OpenEd week 13 - The OpenCourseWars

The OpenCourseWars (13 pages) is a short story depicting a possible future for open education from a historical perspective. Written by David Wiley, it is both highly entertaining and informative. It not only has given me more insight in some problematic issues of open licensing and consequences, but also shows interesting and appealing futures of learning with in an open education landscape. After an overview of the most important issues, and some personal reactions, I describe my personal ideas about the future of open education, from a slightly different persective than David's.

2005 – 2012: The OpenCourseWars

The initial beauty of open education quite rapidly turns grey with problems of the NC license again, with public opinion turning against OCW. Problems with defining Non-Commercial quickly becomes not only a theoretical problem, but a real problem indeed:

Creative Commons’ own publicly posted discussion draft of Proposed Best Practice Guidelines to Clarify the Meaning of Non-Commercial in the Creative Commons Licenses suggested we approach the meaning of the term noncommercial from the “Nature of the User”. To put it simply, the guidelines asked if the would-be user of the noncommercially-licensed material was an individual or non-profit institution. If so, everything was kosher. If not (if the would-be user was a for-profit company), then they were not permitted to use materials. Seems very straightforward, right? MIT OCW, however, saw things in a very different way. They provided their own definition of Noncommercial, in which they said, “Determination of commercial vs. non-commercial purpose is based on the use, not the user”, and that as long as you’re not trying to make money off of their materials, they were cool with whatever else you did.

So on the one hand you had Creative Commons suggesting that Noncommercial should be determined by the nature of the user, and on the other hand you had MIT OCW defining the very same clause of the very same license in the completely opposite way. I had known about this problem for years, and had email discussions with a number of people at both Creative Commons and MIT hoping to get it fixed. But the problem was extremely thorny politically, and nothing had happened yet.

The publishers, clearly not very happy with the whole open education movement, follow with a brilliant strategy attacking the NC clause, and win in court: the NC clause is struck down, and all the content that used to be licensed only for non-commercial use, suddenly became available for commercial use. After this apparent success by the publishers, they could now use and commercially distribute the OCW content, which they did. Still, they would be obliged to mention the Creative Commons license, and share the (now commercial) content under the same open license (Share-Alike). Surprisingly, they even ignored this clause, and they did not Share-Alike, because the publishers thought they could attack and bring down the SA clause as well... but to no avail, and to their own demise.

This lack of judgment started a great new movement in open education, led by students, who happily participated in creating a vast infrastructure of open content. But... another licensing war mounted the surface: CC versus GFDL. This was settled as well, finally, and then there was the dawn of a beautiful period in open education: power to the people, in this case students. David uses the following quote to explain that younger university faculty started to ignore the standard opencoursewares altogether in favor of working:

Putting professors’ lecture notes and things on an university website where students can’t trib test questions and photos and things makes about as much sense as using email. It’s for old people who just don’t get it. I mean, even this eBook reader thing I just got from my sister (who finally graduated, by the way) is pointless. Why would anyone use a device that won’t let you trib

Tribbing is contributing, as you might expect. On the other hand, the opencoursewares are R/O, or read-only, and is "associated with the kind of “authority” young folks want to rebel against, and embodies an entire generation’s frustration with top-down, un-democratic, un-participatory approaches generally."

Following the pandemonium concerning licensing, opencoursewares, and learner participation, a new kind of university emerged: the competency-based university, where students only had to pass a test or exam to be accredited. One of the first universities adopting this model, a traditional online university, started an IBM/Linux like collaboration with the largest site for open content educational materials, creating an enormous synergy; increasing the quality of learning materials, and cost savings for the university itself. A spin-off of the university provided an additional service, where students could approach experts worldwide through Skype for personalized support, paying a certain fee. This service initiated a kind of e-lance economy in itself, because anyone could be an expert. These experts, most of them students, were not inclined to give bad service, because they would be rated by the user, and bad ratings lowered their future chance on flexible employment.

NB.Despite the beauty of the above depicted future, I have an extra note about the accreditation-only model: it will only be valuable if the diploma itself represents value, which depends on the type of assessment: if it is personal, competency-based, and practical, I think these universities might have a chance for survival. If they don't, and assess students with normal exams and tests, I see little future in this model.

An important quote in the postlude represents the most important difficulty with current OCW initiatives:

Generally speaking, OCWs were difficult-to-sustain R/O endeavors that relied on relatively small numbers of university employees and outside funding. As important as they were, they could never scale and were unsustainable in the ways their original funders wanted them to be. On the other hand, OER projects were generally democratic remix projects that lived and died on the quality of the trib’ing.

Embracing the trib culture, David says, opens up opportunities for new business models and new ways of learning, something I totally agree with. He created a very interesting future history of open educational resources, going through different transitions, mentioning important problems in licensing, student contribution, and describing great opportunities in learning, competition, and creating value in society. In all, the end depicts a very similar look on the future as I have described earlier (and just posted on this blog), about "How I want to wake up one day...".

