going to capitalize on this venture. Authors want to do good, but they also want to earn income and be fairly compensated. When we explain our model and how the licensing works, they feel very comfortable.

Last month Hal Plotkin released the paper Free to Learn: An Open Educational Resources Policy Development Guidebook for Community College Governance Officials . That document suggests that community colleges are uniquely positioned to both take advantage of OER opportunities and to become pioneers in teaching through the creative and cost-effective use of OER, including through the adoption of open textbooks. How are Flat World's approaches different in working with universities as opposed to community colleges? What are the differences in terms of the benefits and challenges to faculty, students, and administration within each institution?

This is a great question, but it's a little hard to answer, because we must consider another variable—the book itself. Sometimes a book is aimed at a community college course and demographic, and sometimes it's aimed at a four-year research university. For example, our Exploring Business book has a big community college market, while our Introduction to Economic Analysis title out of Caltech has very much a top-50, Ph.D.-granting institution market. So, this confuses things a little bit. That said, I think it's fair to say that there is generally a correlation between where the financial pain is greatest (which tends to be at community colleges and state institutions) and where the faculty are closest to that pain (where teaching is their primary emphasis, and they spend more time with students). This is where we see the greatest pull for this solution. There's less of a pull from wealthier demographics and/or with faculty who spend more time doing research than teaching. While there's more ideological and intellectual understanding of the value of sharing on the research side, pragmatically, the financial pain tends to be on the community college side.

In the recent First Monday article, A sustainable future for open textbooks: The Flat World Knowledge story , Hilton and Wiley suggest that in testing Flat World's textbook model (“free online and affordable offline”), nearly 40% of students still purchased a print copy of the textbook. And Nicole Allen mentioned in our interview with her that the research of the Student PIRGs shows that “students are willing to purchase formats they value even in the presence of a free alternative.” So, print materials are not going away overnight, as long as the resources can be tailored in ways that teachers and students want to use them. But, as powerful digital technologies offer so many new ways to interact with educational content, how do you foresee the distant (or near) future in which print-on-demand may no longer be a core part of your business model?

We agree with the findings in those reports that print is going away more slowly than pundits proclaimed it would. We're totally committed to what I think of as platform agnosticism. We never want to be in a position of having to guess which technologies or trends will win or lose. Part of our solution was to build a very dynamic publishing engine which could take a book—which is really a series of database objects and computer code that gets pulled together—and transform it through computer software programs to a certain file format. Today, one format goes to a print-on-demand vendor to make a physical book; another is an ePub file to be downloaded to an iPad or other mobile device; another is a .mobi file for a Kindle. We can afford to be on the leading edge and make formats available that may have low penetration today. And if they grow faster, we'll be there with a salable format for those devices that will proliferate.

The most important improvement we can make to learning outcomes across our society right now is access. People sometimes ask me, “Isn't the textbook itself a dead paradigm?” I tell them no, because billions of dollars per year are spent on textbooks. Right now you could create a really killer learning product, and I could take the one that's already being used by millions of people and make it much more accessible. Enabling greater access is going to have much bigger short-term impact. Going forward, improvements in learning outcomes beyond access will come from things that aren't content. They will come from experiences—whether it's an assessment I take and get immediate feedback to inform a specific learning path, or whether it's a social learning experience in which I'm dropped into a community of learners with a challenge and we draw upon each other to come up with solutions. Content supports those things, but isn't as important in some ways as the experience .

Our view of the world is to get into the market where there's pain today, establish a large base of users, and then keep evolving the product to be an increasingly better learning tool. That will inevitably take the form of integrating more unique services that can't be copied. That's the long-term goal for us, and probably critical for any business operating in the digital medium, to be financially successful. Kevin Kelly, the technology writer and founding executive editor of Wired , said it best: “When copies are super abundant, they become worthless. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.” I believe that.

What does a successful teaching and learning environment implementing the power of open textbooks and OER “look like”? Do you have any lingering thoughts — worries, hopes, and predictions?

I don't worry too much because if we keep our finger on the pulse of what people want to do, we'll figure it out. One potential danger is the expense of providing this abundance of integrated tools, formats and options for users. It's easy to imagine the expense of systems that incorporate things like an assessment engine built on adaptive learning and artificial intelligence to guide users to the best resource, all the while connecting them to other users to foster a richer learning experience. This has the potential to be very expensive, and ratchets up the imperative for players in the open community to help figure it out.

CC Talks With: Elspeth Revere of the MacArthur Foundation

Allison Domicone, October 29th, 2010

Elspeth Revere,
MacArthur Foundation / CC BY

Elspeth Revere is the Vice President in charge of Media, Culture and Special Initiatives at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation . The MacArthur Foundation has generously supported CC since our founding in 2002. Join MacArthur and help keep CC going strong by making a donation today .

Can you give us some background on the MacArthur Foundation?

