Today is one of those liminal days when you come to the end of something you’ve worked on for what feels like forever, and it magically transforms into the beginning of something new, and you can still see both sides of it.
We began work on the Creative Commons Certificates two years ago. Collectively, we’ve spent hundreds of hours, sometimes working face to face but most often working remotely, designing and redesigning everything from the course outcomes to the structure of the course content to the assessment approach to the underlying technology. We talked about the certificate at conferences and gathered feedback. We offered one day versions of individual units from the course as face to face workshops and gathered feedback. We went back and refined the designs, content, and assessments again. And again. And again.
This morning, two years later, we kicked off the first official beta offering of the certification courses – a 25 person cohort in the Creative Commons Certificate for Educators course and another 25 person cohort in the Creative Commons Certificate for Librarians course. The courses are in beta, inasmuch as we know there are still improvements that need to be made. But the courses are also official, inasmuch as these 50 individuals are the first to have the opportunity to be formally certified.
I’m both thrilled and terrified to be teaching both courses.
None of this would have been possible without an incredible group of people. The core cert development team included Paul Stacey, Alan Levine, Kelsey Wiens, Kamil Sliwowski, Olga Belikov, Sarah Pearson, and me. Creative Commons staff also made important contributions to the work, including Eric Steuer, Jennie Rose Halperin, Cable Green, Rob Myers, Diane Peters, Timothy Vollmer, Jane Park, Claudio Ruiz, Mari Moreshead, and Ryan Merkley.
Don’t get me wrong – there’s still plenty of work to do. We anticipate making many improvements to the courses between now and when they’re launched to the public at the CC Summit this April (2018). At that time we’ll also openly share all the course content under a CC BY license. But today, as students login to the course and begin posting introductions, I (and many others) feel a deep sense of satisfaction at achieving this milestone. Congratulations to everyone involved!
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