Criticisms and additions

I will provide some additions and criticisms to the very interesting view on the future of open education, by using the same narrating style David uses.

The shift from a teacher-centered university, with professors standing on a stage and transferring knowledge, towards a learner-centered university happened slowly but steadily, when experts are no longer able to transfer knowledge any better than high quality video and multimedia learning materials. In addition, traditional classes turned into some kind of open (and closed) discussion groups in an online virtual world, and face-to-face interaction started to happen in smaller groups for brainstorming and praxis, and large groups in conference like gatherings, organized by students.

Decentralization started to spread into all facets of the learning process, including curricula: students were more and more able to follow learning tracks personalized for them. When the point was reached that faculty and university educators were no longer able to make personalized tracks for each and every one of them, this process is finally decentralized and students were able to make their own learning profile and track, changing and adapting it along the way. Any student could make any track he or she wanted, by aggregating courses, and finding experts to help him (gain knowledge, get employed). These experts were initially paid by universities to do this, but later on another mechanism started to mount, replacing this financial incentive with another one. Lifelong learners got involved in this process, and learning networks came into existence where different facets of society are represented: industry, university, and lifelong learners (including students as we know them today).

Facing quite some opposition, the replacement of normal faculty by these learning networks (ranging from a few to thousands of people) took some time. Learning networks gradually overtook the role assumed for so long by universities: they started to accredit the people in their networks, and were responsible for creating meaningful resources for learning, including challenges and prize competitions, something that became very popular in these learning networks. Universities changed their business models, and flexibly offered hardware (rooms, technology, labs, etc.) and services (creating high-quality materials from bare content, catering, human resource management, etc.) to these learning networks.

New diplomas and certificates were popping up everywhere online, and it seemed that any group was able to give out diplomas, creating quite a disturbance and call for the past. It was not long before a standard appeared, a kind of Netiquette, applying to these diplomas. Diplomas were still given in abundance, but the information relevant to the diplomas were instantly available and linked to the diploma. A group of open source software developers, linked with the group responsible for the diploma Netiquette, created software that aggregated the information of different online diplomas and certificates, automatically scrutinizing them with a number of criteria. Their site, http://cert-check.org, became the number one portal for certification quality check. In the years to come, they developed an advanced technology that could provide anyone with advise on career and learning, based on all the aggregated information.

When trust in diplomas and certificates was restored, other facets became more important. Since any learner was putting their learner results directly on the web, data about their added value was much more consistent and valid than any diploma, which soon assumed a decorative role, a kind of achievement award, only to be given to persons really having shown something, and usually in combination with some kind of research fund. Someone's online ID, being aggregated by more and more advanced machines, took over the role of certification, and after the students, the companies and industry quickly became aware of this. For persons in a learning network, this created another incentive to add value to a network, because added value would return to you in employment opportunities, and/or access to expertise. Adding value clearly happens not just personal social networks, but merely in professional learning networks. A person's online ID, combined with the social and professional "tacit" contacts, provided everything a person needed. If someone was not inclined to help anyone in his or her learning (and, by now employment network), (s)he was probably not helped either.

OpenED week 11 - Open Education & Learning Objects

Do open educational resources "fix" the many problems concerning learning objects?
Wiley discusses some of the main difficulties concerning learning objects in one of his papers on it called "Learning objects, difficulties and opportunities". Before exploring these difficulties and opportunities, it might be better to define a learning object. This, in itself, already represents a problem, but in this post we'll take the definition used by David in a short presentation on this year's BC Net conference. The first thing I noticed about this presentation, which is about openness, localization, and the future of learning objects, was his ironic humor. I usually like ironic humor, and David's good at it. The second thing I noticed were his "Lessigan" (is that a word?) slide style, which I like as well. Thirdly, I was happily surprised, because I had seen this presentation before and had lost track of it. I now found it again:)

Defining a learning object
Well, to get back to the definition question:

"A learning object is characterized by the following four components;

1. It should be a resource;
2. that is used to mediate learning (helps learning happening);
3. in a digital format; and
4. is freely reusable and adaptable."
   

In the same way, he explains why he does not care whether learning objects are dead or not;

"as long as people are willing to (1) openly share (2) educational materials that will (3) render properly in most web browsers, and they also (4) provide access to the unobfuscated source for the materials (especially for Flash files, Java applets, Photoshop images with many layers, and the like)..."

Also, after all, if the definition is disputable, so would its death.

