You may be somewhat surprised to hear that talk on the UNESCO IIEP list, set up for the discussion of open educational resources, has temporarily turned to the topic of open versus free versus libre again. 
Here is my contribution to the conversation, in which I quote and than “adapt” John Adams… Continue reading ‘Misquoting Adams on the UNESCO IIEP List’
Tag Archive for 'open content'
No, this isn’t another tired post complaining that we should think of all “consumers” as also being “producers.” Of course we should.
This is a post about a much more subtle problem with the way we’re thinking, that I am increasingly convinced is putting the field of open educational resources (OER) at risk. Continue reading ‘OERs, Producers, Consumers, and Reuse’
Every now and then I receive an inquiry about the status of the Open Publication License. Today I received this one:
I would like to know about your view on the “Open Publication License” today. I have had some arguments about its status. I have read in the past on some pages that is not recommended to be uses any more and rather one should use the Creative Commons licenses. The wikipedia also states that ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Publication_License). Maybe you can clarify that in a blog post with some comments on the status and how you see the OPL in relation to other licenses or what ia [sic] bad or good about it. So then I could link people to that post and not have to argue about that any more. That would be great.
So here is a whirlwind overview of Open Publication License, and where it stands today. Continue reading ‘About the Open Publication License’
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I’m feeling grumpy today. Must be the jet lag.
Why do people think that open source licenses are a kind of magic pixie dust? Here’s a little thought…. Let’s call it Wiley’s Anti-openness Thought Experiment (WATE):
A major publisher publishes a beginning algebra textbook which is not very effectively designed. Most faculty avoid using it; those who do find that their students perform more poorly than the last few semesters’ students. The word gets out on the street about the poor quality of the book, and sales suffer.
One day, the publisher has a brilliant idea. The publisher releases the second edition of the book, which changes in only one way: the standard copyright statement in the front of the book is replaced with a Creative Commons Attribution License.
Now I ask you: is the second edition of the textbook more educationally effective than the first?
The answer is, obviously, No. So why is it that PhD students looking for dissertation topics keep proposing to gather evidence to establish their hypothesis that “open educational resources are more effective than proprietary resources?” Why is it that very smart people I know from prestigious universities in the OER world keep falling into this same trap in their thinking? AN OPEN LICENSE DOES NOT MAKE A RESOURCE MORE EFFECTIVE!!!
Now, obviously, I am not anti-openness. In fact, I am the most pro-openness person I know. But what you have to understand is that what increases the quality of a resource is when someone **improves** the resource, not when someone **openly licenses** a resource. The improvement is partially made possible by an open source license, but is not accomplished by the license.
Someone once said that a person who doesn’t read is no different from a person who can’t read. In the same sense, and open educational resource that has never been adapted or localized is no different from a fully copyrighted resource.
Please, please, please, let’s learn this lesson.
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Call for Papers
Open Education 2007: Localizing and Learning
Center for Open and Sustainable Learning at Utah State University
Conference dates are September 26-28, 2007
Submission deadline is May 18, 2007
Conference Themes
For the first several years our field focused on content production and content licensing. Today, there are thousands of full university courses and tens of thousands of learning modules available as open educational resources under open licenses like those offered by Creative Commons. However, our work isn’t finished; we’re simply nearing a checkpoint.
If our open education efforts aren’t supporting learning, we’re failing as a field. Period. And as we are beginning to understand how to produce and license content, we have to turn some of our attention to how this content is used by learners and teachers. How do they change, adapt, and localize it for their specific needs or the needs of their specific students? Do open educational resources support learning in ways different from non-open resources? In what concrete ways do open educational resources support learning?
OpenEd 2007 will focus on:
* Localizing open educational resources
* Learning from open educational resources
Acceptance announcements will be made by July 31, 2007. If your session was accepted for presentation, we strongly encourage you to submit a full paper for publication in the conference proceedings. Accepted full papers (5-10 pages) are due no later than August 17, 2007.
All submissions (short description, abstract and full papers) and presentations must be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (http:://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0).
For more info please see the conference website http://cosl.usu.edu/conferences/opened2007/ or
email conference at cosl dot usu dot edu.
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