Festival Report/Ch5OpenContent

Open Content

David Wiley Wednesday night October’s been terrible I never do triangle trips Salt lake sau palo paris and from there Anaheim last week I did take my fam w/ me Disney When that was over we did overnight at my wifes’ parents house for a # of resasons one was laundry I drove from Anaheim to salt lake airport Got a plane came here I’m not complaining at all I wd much rather be too busy than have nothing to do

The thing in Paris OPEN WORLD FORUM Panel : openness in business models Sao Paulo Latin America conf on learning objects, 10 yrs ago , My dissertaion work and the first book I edited In L A there hasn’t be en a shift so I still get invited t ocome talk about htat I try to tell them that OER re the new/better learning objects

And then Anaheim I gave a presidential session at a conf of instructional designers Openness and analytics A big message for me right now one of the things my tiny brain can think about one thing at a time in terms of making the argument for the value prop of openness what’s the point If your’e apret of an org that’s interested in getting beter: DATA about how your’e doing And 2nd if youre a school and those data tell you there are opports You need Permission to change yr curriculum You can’t have licensed something from Pearson So if you don’t have some kidn of data gathering and analytics AND OPNNESS you cannot engage in continuious uqliaty improvement

THa and I’m still doing the stuff on the papers I’m writing right now The agenda is kidn of  : trying to listen to the excuses ppl make for not USING and designing studies to rob them BY U independent study: when we put OCW online w/ abutton if you think this I s cool click to enroll You can MAKE $$ When concern was if you publish openly you put out of busines I’m doing it small pilot 8 teachers 1200 students Using open scie txtbs We ddi training you can edit you can change it if you dno’t want to print it we have grant funding It’s a 2 fold experiment Wher we wstill need print can oyu save $ w/ an open txt

Esp doing small run print on demand there is a line below which you can’t 

It depends on the degree to which yo cusotomize how small and how many you print If a typical txt book calls $100 and a 5 yr rpelacemsnt cycle

Buy a new open txt and tlel them they can highlight it mark in it and do whatever they want Price has to be <$20 /book Wrking w/ CK 12 books Only doing science and this little pilot The teachers doing chem. Took this 1400 pg chem. Book and turned it into a 250 pg book that covers what they WANT and they’ve read every single word at 250p g on a short run the books incl shipping were $7.30 it’s extremely powerful someo f the other bookd that ppl didn’t customize as much cost > $20 that’s ½ the other ½ and in some ways the part more imp to the study is that next sumer after the state administrers we’ll compare the sciencel earning of the kids w/ open txts to thos w/ 100

and every indication almost is that if you look at the entire body of education research you wd bet the farm and the tractor NO DIFF however we do have some reason to believe that b/c the kids can highlight and annotate there is theory based reason to believe they might learn a little moree

emopowerment effect on the teachers is out of control that’s tnot the part I’m researching

Tiffany Hall Shelly ellington that’s the core project team Shelly’s a doc student

Ppl say oh you get what you pay for Let’s not ask if it’s poor quliaty or not but let’s compare to the book your’e already using

Next summer: on the stat’es own exams if we can show the same levels of learning And if we can show that w/ certain levels we’re buildilng a tool

Ads I’ve adapted my book , this many pages this many copies hit a button is it worth it now? Am I gg t osave or actually spend more $ Take away the quality, cost, argument, put ourselves out of business It’s I’m trying t eliminate the arguments against adoption

AN easy one it’s much more European As a music major I have no sense of personal space

August never been that erly before holidays in Europe This yr a # of pl always wanted to come but didn’t have a lot of overseas trip intheir budget A whoel group fop pl who ve never been to open ed I cont to charactarize opened as annual family reunion and it’s wonderful to meet these olonglost cousins

That’s v cool There’s more We ried to have more emphasis on policy this yr and I think next yr that’s gg to be the primary theme In yrs past not enough policy to make a strand This yr a whol strand AB/ as you know there are a lot of interesting policy things going on and more coming God lord willing and the creek don’t rise

Hand overt the keyboard OTR $2 billion Online skills initiative money That didn’t make it a big chunk we’re trying to run it I’m encouraging Hal Plotkin is here The goal is run thru labor targeted at community oclleges $2 billion And it all has to be OER CC BY

My fave story about this is my wife and I were in OH and we drove past this pizza parlor Buy One Get One –if I buy one I beter get one

And I think this shd be our position The public if we buy one we should get one

I dn’t want to buy one and not get one [that sucks]

Mark and I first met jat the meeting where we did the writing for the Capetown Declaration Post meeting writing committee This is back when he was a fellow w/ SHuttleworth NOve / Dec / Feb march capetown published