He further discusses the fourth component in more detail, explaining the difference in reuse between copyrighted materials and open content:

• (c) copyrighted materials can only be reused "as-is"
• open content enables "frictionless adaptation"

Difficulties concerning learning objects
We have now seen the way how a learning object is defined by David Wiley, what about the problems concerning learning objects. In an earlier paper (which hence assumes his earlier definition of LO; without adaptation) some difficulties and opportunities are mentioned. These issues become more important when climbing up the so-called Bloom's taxonomy, which explains the different levels of cognitive skills (from lower-level remembering, understanding, and appllying towards higher-level analyzing, evaluation, and creation). The difficulties concerning learning objects include the following:

• A focus on decontextualization, which is economically sensible, but at the same time counterproductive from the standpoint of student learning.
• Forgetting the fact that learning objects do not "contain" learning, but it merely becomes a learning object when it is part of action, which I take as engagement.
  
• Forgetting the social aspect of learning, which happens more and more on a social basis.
  
• Still, I think we should not forget the advances being made with these technologies: advanced search and metadata machines may be able to find exactly the information you need and accustomed for you (for language, level, other contextual issues). In addition, cognitive tutors (Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative), intelligent robot like machines etc. may sometimes be better able to mediate learning than humans do (i.e. they don't get annoyed, are always available, can retrieve online data, student data, etc. much faster than we do).
  
• The oppressiveness of traditional (or mainstream) learning object approaches, of of automated selection
  and delivery, because it completely precludes discourse or dialogue.
• Incapability of automatic reusing (majority of) learning content, because LO systems are designed to reuse (and sequence) only a specific type of learning object, and the web consists of a multitude of different types and sizes of resources that can perfectly be used for learning.
• In addition, personal reuse of learning objects is in many cases just forbidden because of copyright protection (set by default, see earlier postings week 6 and 7).
• Reusability paradox: A content module's stand-alone pedagogical effectiveness is inversely proportional to its reusability (Wiley, Recker, & Gibbons 2001).
  
• There is no "Educational Objects Economy" thinkable: despite rights management attempts, digital content will make its way into free distribution. As Wiley explains in his presentation (discussed below), giant music and movie corporations are fighting 13-year olds from Finland, and the latter are winning. In a blogpost, he sarcastically questions why not all the money spent on creating this learning objects economy, had been put in better understanding the process of evaluating reuse and creating tools for reuse:
  

" Of course, there’s very little market for these processes and tools, because when you’re talking about supporting people who have been unable to exercise their right to education, you’re obviously talking about “poor people,” and how would you make any return on products developed for “poor people?” I mean, after all, how are they supposed to pay? "

BTW. I don't think that these tools and processes are only useful for poor people; if it increases learning and education, which happens at companies as well, a business model can be built around it, I suppose. It might threaten the incumbent e-learning corporations, or might not be according to their current business model, so that might be a reason for not focusing on it, not the reason that only poor people can make use of it, and that they cannot pay.

The TAO for learning objects: openness
In his presentation, David argues that "OPENNESS IS THE ONLY FUTURE FOR LEARNING OBJECTS". To support this statement, he sketches an interesting overview of education compared with everyday life.

EDUCATION	EVERYDAY
Analog	Digital
Tethered	Mobile
Isolated	Connected
Generic	Personlized
Consuming	Creating
Closed	Open

In italic, the state of today's e-learning is shown, with the few exceptions of course. With that in mind, the basic argument for openness is as follows:

• There is no monetary incentive for an economy based on learning objects; in creating learning objects we should rely on other than monetary incentives;
• Openness enables adaptability, which is crucial in learning. You cannot take one course or learning object or teaching material and take it "as-is" in another setting.. it needs to be transformed and changed into something that is more suitable to that situation/ context/ culture/ learner... etc.
• Because it not only provides access to the resource, but to its "source code" as well, it enables creativity by the user, being able to be active and contributing to it. Tools are important in stimulating this creativity.
  

Other opportunities for learning objects
Openness of resources is just one of the opportunities mentioned by Wiley (2003) in his earlier paper. Besides problematic issues concerning (traditional thinking about) learning objects, some opportunities for learning objects are recognized in this paper:

• Learning objects as entities without content, but rather indicating a kind of strategy or teaching technique, enabling different types and sizes of content to be used (by the end-user).
  
• I see this as a kind of learning context, but can you design a learning context better than a learning object?
  
• The "Educational Objects Commons" or, as we would call it, the open educational resources commons.
• Interactive web tools, and blogs and wikis, providing the social support for learning objects use.
• Supporting problem-based learning: Assuming an instructional design other than direct instruction opens doors to extremely interesting learning object use cases.
  

Important, also for OER: "What everyone does"
In his presentation, an interesting part is when David ironically criticizes the attitude of "What if everyone just would ... do x", meanwhile proposing an attitude more like "What everyone does". He then explains what everyone actually does, and states a number of trends and issues and compares them with relevant "What if everyone just would" issues in the learning objects landscape:

WHAT IF EVERYONE WOULD JUST	WHAT EVERYONE DOES
Repositories	Google
IEEE LOM (etc. 70-80 fields to fill in)	Tagging
OAI-PMH	RSS
IMS-CP (Content Packaging) / SCORM (for LO systems)	HTML/JPG/etc. (sufficient for rendering in webpages)
Ontologies	Folksonomies
LMS	Wikis & Blogs
Learning Objects	Resources

COMPLEX (little uptake)

SIMPLE (tremendous uptake)

David eloquently explains that simplicity wins: something that would be happily acknowledged by Philips, the Dutch electronics multinational, whose slogan is "Sense & Simplicity". We should not try to change the behaviour of 99.9% percent of the world, convincing them that they should fill in 80 fields of metadata according to a certain predetermined ontology. Rather we should leverage and utilize the behavior of people they already show.

