Creative-Commons

tl;dr - Go play around with generativetextbooks.org and let me know what you think. Earlier this year I began prototyping an open source tool for learning with AI in order to explore ways generative AI and OER could intersect. I’m specifically interested in trying to combine the technical power of generative AI with the participatory power of OER, in order to both increase access to educational opportunity and improve outcomes for those students who access it. I did some preliminary writing on this topic back in July of 2023, calling the artifacts that result from combining generative AI and OER “generative textbooks” and have continued to ruminate on the topic. ...

There’s been a lot of discussion about open textbooks, efficacy research, and student cost savings in the wake of this year’s #OpenEd15. The general theme of the conversation has been a concern that a focus on open textbooks confuses the means of open education with the end of open education. I’m compiling a Storify of examples of this really engaging writing - you should definitely take the time to read through it. I’m not responding directly to many of the points made in those posts here, but will in later follow-up posts. The overall criticism about ends / means confusion may or may not be true - it depends entirely on what you think the end or goal of open education should be. This is a conversation we almost never have in the field of open education. What is our long-term goal? What are we actually trying to accomplish? What kind of change are we trying to create in the world? The recently published OER strategy document, as informative as it is, reads more like a list of issues and opportunities than what Michael Feldstein describes as “rungs on a ladder of ambition.” Answering these questions leads to additional, more proximate concerns, like what specific steps do we need to take to get from here to there? In his #OpenEd15 keynote, Michael pushed our thinking with some additional questions, like “Who are we willing to let win?” As I have reflected on the post-conference conversation, and these larger questions about goals and purpose, I’ve decided to share some of my current best answers to these questions. (Disclaimer: my answers are guaranteed to evolve over time.) Your answers will almost certainly be different than mine - and that’s a good thing. I’m not sharing my answers as a way of claiming that they reflect the One True Answer. I’m sharing them in the hope that they will prompt you to think more deeply about your own answers. I find that nothing helps me clarify my thinking quite like reading others’ thinking I disagree with. As we all take the opportunity to ask and answer these important questions for ourselves, and to do that thinking publicly, out loud, who knows what might happen? ...

There have been a number of responses to my decision to introduce a 5th R - “Retain” - to my 4Rs framework. Bill, Darren, and Mike have responded, among others. Some parts of the responses lead me to believe that I wasn’t entirely clear in my initial statement, so let me try to clear a few things up. The original 4Rs were not an attempt to create a new group of permissions that open content licenses needed to support. Many open content licenses, from the CC to the GFDL to the OPL, already granted the rights to reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute long before I created the 4Rs framework. I created the 4Rs framework specifically for the purpose of helping people understand and remember the key rights that open content licenses grant them. ...

It’s been seven years since I introduced the 4Rs framework for thinking about the bundle of permissions that define an open educational resource, or OER. The framework of permitted activities - reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute - has gained some traction in the field, and I’m happy that people have found it useful. The 4Rs play a critical role in my own thinking about OER, and my operational definition of OER now includes two main criteria: (1) free and unfettered access to the resource, and (2) whatever copyright permissions are necessary for users to engage in the 4R activities. But while the framework has served the field well - and has shaped my own thinking, too - I believe the time has come to expand it. ...

Creative Commons has announced my appointment as CC Education Fellow. I’m honored, humbled, and excited to be formally affiliated with CC, and am looking forward to continuing to passionately (and hopefully, effectively) advocate for openness as a way to decrease the cost and increase the quality of education.

Stephen provides an “I told you so” link to this post, A Troubling Result From Publishing Open Access Articles With CC-BY. He continues the claim he has been making for some time that these “problems” would not occur if authors published under a CC BY-NC-SA license instead of the CC BY license. A careful reading of the post he links to, however, shows that this is completely wrong. The problems described in the post are the result of two issues: ...

The Perfect Storm Much of the education technology world - and many of the foundations and venture firms that provide the funding for it - are obsessed with adaptive learning. The Gates Foundation’s Adaptive Learning Market Acceleration Program RFP is the most recent evidence of this trend. The fascination largely stems from the fact that, because these systems are completely automated, they can scale. Scale matters to foundations because it means broader impacts for the work they fund. And, of course, scale matters to investors because it means more customers and, consequently better returns. ...

More response to the interesting discussion happening on the (closed) oer-community list. Brian Lamb asks: Finally, can somebody tell me if an NC license forbids reuse by non-profit public education institutions that charge tuition? Seems like a fairly simple question, but I’ve heard authoritative responses that wholly contradict each other on that point. The extremely misguided thinking Brian is referring to (and not personally guilty of) goes, “If someone is charges tuition for a course that uses a NC textbook, that violates the terms of the license.” This line of thinking is completely wrong. Full stop. Here’s why. ...

Stop the presses. I’m going to agree with Stephen here. In a recent email to the (closed) oer-community mailing list, Stephen argued that perspective plays a significant role in this debate. He couldn’t be more correct. Just as there is not One True License, there is not One True Perspective on the free, nonfree, open, libre, etc., debate. A few examples: - Some people look at OER issues from the perspective of the content, and some see them from the perspective of the people who use the content. Content-p drives people to favor SA licenses, to insure that derivatives of the content always remain free. People-p drives people to reject SA, so that derivers always remain free to license their derivatives as they choose. Which is the One True Perspective? ...

Cable Green sent a frustrated email today to the Educause Openness Constituent Group. Here’s the key point: The Babson Survey Research Group has released a new report: Growing the Curriculum: Open Education Resources in U.S. Higher Education. This sentence is of particular concern to me: “One concept very important to many in the OER field was rarely mentioned at all – licensing terms such as creative commons that permit free use or re-purposing by others.” ...