MacArthur is one of the nation's largest independent foundations. The MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. In addition to selecting the MacArthur Fellows, the Foundation works to defend human rights, advance global conservation and security, make cities better places, and understand how technology is affecting children and society.

With assets over $5 billion, MacArthur will award approximately $230 million in grants this year. Through the support it provides, the Foundation fosters the development of knowledge, nurtures individual creativity, strengthens institutions, helps improve public policy, and provides information to the public, primarily through support for public interest media.

The Foundation was established in 1978. Last year, it made 600 grants for a total of $230 million.

What is your role there?

I am Vice President in charge of Media, Culture and Special Initiatives. We have three ongoing areas of work. The first is in public interest media, where we support public radio, documentary films, deep and analytical news programs, and investigative reporting. The second is support to over 200 arts and culture organizations in our home city, Chicago. The third is institutional support to help strengthen nonprofit organizations that are key to the Foundation's grantmaking fields so that they will exist and be effective over the long term. In addition, we conduct a changing set of special grantmaking initiatives that are intended to be short-term and responsive to a particular problem or opportunity.

The MacArthur Foundation is a private foundation (not a corporate sponsor) that supports Creative Commons – what was the motivation behind this generous giving? What is it about CC that you find important?

In about 1999, MacArthur began exploring the question of how the digital revolution would impact society and the issues that the Foundation cared about and what a Foundation like MacArthur could do to help people understand and shape this phenomenon for the overall good. We held a series of consultations and some of the people who later became founders of Creative Commons, including Larry Lessig and Jamie Boyle, talked to us about both the promise of technology to unlock information and make it widely and easily available, and the concern that digital tools could also be used to limit the public availability of information. They, and others, helped us to understand that copyright laws, originally intended to regulate industry, were increasingly regulating consumers and their behavior — and this was even before blogging, podcasts, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and all the other sharing tools that we now rely on.

In 2002, MacArthur began a six year funding initiative on Intellectual Property and the Long-Term Protection of the Public Domain. Our first grant to Creative Commons was made that year. It was an exemplary organization for us to support because we were looking for new models of thinking about intellectual property in a digital age. All told, we have made 4 grants totaling $3.15 million to support its work. And Creative Commons has become a successful tool for sharing information in the arts, sciences, governance, and education throughout the world.

What is the link between the MacArthur Foundation and CC? Do you use our tools in your work? Or are our tools more applicable to your grantees?

MacArthur policy calls for openness in research and freedom of access to data. We encourage our grantees to explore opportunities to use existing and emerging Internet distribution models and when appropriate open access journals, Creative Commons licenses or other mechanisms that result in broad access for the interested field and public. While we do not insist that grantees use Creative Commons licenses, we do suggest their use when appropriate and practical.

What do you see as CC's role in the broader digital ecosystem? How does CC enable the MacArthur Foundation and its grantees to better innovate in that space?

Creative Commons has made all of us more aware of information sharing — how and why we use the information of others and when and how we will let others use what we create. It has provided the tools to allow us to share what we make both easily and widely if we want to do so. It has enabled communities to form around the world to work on common interests ranging from music and governance. And it has demonstrated that these communities can solve legal, technical and practical problems together.

Help make sure Creative Commons can continue to develop and steward tools that are crucial to sharing information in the arts, sciences, governance, and education throughout the world. Make a donation today .

CC Talks With: Ton Roosendaal, Sintel Producer and head of Blender Institute

Chris Webber, October 27th, 2010

Sintel poster by Blender Institute / CC BY

Ton Roosendaal is head of the Blender Institute, leader of Blender development, and producer of the recently released 3d short film Sintel , which is released as Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 .

Sintel is the Blender Institute's third “open movie”. Could you describe what “open movie” means to the Blender Institute?

Oh… many things. First, I love to work with artists, which goes much easier than working with developers! And making short animation films with teams is an amazing and very rewarding activity. With this large creative community of Blender artists, the financial model enables it even; not many short film makers have this opportunity.

But the practical incentive to do this is because it's a great development model for Blender. Putting artists together on a major challenge is the ultimate way to drive software like Blender forward. That way we can also ensure it fits ambitious targets weeding out the 'would be cool features' for the 'must need' ones. And it's quite easier to design usability with small diverse teams, than have it done online via feedback mechanisms, which easily becomes confusing with the noise of hundreds of different opinions.

It's also a fact that the Blender Institute was established for open movie projects, so for me (and the Blender Institute) it means our core business.

Blender Institute projects have a rare but heavily developed intersection between free and open source software (Blender the software and its developer community) and free culture (the films the Blender Institute produces). How related and similar are these worlds?

I don't consider myself much related to “free culture” really, and certainly not in the political sense. For Blender projects it's just a natural way to deliver it in open license like with [the licenses provided by] CC. We want our users to learn from them, to dissect our tricks and technology, or use them for other works. And not least: to allow everyone who works on a project to freely take it with them; as a portfolio, or companies who sponsor us who need demos or research material. So in that sense we are free culture!