Acknowledging and understanding the discussed problems and opportunities, including the behavior of people (above list), I have made an overview of the problems, and indicated whether it would be solved by OER (defined as educational resources and open source technologies enabling reuse/remix).

PROBLEMS	OER A SOLUTION??
Decontextualization	Most OER provide are highly contextual, which may increase the value for learners and educators.
Engagement	OER, like learning objects, do not contain magical power, although I think that highly advanced OER may actually increase learner engagement.
Social aspect of learning	Just OER is not sufficient. If OER providers do not acknowledge the benefits of Web 2.0, and do not try to intertwine the functionalities offered by online tools and technologies, the value offered by these OER will be sub-optimal.
Oppressiveness	Idem.
Reusing	The intrinsic openness will enable reuse. Still, better compatibility between licenses is desired.
Reusability paradox/Costs of reuse	The paradox remains, but the more findable resources on the web, the better the recommendation tools, the more likely there will be something of your likings, and the less effort it will cost you to adapt them.
Educational Objects Economy/Business models	Other business models can be thought of, more suitable for the web, and actually creating value than costing money

OpenED Week 7: Copyright issues (cont'd)

This week continues the interesting topic of copyright, copyleft, and the public domain. The following resources have been digested this week;

• Creative Commons (Watch the top 4 videos)
• GNU Free Documentation License (FSF, 6 pages)
• Free content tutorial (Various, 12 pages)
• WikiEducator: Memoirs, myths, misrepresentations and the magic (Mackintosh, 10 pages)
• Reasons Not to Use a Creative Commons -NC License (Möller, 9 pages)
• Open educational resources and practices (Blackall, 8 pages)
• Noncommercial isn’t the problem, ShareAlike is (Wiley, 5 pages)
• ShareAlike, the public domain, and privileging (Wiley, 3 pages)

QUESTIONS: Can you think of license options that CC is currently missing that would benefit the open education movement? As the CC and GFDL licenses are incompatible, how can OCW content be legally remixed with Wikipedia content? Some people claim that the Creative Commons ShareAlike clause provides most of the protections people want to secure from the Creative Commons NonCommercial clause. What do you think these people mean, are they right, and why? Is copyleft good for the open education movement? Why or why not?

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Instead of making a personal (independent) blogpost on copyright issues, I have tried to reflect more on other people's thinking this week.. I have taken some of the blogposts about this subject that interested me most, and criticized, applauded, or augmented them with my own musings. In remixing my thoughts with others, I hope to answer some of the questions above. First my favorite Creative Commons video:

Fair use... morality & control-ability

I question the implication that remixing Wikipedia content "illegally" would cause problems. I really don't think that a non-profit organization as Wikimedia will bother much tracking and suing people or institutions who do this, because they don't care and don't have money. A rich institution like MIT, who might care about reuse (Open Courseware licenses are usually somewhat restrictive), and has the money and expertise to proceed, will still be very careful I reckon. Their name and fame, for many institutions and individuals a motivations for opening up, is at stake when publicly going to court without clear moral backings. An example is Blackboard, a company that became widely despised after their failed patent suit. Especially if the remixing concerns free educational content or expanding knowledge worldwide, which is in line with the objective of Wikipedia and MIT. In my opinion, Meg asks the right question:

"Why haven't we focused more on expanding "fair use"? Certainly this would be one way around the above conundrum [i.e. "illegal remixing"]. It would also help solve problems with using copyright materials."

Rob Barton has a similar view:

"I hope something can be worked out so these licenses can be more compatible with each other, but it seems unlikely to happen quickly. In the mean time, it may just be a liberal application of fair use that allows a mixture among the various incompatible licenses, along with a sprinkle of a gentleman's agreement not to sue."

And there we are... Like Meg, Rob is not seeking the license incompatibility in more licenses or license agreements, but in an expansion of fair use, or gentleman's agreement not to sue. But then... who will decide on the fair use..? I think no one in particular, but the process of use and reuse, of remixing and adapting, and of claims and cases, will in the end make out what is to be allowed, and what not, and that this will become clear for the end-user. It might be just better to see how things evolve over time, let people do things wrong (who hasn't ever downloaded films or mp3's illegally?) than to commission some kind of document containing the ultimate solution.

• Letting the definition of fair use evolve and expand over time to overcome license incompatibility is better than to design new licenses and set new rules.