2-3 yrs ago

Mark it’s clear that he’s gifted I’m tryting to put my finger on the gift he’s great at making cnxns he’s super personable when I say he’s good at making cnsns he’s a fabulous matchmatker but also sees cnxns between ideas not always the same person and hes’ superpersonable and like everybody else in this field his heart is in the right place iand hes’ sincere ppl are genuinely interesdted in helping

my folks largely don’t have the technical chops these folks have we hav ,one way to charactersize loosely; were’formaland they’re forma sr. policy advisor to the undersecy’ provosts uni presidents here much more of a hacker I wd doubr anyone registered for Drumbeat that’s at an exec role at a university

Andi guess the other So Everything ‘s a religious metaphor for me In someways open ed I don’t know if I believe this or not Open ed is about the calvins and the luthers and the ppl inside working for reform who still believe in the orthodoxy and respect its traditions and values and understand there needs to be change I think this meeting is more popularted by ppl who have for a variety of good reasons lost faith or lost interest in the structure in the orthodoxy

I think this group

I think the open ed group has a lot of experience on not just the policy but practical problems of education side and knows how to get things done in a way somebody wd value/carea bout in s ome kind of semi formal way like wanting to earn a crdential Ithink there’es a lot of insititutional knowledge sounds wrong but historical knowledge In my group And a lot of passion for change And not al ot of technical capability In this group a ton of technical capability, passion for change and not much historical knowledge So I think our two little particles can share that electron and bond in that way

I hope it’s not arrogant to say that I think we have some things to teach each

My thinking hasn’t changed on this particular point Which is I think the overwhelming majority ,99.% of ppl who go to earn a credential do so to convert into employment I kow there are pp lain the world who at 665 go back and finish their degree for personal satisfatcoitn

So the real issues w/ the badges is will anyone care

IS IBM or is GOOGLE …. At the end of the day if I ever earned the 3 badges that make me a jr. space cadet can I get a job with that And the answer will EVENTUALLY Be yes I don’t have to be Nostradamus Is that an 18 month yes or is that a 5-6

Anya: Michelin guide in the age of yelp

Burn down the system and palnt something better in its ashes vs let’s understand the constraints of the system and hack it

IF they were really smart they wd snooker some ppl form goolge into completing them

Ppl Cathy Casserly Keynote

Taught classrooms of 45 students in Kingston, Jamaica Education clearly the route out of poverty Taught in prisons

From there I studied in DC looking at federal edu and povery prgormas Always been lured to programs on the edge: welfare to work, help welfare recipients back into the Educational system

Applachia, missisippi, texas kids out of the mainstream

Not a lot of eyeballs up here ,ppl tired, looking at ipads, phones, glasses, cameras

Systems are calcified and hard to change Summers off, 400 y-o monastic style of teaching

(These slides are meant for another audience)

Mike smith and I worked to gether to seed this area of open educational resources A foundation that has some nimbleness and uniqueness One of 1st projects was MIT open courseware

Phase 2 Open content; push it out there; build I t and se who comes: what is the right grain size for OER on the web How do wemake sur ematerials are relevant Are we srue all those OER are improving student learning?

Phase 4 Structured oER Siloes of content How do we change insittitions? Badges that ppl can transfer and P2p learning platforms

Mark: only 10 yrs to move from an industrial way of thinking to even imagine something like P2pU Now we’re going to lok at it form the other end

MEena Hwang OCW Last seasons—clothing Marxism It’s a thing of the past First of all, please accept my sincere apologies for being so late with my responses. While looking at your questions, I realized that I have been so wrapped up with the daily ‘work’ and ‘operation’ of things that I was not even thinking much about the fundamentals of why this is important – why I decided that this was something that I should devote my life to. Please refer to below for short answers to your profound questions. I would be happy to talk to you to elaborate more on the questions, if you still have time. I am now in Barcelona, trying to prepare for the Drumbeat Festival.

1) What is your background and why are you interested in open education, free sharing and reuse of knowledge? I’ve worked in corporate training for a consulting company that did a lot of training for multinational businesses and in higher education. My interest in free sharing and reuse comes from me being an idealist who believes that this is something that can change the world. It’s the whole democracy of creation it’s really cool hwo ppl can ctually create something and have I tupblished and ppl can all have access to it I’ve not seen it yet in the field that I work in OER a lot of it is community source where universities/institutions w/ $ put out free content for ppl to use when I 1st got to know about mechanicsms of open source programs and how things SHOULD be working on the internet I took it a little more idealistically CROWDSOURCING hasn’t worked all that well Connexions is a great collection of individuals but we’re not seeing it like we should I’ve tried it in so many places so convinced this cd woek Taking t individuals in china or Romania or Myanmar Vietnam Interested inbringing quality courseware into their language b/c they don’t hvae Then organize individuals for translation It’s diff to get things organized to get going All the programs on Sourceforge.net the median number of develoers is one

So it’s not ideal This wd not ever be the North south I work w/ consortium mostly Producers and a lot of the producerstotally believe that they’re helping the develping world & it’s bullshit I wd go to places like China and asay do you actually use no it’s not fit for my classrooms My students do not speak English so it’s not great for them I use it to just check the curriculum Language problem the context

