For the first time in its six year history, the International Open Education Conference was held in Vancouver at UBC Robson Square from August 12th to 14th. The conference focused on many topics connected to open education, and all of the presentations and keynotes were streamed live and archived via Ustream. The videos are there for anyone to view on the Open Education Conference website, and it truly speaks of the values of the Open Education Conference. Below are a few snippets from some of the presentations.
Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for OpenCourseWare: A Preview
In 2008, eight US based OpenCourseWare (OCW) producers wrote the Code of Best Practices to re-examine the copyright exception of fair use. Lindsey Weeramuni, Intellectual Property Supervisor at MIT, presented the progress that the Code of Best Practices has made since its conception in 2008, right up to its ongoing legal review which is expected to be finalized by the end of September 2009. The Code, which is a legal document, intends to interpret and apply fair use under US copyright law. While it does not apply to international copyright, it does set the stage for communication between OCW producers to encourage the creation of similar legislation in their areas. The implementation of the Code of Best Practices will provide institutions with a framework for what course material can be used in open course wares. Likewise, it will mark and tag items for which fair use is claimed so that there is a clear distinction for users. As this legislation goes into its last phases of implementation, the OCW world can anticipate a change to the copyright regime.
Can International Copyright Exceptions and Limitations Support A Global Learning Commons
Lila Bailey, Counsel for ccLearn, discussed the problems surrounding third party copyrighted content for members of the open educational resource (OER) community. The goal of ccLearn is to build a global learning commons where anyone in the world can access, share, modify, and combine OERs. Bailey explains that the difficulties to the openness and interoperability required for the global learning commons are the restrictions placed in educational resources under “all-rights-reserved” (ARR). To overcome these ARR restrictions, OER creators have been relying on copyright exceptions, or linking to the work rather than incorporating it. Copyright exceptions are a way of using ARR material without payment or permission; however, it’s not internationally standardized and thus not interoperable or open. It works around the copyright rather than encouraging cooperation. Because of separate copyright laws in individual nations, the flow of OERs literally stops at borders, which hurts the global learning commons. To overcome this barrier, Bailey encouraged everyone in attendance to use Public Domain and Creative Commons material as much as possible and to discourage the use of ARR. When this happens a global learning commons can be nurtured without limitations.
In a discussion about open textbooks, Murugan Pal from the CK12 Foundation, Eric Frank from Flat World Knowledge, Cable Green from the WA State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, Barbara Illowsky from De Anza College, and Steve Acker from Ohio State University shared their knowledge and experience with open textbook publishing models. While each panel member had different experiences with open textbooks, there was a constant theme throughout – open textbooks first and foremost save students money. For example, an institution with 80 courses per year can charge students up to $42 million in textbooks. The introduction of one open textbook into one course could save students $250,000 per year. The panel also discussed the learning benefits of open textbooks for students, particularly those in higher education. The panel explained that open textbooks encourage a de-linear way of learning, where students can use hyperlinks and embedded material to branch their learning through other online means. Students become not only recipients of the material but also collaborators, which places them in the professional atmosphere: an experience they might not otherwise get through traditional texts. Each panel member predicted a vast change from the traditional textbook to that of an open source textbook. The only question is when?
Through a video compilation, Al Levine of the New Media Consortium shared personal stories of how people are able to connect with others online through their willingness to share open licensed materials. In one video, Tom Woodward, who puts his photos on Flickr with a Creative Commons license, got an email from someone in France who wanted to use his picture of a parrot in a display at a national French museum, as it represented the plight of the rainforest. His photo is in a French museum simply because he shares his photos openly on Flickr. In another example, a student studying with Barbara Ganley went to India and used a blog to communicate with her family and Barbara about her travels. Within a few weeks people from India were following her and interacting with her on her blog. Barbara nominated the blog for a college-wide writing award and it won. This experience inspired the student to start a non-profit in India to do digital story telling with Indian youth in schools. In another video, Alec Couros published a diagram titled “the networked teacher” in his 2006 dissertation. This diagram has been reused, revised, and translated into different languages and the key reason why is because Alec wrote his dissertation with a Creative Commons license. Now, with over 26,000 views, his writing has reached a wide audience that would never have seen his work had he not made it accessible online. The common theme in all of these examples is if you make it open, connections can be made, and you can have an effect on complete strangers by sharing open licensed materials!