In addition to this intelligent perspective of redefining fair use, I question the control-ability. I can imagine it will be pretty difficult to monitor restrictions imposed by these licenses, or by the people making the resources licensed as such. I think that if the use of resources do not really go against one's own personal moral standards, one would use them anyhow. I don't think a small private educational publisher in some poor country would consider asking permission to MIT to use and their resources, especially if they improve them, if their financial position would not even allow the smallest contribution. They would just do it. And maybe even doing a good job, because their competitor might offer similar resources for a much higher price...

• Moral values are stronger indicators for the reuse and remixability of artifacts than rules and restrictions.

Creative "intermediary" licenses?

Greg Francom explains his opinion about Creative Commons and educational content, and I was tended to agree with him, but later on, I was somewhat reluctant to agree with him.

"Is any restriction of freedoms bad? I can see the value of having intermediary licenses such as share alike and non-commercial as a kind of gateway to help apprehensive individuals begin to license their original work. These licenses, however, still restrict end users from using resources in certain ways as David Wiley points out. I agree with him that the ideal and future goal is the public domain."

Greg has a good point: the wide range of licenses will get more people involved, but other aspects, such as the presentation and the entry level are important as well. As Rob says:

"CC works because it is simple, and I believe it is important to keep it that way."

Rob Barton is right... keep the barrier low! Make and present it simple! This is key, because otherwise most people will get confused and NOT license their content.. which subsequently becomes copyrighted automatically. The presentation of the of the CC licenses on the Creative Commons website, their great videos and their international marketing, in combination with the wide range of possibilities, is attractive to nearly anyone.

Regarding the restrictions of some Creative Commons licenses, I acknowledge the difficulties mentioned, but I do not agree to the full 100% with Greg, Wayne's and David's concerns. I would want any licensee to consider his/her license very well, and that the choice of license should be an informed one. So when someone chooses a specific license, specify the main problems that relate to this license. Make the NC and SA discussions as clear as the licenses themselves, and inform institutions about it. I also agree that Non-Commercial and Share-Alike clauses sometimes create inefficiency or incompatibility, but I don't think that the ideal and future goal for learning materials is solely in the public domain... I will try to explain that by commenting on another quote by Greg:

"I think that when people say that share-alike will cover all of the needs of the non-commercial clause... [...] If a company sells a creative item that is licensed with the share-alike clause and not the non-commercial one, then they are also required to release this item for free to the general public. Selling an item that you must also provide free to the public would not work very well."

Mmm... Share-Alike covering all the needs of the Non-Commercial clause... I don't think so. Imagine me being professional photographer, and I put my pictures online under CC-By-SA. Some other guy could for instance make a beautiful photo book, or agenda, with my pictures, and sell that commercially. He could bring out this book as Share-Alike, meaning that anyone interested in re-publishing or remixing this photo book would have to name the original author (me), and put the same CC license on it as I originally put on it. But he would be able to sell the photo book or agenda or whatever other artifact he made out of my photo material. And there are situations thinkable when I would not agree to this, for example when I sell my own photo books and agendas on my website.

• Share-Alike and Non-Commercial are complementary, not the same.

Greg forgets that remixing can happen in different ways and that Sharing Alike is not just copy-paste the original content and provide it online under a Creative Commons license. Remixing is adding content, changing, localizing, translating... etc..: which means adding value. And the remixer might want to be paid for that added value, which is totally acceptable. Or the original creator might not be willing to enable remixers this kind of use... because it interferes with their own business model, or just because it does not feel good... which might be a pity, but totally acceptable as well.

• Not offering the Non-Commercial clause will create more copyrighted material.
• The future of open learning materials resides in the whole copyright spectrum: copyleft is good for education.
  

To explain this in more detail, consider the value for the creator if he (or she) can commercialize his artifact, whilst putting it openly on the Internet. I have explained that not allowing him to forbid commercial use by others means that he might copyright his stuff. By acknowledging potential future or current commercial value for the creator you draw individuals and institutions into a more open, or less restricted, domain. In fact, more reuse and remix possibilities are achieved because of Creative Commons and copyleft. Möller states that

"there may be circumstances where -NC is the only (and therefore best) available option, but that number of circumstances should decrease as the business models around free content evolve."

And he may be right that commercial use might even create more value in the end, but shouldn't this judgment be made by the creator?

Value of Public Domain

To get back on last week's discussion about what the value of the public domain is versus CC... I think I want to point out to Greg Francom that he should not forget the opportunity losses when you do not offer other licensing options to individuals, which might be less ideal for the remixer. If they do not license their content, you know it will be copyrighted and all rights reserved. I believe in the diversity of possibilities offered by CC and think that a much larger number of people would open license their materials if all options are offered, isn't that real openness? I can imagine different situations where the creator indeed would restrict the use somewhat, because otherwise he or she will not be able to profit from it. I agree that the public domain is more useful for the remixer, but what about the value of reputation of the original creator?