We have to move on And so the resoun I concentrate on TTRANSLATION 1st I figure that wd be capacity building show a model to collaborate on the web together Translation is the easiest form of derivative I thought

Once you have an example things wil move a little easier

Translation is a really difficult and tedious job

OCW farthet along in integration w/ plicy

Startd w/ insituttions easier for us to work w/ gov’t institutions

Policy—many institutions trying to embed open pub into their system: open journals, open courseware Reflecting on faculty eval for promotion—how many, They get pts fro how many classes you teaca dn # of journals you publish

Schools seriously considering OCW as criteria for promtoin Diff countries looking to opening federally funded material: Korea, Brazil, Netherlands I think it’s not finite yet it’s just a discussion that’s going on The consensus in Many European countries sif money came from the govt it shd be open t opublic In that way it’s been easier for us to work with policy .

2) What would you say is your main motivation for working on free and open education? Why is this important to the world? I think the answer to the second question answers the first question. Free and open education is important to the world. It can be a tool to provide with basic human rights as stated by UN. Human beings are entitled to food, shelter and education. If we decide to share what we have with the underpreviliged ones, maybe we will have a different picture. 3) Can you describe OCWC's current projects? How many people are participating? What kinds of projects are they working on? What are the goals? There are more than 200 member institutions in the Consortium. There are individual projects, and there are collaborative projects led by the Consortium. Simply put, the Consortium works on projects that ensure bigger discoverability, accessibility, and further propagation of open educational contents. For discoverability, we are working on global course catalog of all OCW courses. For accessibility, there are continuing discussions on how to make contents accessible to visually impaired, people with bandwidth problems, or those who has little access to technical devices. For further propagation of OCW, we are not just talking about outreach for more institutions to participate, but creating something that enables more people to participate with less efforts. An authoring tool that acts as a turn-key method to make OCW content is one of them. Creating guidelines for open licenses for OCW is also another.

4) What do you think is the relationship between free, and/or open-source software and open education? Why is it that so many people who are interested in one, are working on building the other? I have met many people who regard OCW as something identical to open-source software. I would say that the idea of sharing is the same, but the mechanism for building the ‘product’ may have been a bit different. Whereas open-source software has been modularized for individuals to build upon and improve, thus reducing the cost of rebuilding it, OCW contents in large part have been provided by institutions as ‘community source’. We are trying to encourage reuse and remix of the materials, and there are people who are making derivative work, to fit the context of their use, language, and culture. However, in many cases, these derivative works have not been shared to the original authors. I think the ones who are interested in one is also interested in another because both share the same values. Both see the importance of value creation the other party makes to the society.

5) What are your current thoughts on issues faced by open courseware including discovery, reuse, and sustainability? These are all very important and urgent issues with us. And honestly, as much as there seems to be no right, one answer to these problems, collaboration with the wider community may provide us with a solution for these. Technology is a very important factor that underlies all these issues.

For example we’ve been working w/ CC In Veitnam CC Vietnam Luanch was with our global mtg we invite all these locals to take workshops on CC licence That was all about awareness son open content Protoco lo fopen licensing Working on licensing ppl And now we have ot work w/ the tech community b/c we really need advanced technology to move on and by advanced tech I’m not talk ing about high tech stuff I’m talking about user friendly stuff al ot of times when institutions develop stuff they’re projects w/ techy communities we can be a little more flexible what I really want to develop right now is an authoring Tool any teacher, fill it out as their course notes application –

it has to be easy if an individual wants to do an open content site an easy application I wd like to talk to the tech commu more about the mobile apps

We’re the best case for them as much as I love them –you should be loving us back! This is a great case as muc has I complain I do not forget the fact that this has been a great movement and we’ve accomplish a lot My heart is all the way out there in a big hurry!!

6) What are the big discoveries and challenges has the OCWC faced in the years it's been operating?

7) What are the main obstacles standing in the way of an entirely free and open world of education? Are they technological, social, matters of government policy or the conduct and structure of institutions? 8)Do you think institutions will adapt to the new reality or will educational innovators have to find workarounds/build new kinds of institutions? Should open courseware be entirely publicly funded?

9) There are concerns about participation in open education by traditionally disadvantaged student populations. What is the best way to reach these students?

10) Your hope and interest in participating in Mozilla Drumbeat Festival?

11) Anything else you'd like to say about the future of education? What will education look like in 2020?

Nobody knows and I think that’s the most exciting part Ppl keep talking about informal learning I nparts of asia Africa ppl are not into informal learning at all For sure OER Has to be an alternative to the problem we’re facing The rate of pop growth if we are to educate ppl there’s no way possible physically to educate al these ppl there’s just no way India: building 1000 universities It’s nothing It doesn’t salve anything!!! This has to offer some kind of alternative I don’t know how We had no idea what was gg to happen in 10 yrs, 10 yrs ago I’ve been working 4 yrs ago.

