Open-Content

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. ...

[caption id=“attachment_3244” align=“alignright” width=“300”] via MIke Caulfield[/caption] I recently received the excellent news that I will receive another year of support as a Shuttleworth Fellow. These fellowships are extremely generous and I’m incredibly grateful for the foundation’s vote of confidence in the work I’m doing supporting widespread OER adoption through Lumen Learning. As many of you know, Shuttleworth Fellows also have the opportunity to pitch the Foundation for project funding. The foundation has also chosen to support our project proposal this year, and I’m extremely excited to start sharing the idea we’re working on with the community. ...

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. ...

Long before an upstart Harry headed to Hogwarts, Sparrowhawk went to the School of Roke in Ursula K. Leguin’s A Wizard of Earthsea. As part of his schooling, Sparrowhawk: was sent with seven other boys across Roke Island to the farthest north-most cape, where stands the Isolate Tower. There by himself lived the Master Namer, who was called by a name that had no meaning in any language, Kurremkarmerruk. No farm or dwelling lay within miles of the tower. Grim it stood above the northern cliffs, grey were the clouds over the seas of winter, endless the lists and ranks and rounds of names that the Namer’s eight pupils must learn. Amongst them in the tower’s high room Kurremkarmerruk sat on the high seat, writing down lists of names that must be learned before the ink faded at midnight leaving the parchment blank again. ...

Occasionally an initial concern for institutions considering a major OER initiative is, “What will happen to the revenue the college has traditionally received from the bookstore?” In 2011, NACS (the National Association of College Stores) released this infographic showing where the money students spend on textbooks goes (click the image to link to the original): According to NACS, the average college bookstore’s pre-tax income on textbooks is 3.7% of the price of the book. In other words, when a student spends $150 on a biology textbook, the college “makes” $5.55. ...

I’m SUPER excited today to announce a new partnership between OpenStax College, which makes great open textbooks, and Lumen Learning, which provides a wide range of services to institutions that want help adopting OER successfully and sustainably. For all the details, check the full announcement. Lumen also released a new video today that explains what we do and why we do it, and also includes perspectives from several of our partner institutions about how they’re using OER and what it’s like to work with Lumen. ...

Exactly a year ago today I published a post about some exciting changes in my professional life. I had just applied for a 12-month unpaid leave of absence from BYU. My goal was to spend the time away focused on supporting and scaling the adoption of open educational resources (OER) in formal education. Specifically, I wanted to help institutions that serve at-risk students - like community colleges - use OER to eliminate textbook costs and improve student success. Kim Thanos and I had formed Lumen Learning in October for exactly this purpose. Then I got the incredible news that I’d received a Shuttleworth Fellowship. And then my leave was approved. Thus began a year of awesomeness. ...

This week I’m participating in a conversation about badges over on the Department of Education’s LINCS website. I believe badges are potentially a key piece of infrastructure necessary to support truly open, distributed learning, but I’m frequently disappointed by the level of thoughtfulness of the discourse around badges. There’s much to learn about badges by looking to the history of other technologies, as I’ve tried to point out in my answers to the first two question prompts. ...

I’m at AECT this week, the annual meeting of the professional association for academic educational technologists and instructional designers. This is my 15th year attending the conference, and (with the exception of the Open Education Conference) this is my favorite conference each year. These are “my people,” and so I was much more nervous than usual when invited to give a keynote address here. Ali Carr-Chellman, Tom Reeves, and I participated yesterday in “AECTx,” a keynote session in which we each gave 18 minute talks. Without coordinating ahead of time, each of our talks focused on using educational technology and educational research to solve large, societal problems. I was particualrly taken with the clarity of Tom’s formulation. Two slides near the end of his presentation admonished us that we need to: ...

Hundreds of thousands of words have been written about open educational resources, but precious little has been written about how OER - or openness more generally - changes the practice of education. Substituting OER for expensive commercial resources definitely save money and increase access to core instructional materials. Increasing access to core instructional materials will necessarily make significant improvements in learning outcomes for students who otherwise wouldn’t have had access to the materials (e.g., couldn’t afford to purchase their textbooks). If the percentage of those students in a given population is large enough, their improvement in learning may even be detectable when comparing learning in the population before OER adoption with learning in the population after OER adoption. Saving significant amounts of money and doing no harm to learning outcomes (or even slightly improving learning outcomes) is clearly a win. However, there are much bigger victories to be won with openness. ...