• If you do not specifically disallow commercial use by including the Non-Commercial clause in your CC license, it is possible that you will loose some opportunities for making money out of your CC licensed content, whether educational or not.

Another thing I would like to stress is the relative risk of imposing some rights on an artifact. The owner of the artifact A who reserves some rights, always runs the risk that there is a viable alternative artifact B licensed less strict, and the remixer will prefer B at the cost of the owner of A.

• Restricting reuse on an artifact involves the risk of replacement by a more openly licensed alternative.

Stephen Downes, as one would expect, has an opinion about the NC (Non-Commercial) clause of Creative Commons:

"And again I iterate that the only people harmed by CC-NC-By are commercial exploiters who seek to cordon off the market for academic content as their own and to systematically loot it for their own benefit and at the expense of people who most need free - and noncommercial - content."

Is there no commercial use possible that will enhance the product? There are arguments in favour of enabling commercial use, because that will stimulate innovation around the content, or provide services to people, making the content or product more attractive. Open source experiences usually provide us with an answer, with a longer history in open licensing. You could argue that commercial exploitation of open source software has caused successful adoption of it. Take Linux, which is the foundation of many large businesses, not only having instrumental value (as the software used within the company), but as the core around which the business is built. I don't think anyone can deny that commercial use can have a positive effect on the development of open content, whether software or educational resources.

So what exactly is commercial use? I do not specifically know in what way open source software forms the "raison d'être" of organizations like RedHat or SuSe. The source code remains open, I suppose, but the code that is added as well? Translated to educational resources, what about adding pictures, changing the format, and specifying the resource to a specific context, and sell the package to customers that are in need of such a thing? Should this be forbidden? Or don't you agree that this enhances public value? I suppose commercial applications in many cases form the last step towards true end-user value. The valorization of half-useful open educational resources cannot or may not happen without at least some commercial exploitation. We should not forget that these organizations or people do add some significant value to the resources, whether it is in marketing, aggregation, contextualization, or in any other service value. People or organizations sometimes do not have the time or knowledge to search and aggregate, put into sequence, translate, or fine-tune content that is freely available online. Why should it made impossible if there are people/organizations willing to do that for a certain prize? You see that I here criticize NC, but I am not against it, as I explained earlier.

So.. is Creative Commons perfect?

No. It is not, and I don't think they claim to be. Although there are a lot of options available to the users of the licenses, some are left out. Some of us discussed the Attribution clause, which is included in every Creative Commons license. I agree that this should not be always included, because one could think of instances where, for example, you don't care that they attribute your content, but you want your content to be shared alike. I also think that users of CC-NC licenses should be able to define instances of commercial use they want to disallow: "Some Commercial Use Reserved". In that way the creator can protect the commercial value of his creation in more specific terms, meanwhile opening up for other uses, including commercial ones, which might increase value in the long term.

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Interesting... the definition of "free" (According to OXFORD English Dictionary)

1 not under the control or in the power of another. 2 permitted to take a specified action. 3 not or no longer confined, obstructed, or fixed. 4 not subject to engagements or obligations. 5 not occupied or in use. 6 (free of/from) not subject to or affected by. 7 available without charge. 8 generous or lavish. 9 frank and unrestrained. not subject to the normal conventions; improvised. (of a translation or interpretation) conveying only the broad sense; not literal.

OpenEd week 6 - Copyright

This week, and the next, will be centered around copyright issues. Initially I regarded this as something not so interesting, but after reading some background material (including a comic book, Bound by Law), and grasping the valid concerns stated by the authors, my interest had grown like a lotus in the mud. It is a truly interesting and dynamic domain, and the decisions made nowadays will greatly influence our future possibility to stand on "the shoulders of giants", small or large. I will shortly discuss the public domain, copyright, and the rise of open licenses in relation to these concerns with copyright legislation. Also, the relation with open educational resources, and the value of these if being put in the public domain, is discussed.

The following background readings in copyright and the public domain have been used in this blogpost.

• Copyright Basics (Carroll, 9 pages)
• Public domain (Wikipedia, 10 pages)
• Against Perpetual Copyright (Lessig, 8 pages)
• An Interview with Lawrence Lessig on Copyrights (Lessig, 5 pages)
• Bound by Law (Aoki, Boyle, and Jenkins, 76 pages)
• Value of the public domain (Pollock, 18 pages)
• Forever minus a day? Some theory and empirics of optimal copyright (Pollock, 29 pages)

Basics of copyright
I will discuss the basics of copyright to start with, followed by a short explanation of the public domain and the open licenses that cover the space between these two extremities. Copyright is an apparently simple right to get or have: the origin of the work has to be in the author holding the copyright. Copyrights hold for

• Books, manuscripts and speeches and other nondramatic literary works
• Computer programs
• Music (lyrics and recordings)
• Cartoons and comic strips
• Photographs
• Drawings, prints, and other works of visual arts
• Motion pictures and video recordings
• Dramatic scripts, plays, and screenplays
• Games