Otherwise the mechanism we produce: couple problems Community source is not gg to be the aswer to everything The mechanism it’s the fact that we can’t do , the tech infrastructure has to be there We survive our being is dependent on the technology It’s ntot gg to be as effective or fast .

Nononono It has to be interactive Learning modules and learning environments It startd w/ contents back when we had no better tech For us communication was 1-dimensional Mechanism of production All the learning objects coming in from everybody who uses it

Anything and everything tht has to do w/ education can be a learning object .

Granules of images , videos, it doesn’t have to be the whole thing ..

And it shd not be the whole thing .

My personal ambition was to speak to as many techies as possible to share my views see if we have anybody resonating won the ideas Many developments going on to make things better Nobody wants to wach a 40 min video of a lectur How do we make videos searchable Text has to be in Automatic subtitles transcriptions Many ppl doing that I wd like to get even more ppl

A friend of mine made something almost identical these ppl are thinking what I am thinking they know what’s going on They know their needs

Q for Anya Kamenetz Mary Lou Forward, OpenCourseWare Consortium

1. Can you tell me how the OCWC got started?

Following MIT's announcement that they would post educational materials from their entire curriculum for free and open access, called OpenCourseWare, universities around the world became interested. As the interest in making educational materials freely available via the internet grew, these universities decided to form a consortium devoted to the promotion of the development and use of OpenCourseWare. Heavily relying on volunteer efforts from those committed to the ideals of OpenCourseWare, the Consortium went through the process of legal registration and governance set-up to become a non-profit in 2008.

2. What is your background and why are you interested in the free sharing and reuse of knowledge?

My background is actually in African Studies and Environmental Studies. Prior to joining the Consortium in July 2009, I was developing and overseeing educational programs across the African continent, which had me in various African countries for about 3 months a year. Prior to that, I lived in Madagascar for several years teaching ecology and conservation. All of these programs featured a combination of field and community based studies with traditional classroom-based lectures. These programs demonstrated that you can gain tremendous understanding of complex issues from a variety of learning environments, and knowledge gained from informal environments is valid and needs more recognition. These experiences convinced me that if people are going to address some of the critical global issues of our time, collaboration is essential as is understanding the issues from different perspectives. Open education reduces the barriers to gaining these perspectives through contributions from around the world and access to thought and cultural interpretations through educational materials. It also allows for engagement in new ways, since learners have control over what they're studying and who they want to learn from.

3. What would you say is your main motivation for working on free and open education?

I'd say it's equal parts the appeal of leveling the playing field , and the power of sharing and collaboration. I've seen situations where access to higher education is beyond the reach of too many people, often for reasons they can't control. Others are concerned about taking the risk of changing their lives, often including losing their livelihood, to attend a traditional higher education program, with no assurance of success or improved situation. Open education allows people to learn on their terms, or to supplement their formal education in ways that are personally meaningful. Sharing education with a wider audience, creating the possibilities for new collaborations among educators and learners, and building on what others are doing can allow for more effective paths to knowledge and some really innovative, new stuff. Keeping it all open and free allows us to engage a wider audience of potential learners, and to learn from those who may not be featured in the traditional journals and texts of our institutions.

4. How does the OCWC work? How many people are participating, and from what institutions? What kinds of projects are they working on? What are the goals?

Our members are institutions and organizations, and we have about 240 members from around the world. Our membership is very global, with about equal representation from Asia, Europe, North and South America. We're seeing growing interest and membership from Africa, which is great. The OCW Consortium serves as a resource for starting and sustaining OCW projects, as a coordinating body for the movement on a global scale, and as a forum for exchange of ideas and future planning. We envision a world in which the desire to learn is fully met by the opportunity to do so anywhere in the world - where everyone, everywhere is able to access affordable, educationally and culturally appropriate opportunities to gain whatever knowledge or training they desire. The Consortium acts to realize this vision by addressing one issue - that of access to high‐quality educational materials - and by partnering with organizations addressing related problems that must also be solved to make this vision a reality.

5. What do you think is the relationship between free software and open education? Why is it that so many people who are interested in one, are working on building the other?

The ideals are aligned. They are both about sharing – skills, knowledge, talents – and using or modifying what others have shared, whether to improve personal experience/understanding or to realize impacts on a larger scale. I think that at the heart of both movements is a belief in the importance of contributing to the common good. There's also a degree of shared belief that things can be different than the world has been – that software can only come from software companies to their customers, and education can only come from educational institutions to their students – and an acknowledgment that while those models work for a segment of the world's population, they don't work for everyone.

6. What are the main obstacles standing in the way of an entirely affordable, accessible, high-quality, and open world of higher education? Are they technological, social, matters of government policy or the conduct and structure of institutions?

