Licensing

I can hear Stephen now… eSchoolNews reports on a speech given today by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, which they summarize with the byline, “Secretary calls federal investment in open courseware an ‘opportunity’ for education publishers.” From the article: To support technological innovation in learning, President Obama has proposed investing $500 million over ten years in an Online Skills Initiative designed to produce free and open online courses that contribute to post-secondary success, Duncan said. These courses can be used by students, schools, and self-directed learners, and they also will be freely available to commercial publishers. ...

I’ve written about this before, but here we go again… In educational research there is a long and storied history of people conducting studies along the lines of “is video-based instruction more effective than audio-based instruction?” or “is text-based instruction more effective than audio-based instruction?” or ““is video-based instruction more effective than text-based instruction?,” etc. This pointless family of research has a name, the “No Significant Difference Phenomenon,” and even has it’s own website: http://www.nosignificantdifference.org/. From the website: ...

I’ve newly met a number of people at the annual family reunion that is Open Education 2009 (#opened09). And while you’re never supposed to single people out (esp. because doing so means you’re passing over many others), I must admit that meeting Dave Cormier has been one of the highlights of this year’s conference for me. After the film screening tonight we got to talking… Warning: poor summary of Dave’s thinking coming up here: ...

I recently posted a link to the OER Remix Game, a card game you can play with friends to learn about the license compatibility difficulties involved in remixing. Well, if you’ve had a hard time convincing your friends to play the game with you, you can now try a beta of the online (one player) version of the game! You can find it at OER Remix Game Online. Your thoughts and feedback would be appreciated. Critical and corrective feedback is, of course, the most useful kind.

A good friend suggested to me yesterday that openly publishing my course materials may not be possible at BYU due to the Brigham Young University Intellectual Property Policy. Curious that such a restriction on my ability to openly share my course materials might exist, I explored the policy in more detail. Here’s what I found. 1. Course materials are Creative Works as defined by the IPP: Intellectual properties are divided into two categories: technical works and creative works. Technical works include intellectual properties that are generally of a scientific, engineering, or technical nature - such as patentable or unpatentable inventions, devices, machines, processes, methods, and compositions; computer software; and university collections. Creative works include all intellectual properties not covered in technical works that are of an artistic, scholarly, instructional, assessment, or entertainment nature. Examples of creative works might include creative productions, such as works of art or design; musical scores; books, poems, and other types of scholarly or creative writings; films; video and audio recordings; and instructional materials, such as textbooks and multimedia programs. All computer software is included in technical works except that which is clearly developed for entertainment or for instructional purposes, e.g., electronic textbooks and textbook supplements, classroom and self-study tutorials. (Section I Para 1) ...