The rights related to copyright concern reproduction (also of derivative works), production and distribution of copies, and the performance and display of the work publicly. Two moral rights are recognized by the US as well, which concern attribution and integrity. They allow the author of a work to claim authorship and to prevent the use of his/her name for something he/she did not create or for a derivative. Moral and copyrights are not omnivalent, some cultural works, such as sound recordings and architectural works can be protected by other rights. The length of the copyright depends on the year of origin of a work, and of course the country where the material comes from, because of differences in laws over time and geography. Fair use implies that copyrighted material can be used "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research". It also applies in other areas, as some of the examples below:

• Quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment;
• Quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work for illustration or clarification of the author's observations;
• Use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied;
• Summary of an address or article with brief quotations, in a news report;
• Reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy;
• Reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson;
• Reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports;
• Incidental and fortuitous reproduction in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.

Public domain
On the other side of the spectrum there is the public domain, where works can be used for whatever reason by whomever. Unlike earlier days, it now applies that if works are published without further notice, they are copyrighted, instead of part of the public domain. Instances of public domain works include works where copyright is expired, governmental works, titles/slogans/names and other works that cannot be copyrighted (although possible with trademarks), forfeiture, and abandonment (through for example Creative Commons licensing). It is impossible to appropriate or copyright content that belongs to the public domain.

It is interesting to discuss the boundaries of public domain and copyright. It could be difficult to distinguish PD and copyrighted content, and because of that, people may use apparent PD works (but are not PD) to develop new works (derivatives), which they put in the public domain, and that is illegal. A number of open licenses, or copyleft licenses have been brought into existence, to grant some subset of copyright to the public or to prevent commercialization or other use not intended by the creator, and to improve the reuse and remix of works. They usually forbid proprietary distribution, but can include more specifications on how to use the material (software, images, etc.).

The space between
The GFDL (GNU Free Documentation License, used by, amongst others, Wikipedia) and Creative Commons licenses exert a number of controls on the use of the work they license, but what controls exactly and how do they differ from copyright and public domain?

• Public domain comprises the body of knowledge and innovation (especially creative works such as writing, art, music, and inventions) in relation to which no person or other legal entity can establish or maintain proprietary interests within a particular legal jurisdiction. This body of information and creativity is considered to be part of a common cultural and intellectual heritage, which, in general, anyone may use or exploit, whether for commercial or non-commercial purposes. (Wikipedia)
• The purpose of GFDL is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this license preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others. This license is a kind of "copyleft", which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense.
• The GFDL can be compared with the Creative Commons (CC) Attribution/ShareAlike license. Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved." In specific, these are the most common options Creative Commons offers;

• Attribution (By). You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give credit the way you request.

• Noncommercial (NC). You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work — and derivative works based upon it — but for noncommercial purposes only

• No Derivative Works (ND). You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.
  

• Share Alike (SA). You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

Creative Commons offer to license your work using other 'open licenses' that are most commonly used, or to copyright it, or to put it in the public domain. Actually, almost any type of protection can be found and utilized on their website. Offering your work under a Creative Commons license does not mean giving up your copyright. It means offering some of your rights to any member of the public but only on certain conditions.

So how do these domains relate to each other? Creativity is by no means a stand-alone feature of a person or institution. Quite the contrary, it needs a rich public domain, as been said by Judge Alex Kozinski in the dissenting opinion for the 1993 White v. Samsung Electronics case. Lawrence Lessig, a prolific writer on copyright issues and one of leading persons behind Creative Commons, explains that new cultural works are built on top of others, and that copyright prevents this to happen, because of the trouble of having to consult the copyright owner, buy off the rights, etc. These are all all transaction costs, thus strict copyright legislation will favour large companies over individual creators. The value of the public domain, he explains, cannot only be measured in terms of profit, but also "comes from the content of a work being placed into the Public Domain to be discussed in print, copied, derived, modified, mixed, remixed, or respun into some new work." Copyright would therefore, if applied rigorously on almost everything, stifle innovation and progress. And, interestingly, that is quite the opposite of the original intend of setting up copyright legislation, which should "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".

David Wiley challenges us to think about the value of the public domain in relation to the the "open domain", where works are conditioned, but open to use. As we have seen, there are different ways to openly license your cultural works, allowing different levels of freedom to use, remix, and distribute. The question is impossible to answer, because

1. No specification is made about which Creative Commons license; and
2. It is common wisdom that overprotecting works is as dangerous as underprotecting it, and that creativity needs a rich public domain.

Both the public domain and copyrighted domain are needed, because public good requires a mix of public and private. Individuals may find incentives in the possibility of owning their works and being able to make money out of it. Other don't see the value of protecting it and just give it away to the public. It will depend on the author, but also on the work that is created. Therefore, by asking what would be the net benefit of licensing (ALL) works under the GNU Free Documentation License, would imply that it would be impossible to copyright works. This, in turn, would take away the incentives I just mentioned, causing a negative effect to the public good, because innovation would stifle. Making all works available for reuse and remix under these licenses might not have a positive effect on the net value of the public domain in the longer term.