There are obstacles in every area that you mention, so there's a fair bit of work to be done. Though openness is coming into educational practice around the world, the availability of resources and the options for openness are still both relatively unknown and not well understood. For educators, I think the biggest obstacle is existing practice and culture. Sharing has taken place in highly prescribed ways (sharing information with students in the classroom, sharing information with colleagues in peer-reviewed journals, sharing information through books or public lectures, etc). Higher ed culture values referencing other people's work, but not using or modifying, at least in a visible way. Key parts of ensuring that OER can improve teaching and learning is the re-use and modification of shared materials, so this needs to become not just acceptable, but expected. As for sharing one's own educational materials, throwing things out into the world in ways that you can't control is seen as risky. That lack of control can be daunting where professional reputation is so important. For learners, we need to make materials more discoverable, and make sure they are in user-friendly formats. We need to keep in mind global disparities in technology use and access so we make sure that we aren't creating accessibility just for those who would have access to a good education anyway. We have work to do on assessment of knowledge so learners can demonstrate that they have achieved a level of understanding expected by different professions or educational institutions.

7. Do you think institutions will largely adapt to the new reality or will educational innovators have to find workarounds? What are the benefits to institutions of participating in projects such as the OCWC?

All organizations eventually have to adapt to new realities. The innovative ones will do it more quickly, coming up with ideas that better serve their constituents and their own mission. A more loosely structured educational path suggests teaching faculty will have to emphasize mentoring and facilitating over lecturing. It's unlikely that small institutions that are basically offering the same subject areas will continue to flourish if learners have lots more options for learning and assessment of those same subject areas. Some institutions may become more focused and specialized, while others might emphasize more general education subjects. Institutional systems and practices would have to adapt to a new style of learning and providing credit or degrees, with an emphasis on broader coordination with other institutions. There are lots of great opportunities in all of this. Universities may be able to serve many more students that they do now, with a different deployment of resources. I think we're going to see some really exciting ideas coming up in the next few years.

8. How far can open content go in advancing the ideals of open education? What needs to be done to improve discoverability, sustainability, and linkage of open content to actual teaching and learning practice?

Open content forms the essential building materials for the possibilities of open education. It's important to have high quality materials available that suit the way different learners and teachers construct understanding. A one-size-fits-all approach isn't viable in education, so a variety of materials that address subjects in different ways or with a different emphasis allow people to select what works for them. This does hinge on people being able to find what they need, so discoverability is paramount. We're actually working with a number of organizations and individuals this year to try to come up with classification system for OER that can be globally adopted so that materials can be indexed in meaningful ways. This would enable both more targeted searching and easier browsing. Once materials can be easily found, it's easier to make the case for use, which will enable greater impact on teaching and learning.

9. There are concerns about participation in open education by traditionally disadvantaged student populations. What is the best way to reach these students?

How will people access the information, use it, gain understanding, and have their knowledge validated? While applicable to all leaners, these are more acute for traditionally disadvantaged populations. On a global scale, this includes bandwith and computer access questions, language issues, etc. Some are working on handheld devices that could have content downloaded to them from a central point. Others are considering how cell phone penetration could provide greater access to education. Where computer access and bandwidth are less of an issue, there's still the question of support. We need to let people know this is a resource for all, provide some guidance on how to get started, and make sure that the structures and policies that will need to be developed by institutions and governments address the support needs of all potential learners. Open education can be a powerful resource for people who may not have strong support for higher education in their families or social circles. It can support learners who are struggling in traditional education formats. It can demonstrate that success is likely by allowing students to work through problems, units and courses on their own, perhaps before committing to an educational program, or perhaps instead of a traditional degree program. It allows flexibility in learning, but the motivation still has to come from the learner. A lot of people have that motivation enhanced through the formal and informal supports in a traditional educational environment, so we need to bear this in mind as we work toward the ideal of open access to education.

10. Your hope and interest in participating in Mozilla Drumbeat Festival?

The festival will attract people interested in freedom in education and the web who are willing to work for their interest. We have a great opportunity in the coming year or so to collaboratively address some of the big challenges in open education. This occasion allows us to discuss different perspectives, brainstorm solutions, and reflect on paths taken and those we need to take in the future.

Cathy Fletcher & Joel From Connexions

Houston @Rice Project Mgr for Connexions

Equally focused on profs/ learners Wide variety of things Built on this philosophy of openness Architecture –modular Xml format Simple document oriented Permanent versions of everything If someone is elying on your material they can have that version even if you change it or update it And connexcions has a strong authorship model Ppl author as groups everybody’s name is there

Came out of a university environment ppl like to know who’s teaching materials are there .