The Design of Openness
Jim Groom from the University of Mary Washington (UMW) shared his university’s experience in implementing a blogging platform called UMW blogs. When the initial launch happened two years ago, about 60-70 blogs were active. There was no dictation for what the UMW community should do with a blog, just that they needed to engage with it: it was their space to build and create. What happened next was astonishing. The blogging platform was used to create literary journals, websites, and an art history exhibit. One blog built a digital histories page about Virginia, and this was something that the community saw as a project that is open and relevant to the whole community – inside and outside of the university. UMW blogs, which now has over 2900 users, was built using WordPress. With WordPress, students are able to export their material once they leave university – something that is not possible with a learning management system. Thus, a UMW blog can become a part of a learner’s online identity. For Jim, blogs are a space, not a tool, and they act as a way to frame your digital identity – an identity that continues after well after university.
Vital Signs: Lessons from Building a Statewide Science Learning Environment
Sarah Kim from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute presented her work on an initiative, Vital Signs, which brings together scientists and students in a community-based science education environment. Sarah began by looking at a case study of an ecosystem health investigation, where students assume the role of scientists and collect samples out in the field. Before the samples are collected, a scientist records a video for the students to watch which gives them an idea of what types of samples they might find. After the students collect samples, they go through the scientific process of analyzing the samples and share their findings online, comparing it to the previous year’s data. Vital Signs uses open source technology to maintain the online data, and this helps the scientific community. Scientists use this student-collected data to inform their own state-wide research efforts. What has been learned from the project so far is that teachers want to connect students to scientists and have them go out into the field, as this helps them learn about science in ways that aren’t possible with a textbook.
Siyavula: Building Sustainable OERs Through Community Development
In South Africa, much like in other places around the world, teachers spend a lot of time preparing teaching material on their own. The Siyavula project strives to make sure these teachers have access to teaching materials by putting open learning materials online. Mark Horner and Cynthia Jimes from Siyavula, and Kathi Fletcher and Joel Thierstein from Connexions discussed Siyavula and how South Africa is developing sustainable open educational resources across grades R-12. Siyavula depends on creating communities of practice. What Mark and Cynthia found was that even though teachers develop their own teaching material, they often remix and reuse materials by means of swap and share groups. These groups meet face-to-face, and Siyavula aims to bring them online, where more teachers can join the community and share their materials. With Siyavula, teachers can access resources that they need, use them in the classroom, and then add to the information repository where the materials can be used by other teachers. By using Connexions as the information repository, Siyavula provides teachers with up-to-date learning resources and drives down the cost of printing. This makes it cheaper to update textbooks and teach students relevant, up-to-date material.
Telling Stories in Land and Food Systems; Future Advocates and Citizen Journalists
Duncan McHugh, Andrew Riseman, and Cyprien Lomas from the UBC Faculty of Land and Food Systems, and Kathryn Gretsinger from the CBC and the UBC Graduate School of Journalism shared their podcasting assignment that they created for AGRO 461, a capstone project for agroecology students. Andrew, the instructor for the course, wanted his students to do something other than write a report, so, he created a podcasting assignment. With the help of the School of Journalism, Land and Food Systems students were taught about how to tell a journalistic story. Students were also given workshops on copyright awareness, how to get good recording, and how to use audio-editing software. The course used two open sourced tools: sakai to communicate with students and audacity as an audio editor. Audacity was chosen, as students could download this onto their home computer and could continue to use the program after the course finished. The final project consisted of a 10 minute audio piece, and each piece used a Creative Commons license. The project gave students a sense of accountability for their work, as the pieces were entered into a CBC competition. This project taught students how to better communicate and how to spread their message to a broader audience, something that will be beneficial to them after they graduate.