But each time I meet people who work in this field, it's mostly theorists, not practicists. so I'ma bit biased [...] people who talk about free culture don't seem to make it (at least here in the Netherlands, at conferences or meetings). I get regular invitations to talk on this topic. I do it sometimes, but the blah-blah level disturbs me a bit. Free culture is about doing it.

So at the Blender Institute, you have artists working on these works, and you have programmers working on this code. How similar are those worlds?

For Blender, I think we have a great mix, with a lot of cross-overs. Several of our coders started as users, and we involve artists closely in design for tools or features.

This doesn't always go perfectly, especially when it's highly technical, like simulation code. But if you visit our IRC channel, or mailing list, or conferences… it's always a great mix. Maybe this is because 3d art creation is quite technical too? I dunno… not many users will understand how to construct bsp trees, yet they use it all the time.

In general compared to other open source projects, I think we're quite un-technical and accessible. A big reason for that is because I'm not even a trained programmer. I did art and industrial design. When coders go too deep in abstract constructions I can't follow it either and can simply counter it with an “Okay, but what's the benefit for using this?” And when the answer is “It makes coders' lives easier” I usually ignore it. In my simple world, coders suffer and artists benefit! But one coder can also do some stuff — taking a few hours — that saves hundreds of thousands of people a few seconds in a day. And that's always good.

What's the development of a film like Sintel like as in terms of internal development vs community involvement in production? Has that dynamic changed at all from work to work? I partly ask this because some people think “Oh, open movie, they must have their SVN repository open the whole time and just get random contributions from everywhere,” but Blender Institute films don't tend to work that way.

Right, we keep most of our content closed until release. I'ma firm believer in establishing protective creative processes. In contrast to developers — who can function well individually online — an artist really needs daily and in-person feedback and stimulation.

We've done this now four times (three films and one game) and it's amazing how teams grow in due time. But during this process they're very vulnerable too. If you followed the blog you may have seen that we had quite harsh criticism on posting our progress work . If you're in the middle of a process, you see the improvements. Online you only see the failures.

The cool thing is that a lot of tests and progress can be followed now perfectly and it suddenly makes more sense I think. Another complex factor for opening up a creative process is that people are also quite inexperienced when they join a project. You want to give them a learning curve and not hear all the time from our audience that it sucks. Not that it was that bad! But one bad criticism can ruin a day.

One last thing on the “open svn” point: in theory it could work, if we would open up everything 100% from scratch. That then will give an audience a better picture of progress and growth. We did that for our game project and it was suited quite well for it. For film… most of our audience wants to get surprised more, not know the script, the dialogs, the twists. Film is more 'art' than games, in that respect.

Ton Roosendaal by Kennisland / CC BY-SA

You also did the sprints this time, which pulled in some more community involvement than in previous projects. Do you think that model went well? Would you do it again?

The modeling sprint was great! We needed a lot of props, and for that an online project works perfectly. The animation sprint (for animated characters) was less of a success. Character animation doesn't lend itself well for it, I think. There's no history for it… ehh. Like, for design and modeling, we have a vocabulary. Most people understand when you explain visual design, style, proportions. But for animation… only a few (trained) animators know how to discuss this. It's more specialist too.

How has the choice of the Creative Commons Attribution license affected your works?

How would it affect our works? Do you mean, why not choose ND (no-derivatives) or NC (noncommercial)? Both restrictions won't suit well for our work. And without attribution it's not a CC license.

I did get some complaints why not choose a FSF compatible license, but the Free Software Foundation has no license for content like ours either.

What kinds of things have you seen / do you expect to see post-release of a project such as Sintel?

A lot of things happened with previous films, Elephants Dream and Big Buck Bunny, ranging from codec research in companies, showcases on tradeshows, to student composers using it to graduate. Even wallpaper!

We are working now on a 4k resolution of the film (4096 x 2160). The 4k market is small, but very active and visible in many places. They're dying for good content. I'm also very interested in doing a stereoscopic '3d' version. As for people making alternative endings or shots; that hasn't happened a lot, to my knowledge. Our quality standard is too high as well, so it's not a simple job.

But further, the very cool thing of open content is that you're done when you're done! A commercial product's work stress only starts when the product is done. That's what I learned with our first film. Just let it go, and move on to next.

And at least one “free culture” aspect then: it's quite amazing how our films have become some kind of cultural heritage already. People have grown fond of them, or at least to the memory of them. It's part of our culture in a way, and without a free license that would have been a really tough job.

Might there be a Sintel game (Project Jackfruit?) using the Blender Game Engine like there was a game following Big Buck Bunny (Yo Frankie)?

Not here in the Blender Institute. But there's already a quite promising online project for it .

You can watch Sintel online and support the project (and get all the data files used to produce the film, tutorials, and many other goodies) by purchasing a DVD set . You may also wish to consider supporting Creative Commons in our current superhero campaign .