Discoverability: Connexions has had discoverabily thru basic search b/c ofconnectedness of basic models

Music education: comes out in top couple of hits 

“Circle of fifths”

V standards based OAI PMH is a discoverability protocol that uses doubling core

Sustainability the big thing that COnnexoins has done and this has changed We’re just starting our 2nd yr of aconsortium connexconsortium . org 25 members right now and they and it ranges from comm. College system, comm. College consortium, businesses—Webassign homework on assignment picked a txtbook and built a service around that

2 businesses that are in e-reader space : Entourage (hardware) and a couple of softoware producers ./

We have this modular system, 17,000 modules and 1000 collections ordered set of modules Txtbooks An education group that’s doing their journals, NCPEA ,profs, ed admins, Collections=journal issues Modules=articles

Doing it at a small rate for quite a while Last few years fully committed to going completely for Connexions

Email traffic on their content

Research surveys and things like that

CC open txtbook project: 10 that are approp for Comm coll that they’ve reviewed

And then a similar # that are university level, ~50 quite a few in the area of digital signal processing a strength of Rice and the idea came out of the electrical and computer engineering classes

k-9 materials

Siyavula –s Africa Shuttleworth funded

Kindergarten—9th grade

10th,11th, 12th math , chem., physics textbooks another large user and then small niche grouips a group that does engineering ethics music area that’s got quite a bit. The music modules are used by K-12 teachers they focus in on middle schoo to early hs and adult learners going in to understand music theory .

Sev diff ppl have done research on remixability in Connexinos URL, all the stats, all the metadata, xml

Fair amt of research it’s kind of hard to tell In one sense the remixavility is kind of low if you look at other productions like the # of ppl who write peer reviewed articles and get published All these things fit the same power law curve It’s what you would expect to see Reuse: download and used: publish a derived copy Use somebody’s module in another collection Build yr own txtbook or journal or whatever you want to do . Folks have pulled together workshops they’ve done from materials already in connexions

1999

Iwas working for a small co and had written a grant to NIH to do education software And I got that grant and what I was doing was similar to what Connexxions was already doing that’s how I found out about it got interested in it. 4 yrs ago.

When the first time that it really dawned on me was when I was looking at my kids textbooks My oldest was in 4th grade and she had this tt book talking about circuits it had the def of a short circuit wrong: that’s such an easy fix and that needs to be fixed it needs to not take 10 yrs That’s what got me started thinking about that’s the proposal that I did wi NIH 2 daughters HS and middle school .

Connexxions part of the Open content studio we’re building an open txtbook I am also interested in designing an API for publishing to open remixable repositories Connxesions open for getting info OUT But if you want to publish TO you need to use the tools There’s a feedback system between that ecosystem and getting some of the other OCW groups that are really interest in this idea of semantic XML but they’re always gg to be diff b/c they are university based ,reputation based, quite a diff thing from an open repository where anyone can contribute

But the general remixablity wd be nenhanced by having great editors that you can use where you can publish where you want to publish to

The other big thing: QUALITY CONTROL And we have 3 things in plce One of which works the bset so far 1) Knowing the author some of our authors are really good about telling us about themselves 2) We have th ststems of reatings, it’s not being used really, it’s not making a big diff right now 3) We call lenses and this is a way for 3d parties to come in rate content add their own metadata that’s important for their community so lenses unlike a collection which is an ordered set of modules ,lenses are unordered Siyavula, Comm Colleges, you can have as many lenses as you want if you land on the content you see what’s lensesd it,I fy ouland on a lens

you have to create an acct to do either one The lensing is more valuable: comments, yr own vocuabluary , a blurb about who you are and direct people CCOER can direct ppl to their consortium site also thru their lens.

I think our ratings are just a little too much work for somebody to do We haven’t invested the time in the technology If you don’t require an acct you have to be more careful about gaming the system It’s ungamed but unused

Discussion forum—we’ve failed miserably as have many other ppl It has to really work well You have to be able to see what other ppl have said without having to drill down 40 levels deep Serious UI design and testing

When you author anything you give yr email: email the authors It emails connexions also We like to hear what ppl are saying if they don’t ind us knowing That’s how I know this content is really active We also have ltoso f feeds Everybody’s whos lensed you can get a feed of their lens Feeds See when new content is published.

The thing that Conn is pursuing v aggressively right now is getting big blocks of content 2 million users but to drive home to increase the consortium size the key iscontnet that’s really realllvaluable

education group: invested yrs worth of journals CC is one of those wedge areas where you can make a HUGE diff w/ open textbooks That’s the dirction that Connx is going recruiting content helping get those projects going that j

I don’tkn owit’s gg to be interesdting

One of the other thingsa bout connex All the content :CC BY unviersala DONORS sometimes that’s a disadvantage b/c there’s great content w/ restrictions I love the idea of taking P2PU and saying Back ot the API I wd love to have something wher as you’re doing courses: hey I want to publish things to connextions: do it again and eventually it becomes mature enough that this is a txtbook One button push Printo ndmeand We cd have added services consortium members , layout, tools and services

Services can serve both connextions and other repositories .

Open content studio flatworld Ocw and us I think those are the 3

And CC—on the discorverability side

Ive been looking at some of the language tools they’re really intesresting

That’s something that Connxesions has been working on Writing at specficiation for internationalizing the site Lots of content in diff languages but some of our tools E pubs and pddf asnd print on demand don’t work uniformly across languages And then the site itself is not international

CONX funding has come from Hewlett, Maxfield Foundation the consortium is becoming a bigger and bigger part it isn’t sustaining us yet but it looks very good to gt there in 5 yrs We’ve explord lots of diff sustainability models Print on demand cd in theory bring a little bit of $ back in But the big thing is the consortium have it make $ off this content and sustain it .

And then it’s really safe My husband and I spent a wknd made sure we cd put the XML in an XML database Don’t have a good way to get it back out, complex format can’t use again, 5 yrs from now it will have disappeared XML: you can make it just as complicatd as anything else but if you have a simple semantic XML: graf, exercise , video 100 yrs from now somebody loking at that can tell what it means it it’snot gg to be out of date in a weird language

it’s plain txt it’s noin a proprietary format it’s not hidden in any way

we use this Lego analogy but it doesn’t tell you why the xml works that way

if you write a module and I write a module we put it together it’s gg to work perfectly .

One of the things that’s very interesting in tech and education Cognitive tutor like OLI but AUTOMATED and SHARABLE content, open ? banks, stat analysis helps you navigate if you answer this correctly ,all these other ppl answered it correctly

Allow students to progress and remediate v easily 

Easily interesting and collaborative work inclass

That’s an area that might be interesting in 2020 .

Officially 4 hrs I hope we really have more energy into it

2.2 milion visitors last month

lensing system it really hasn’t started we’re just now getting members there’s a way to endorse things but it does take time

import from Word, open office

ab Brad Felix Flat World 1000 adoptions—22 titles 70 in the pipeline 55,000 students, 95+% domestic

still have

printed is most popular 2nd is PDF: 24.95 printed is $29.95

customization version 1: resequence: delete, move up and down

and #2 is ability to nnotate at paragraph level take notes as prof and those will proliferate into the PDF/print version of the book if you sdon’t agree, want to add links you can do that thru annottion commands Version #2 of customization scheduled for Dec. 1 release Is all about editing at the sentence level You’ll be able to go into any setion and change whatever you desire Insert a video, other objects Tools to really dig into actual content instead of adding, deleting, resequence

2.x Spring 2011 wid be

organizational behavior/ mgmt I wd like some of this ands ome of that What we do and say, we pu the books together we don’t put it really in the catalog, it’s not in the catalog Customize it, apck it down and use that in yr course On a one-on-one level we can pt them in different direction

A manual way of exposing the good stuff 

But the more automated version of that is coming someimt in 2011

Abt 30% Of txtbooks are customized and that’s w/ minimal marketing

We feel like the functionality is not quite thereyt And as of Dec 1ist it’s gg to be worth it We wd expecti t to rise substantially

It’s gg to be a fantastic opp for us to get feedback on those new tools that we’re scheduling

Goal; make stuff and do stuff not just talk about stuff If we’re gg to be making stuff the tools are what we’re pushing to release to the open market Get feedback from some interesting folks on that

I think for all the usua resons I kind of Business models and businesses aside I think that Educaiton is the black gold of the 21st c

Exposure to content as time goes on is gg to be come more ubiquitous given digital tech

It’s not the king

The modesl that get built up have to be built around the idea that the content is avail from one source or another for free why not work to make that as high quality as possible.

Teaching tech in K 12 for 5 yrs And it was an intentional diversion in my career Prior to that a couple of diff startups Ecollege helped build from gorund up One of the ways I ended up at Flatworld I loved Ecollee Working for a diff startup doing financial stuff iin NYC worked there for 6 montsh and realizedi hated it b/c I don’t carea bout improving efficiency of investment banker analysits I cared about improving education

I went back to school got a masters in edutech End goal being designing educational product I shd prob know what it’s like to stand in front of aclassroom and teach I realized why reachers have no time and why they’re so tired at the end fo the day.

Connexions/ ocwc/ flat world We have 2 diff themes

Start to build a txtbook on intro to web dev There’s tons of material and this wd be an exercise on curating and remixing using the tools avail

From flatworld and others as well

Use exp w remiing and forming it into a curated txtbook And the goal is not to build a complete txt book but get some rxns where’s the gaps between where the tools are now and where they shd be What improvements cd we make Give ppl an appreciation of what it tagkes to do this kind of curation not that easy it’s not till oyu do it that ppl realize the challenges involved

That’s one major theme The other led by Mary lou forward She is I think gg to be leading more discussion based stuff 2 things

discoverability 

huge challenge in that space creating a global course cataloge and what’s gg to be involved who shd do it

leading that kind of disusccion another which is MORE OCW specific : future of OER and what do you want this to do?

Solicit feedback for the consortium and what directions to take

Sprinkly in toher stuff as necessary Open mic Where ppl can say for 3 min what are you doing w/ OER what’s working what’s not.

5pm OCW In the basement OCWC is having an impromptu organization session between OCW and Connexions Do you hve acorporate member? affiliate I’m

Joel _ Future of OER & searchability Wifi was not available so we cdn’t do things

Hierarchy of conf email wifi

It’s a benefit to have disparate groups b/c you move quicker

At some pt the larger world is gg to say: I don’t care

I want to search HERE when you have a 3d grade teacher he or she isn’t gg to go looing all over thep lace In the US somoe f htat’s being handled by the states Develop their own systems/ partner? I’ve put otehhter the legislators from TX & CA and told them both: if you get together this isa powerful bloc CA Is much more open to that at the moment b/c they have no $ at all And TX is we’ll see Dean Flores Senate majority leader

5:50 pm Chris of Opera talkinga bout accessibility Provide good training material

Janet of Mozilla: rewriting stds in plain language

Open Content Studio Pathways to Open Content (12:14) Basement, gray carpet, 6 ppl including 2 doing something else Isn’t that what librarians do when they get a new book? The question is how do we od this in digital space You don’t want to alter the process of creating content too much Modify the tools so the produce the markup we’rel looking for it become s part of the job they don’t know they’re creating metadata

Librarian is looking at OCW Course and able to classify w/ a folksonomy and taxonomy

Amazon has figured this out better than anyone else for shopping Gives you brands, gives you dollars Producers of products has an incentive It’s a requirement when your’e adding products into the system

Mary Lou: we need a few test cases Those are gg to come ot the top of everyone’s search list

Once pp lbegin to see that 

Yo udno’t want yr project not to be listed We can’t mpozse but here’s gg to be a self motivating mechanism in having this

We have decentalized system

You have materials that live on more than one site

Cnxns remix model but We ‘d like to see ppl be able to tak things from multiple places reuse and republish discovery revision and republishing Improve the search and discovery story use the exact same technology Translation I drew on THIS OCW course

Jaroslaw Glasses guy: the way ppl interact w/ information they use a lot of technologies If I take some parto f the tt from connections and I use my tool of choice : NOTEPAD and then I upload it somewhere else all the metadata will be lost you canot really AUTOAMTE that We ened to force ppl to use particular tool we don’t want to do this b/c we do not want ppl to be less creative b/c the way you work on a wiki is v diff from the way you work on connexions

Ali : U Michigan Embed metadata in images All of it won’t be lost even if somebody doesn’t choose to host you

Tools of choices Track changes going away b/c everyone can edit the same document at the same time You dan’t have this case of I make this changes I email to you and you se what ‘s going on b/c ppl use etherpad, googledocs

Low enrgy here So theoretical , abstract It can wash your dog for you but you don’t need it to wash yr dog

Jaroslaw

This is the way we innovate in general

Don’t use tables for Layout they’re supposed to be about data contained inside Use CSS and proper HTML tags But ppl can still choose to ignore that and do it the “Wrong” way and we jusdt live w/ it

ppl still have the choice to use other tools if they want
i think the switchf rom "don't use tables use CSS" Is a failure of tech

Techsprint II

5 or so instructors from UC Irvine and Carnegie Mellon Folks from OCW and FWK

Think beyond open textbooks themselves Instructors want content they can plug in to open "courses"--larger scale FWK is the halfway point bw "textbooks" and "open courses" with web books that have interactive content Might change the "kind" of teaching folks do--might be the entry point into online courses for some instructors, since most are comfortable with a textbook Still need some way to navigate the course--you can't start Thermodynamics with a MIT OCW course, you can't jump in to a subject without knowing something about it Need to build open courses with some sort of assessment around it Adaptive?

Different learning paces--some schools doing "4 in 3" years, using summers Does education include the social happenings on a campus? Does it include learning how to multitask and deal with the consequences?

Publisher Takeaway: Highly experienced and forward thinkers in this space are advocating for the true disaggregation of content into discrete learning objects, easily assemble-able into COURSES by professors. This includes at least general assessments in the form of checkpoints throughout the course. Adaptive is cool too. There is still room for the publisher here in terms of curating the content, but revenue models remain unclear.

COuple of discussions: first was on OCW what's next what shd be done not really about sustainability no! it was just

Brad FELIX: THE TXTBOOK IS DEAD the lesson learned is building content is really hard and not appealing

the other theory is that everybody's still at OPEN ED

In this session the people gathered were from Open Courseware Consortium, Connexions, Flatworldknowledge and Kaizendo.org. Sveinn Sandvik Svendsen from Kaizendo.org presented the prototype of the Kaizendo tool to an audience of ~10. The feature presented was the basic user interface and the commenting system. Aspects (different versions of the text) was also explained to the audience.

Pathways to Open Content Connextions - How to find content – create a lens (schools start building lenses) Can you work collaboratively on a lens, if you share an account, one account that different people log on. Organizational account and can build all 3 lenses (members, affiliation and endorsement) Still coming.

Flatworld – a new model for publishing, provide editorial and selling services. - Errors checking and curable. Find tenured professor and negotiate a contract. Content gets peer reviewed. - Printed copies possible -=----------------------------------