The same arguments count for the issue of simply placing OER in the public domain and the net benefit for the open educational resources movement. Most educational institutions are (like) private organizations and have to compete with others, and increasingly in an international playing field. Their educational resources therefore, can be considered as something that could be competitive advantageous. By opening up, but not allowing commercial use (which is a difficult clause), the barrier for such an institution becomes lower. Also, because many OER-initiatives depend on the contributions of many individuals, whose reputations are of paramount significance to them, it might be impossible to become sustainable if contributors cannot impose attribution.

As Rufus Pollock explains the reason for copyright; "Thus while making existing knowledge open is optimal (for public value), such a strategy may not be compatible with ensuring its creation in the first place. When the first-best solution of up-front funding is impractical or inefficient we may have to make difficult trade-offs between the costs of restricting access and the benefits of providing creators with greater incentives to produce work."

Evidence shows that the benefit of placing work in the public domain (PD) is that public domain works are more likely to be made available to the public. Pollock also showes that this access to older (PD) works generates value not only for the consumer but also revenue for the firms involved in re-issuing these PD works. Older, coppyrighted works gathering dust in vaults or even rotting away generate no revenue or value for society, and represent a tragedy for any nation’s cultural heritage.

So what about Open Educational Resources?
There are three broad possibilities that apply for educational resources:

• Do nothing will mean that the works are copyrighted. Still, if openly placed on a website, the works can be used according to the "fair use" doctrine, meaning that copyrighted works can be used without consultation for some educational or non-profit purposes.
• License your work, and choose a license that is very open (GFDL, CC-By), open with more restrictions for use (CC-By-NC-ND), or plain right copyright it.
• Give the work to the public domain and state that it is part of the public domain.

We have seen that not doing anything will mean in most countries that the content is copyrighted. This would not be a good option for social welfare. License the work under copyright laws at least makes it clear that it is copyrighted, but will cause it to be used for purposes determined by the author, and permitted by the author. This is not a good option within academic circles either, so that leaves us with a number of open licenses, out of which the creator has to choose a license to his or her likings. Creators need to be informed well, because the different provisions of the Creative Commons licenses can create incompatibility with other works, licensed differently.

Freedom of expression?
Lawrence Lessig explains that the United States (and possibly other nations as well) are currently facing an enormous threats regarding copyright legislation. Strong political movements try to extend copyright terms over longer periods of time, which benefits only the copyright owners. These are, taking into account that copyright already lasts 75, 95, or 120 years (depending on the type of work), family or publishers of the copyrighted content. They have the power to decide if and how material is used. The following premises explain that extending copyright does not create incentives for people that might be responsible for progressing science or creating useful arts, but merely granting a windfall to existing works.

• Copyright law's constitutional purpose: to promote the progress of science and the useful arts; and
• Creativity needs a rich public domain; scientific progress and new useful arts are built on top of existing ones.

Lessig states that this strong political group, existing of lobbyists from Hollywood and recording industry, aren't so much defending the rights of creators, they're defending a certain business model. This group intends to create a "permission culture", rather than "a world in which there are few barriers to entry, where a blog can create a major political scandal, a $218 digital film can go to the Cannes Film Festival, a podcast can reach tens of thousands of listeners, a mash-up can savagely criticize the government's respons to a hurricane, where recording and remixing technology better than anything Phil Spector ever had may come bundled free with your laptop." Current copyright legislation creates more and more barriers for creative individuals, who do not possess the time, money, or knowledge to clear their works of copyrighted material. In addition, the clearance itself is an enormous barrier of creating new material to start with.

He also refers to the lack of requirement in current copyright legislation of filing or renewing copyright. This results in a vast domain of works, where "it's so hard to know what material is available and what material is not available... So there's this mass of unsorted material out there that could or could not be available for public use creating vast uncertainty. As we said, just at the time that technology is enabling all sorts of new creativity, to build on this material and do stuff with it, the law is getting in the way and locking it up."

In the end, a clear warning is stated by Lawrence Lessig; "We live in a time when our culture is increasingly tone-deaf to legitimate criticisms around the world. If there's ever a time when we have to open up the opportunity for people to be critical and spread their creative message it's now. Yet, just at this time, there's this copyright war that's shutting down channels of communication in the name of defending property rights. But in defending those property rights what you're also doing is disabling an extraordinary system of expression that could be doing our democracy an extraordinary bit of good."

Aoki, Boyle, and Jenkins (Bound by Law) confer that although copyright seems to eradicate opportunities for artists, and that copyright might stifle innovation and the progress of science and useful arts, it should not be neglected or violated. It can be a valuable tool for any kind of creator, also when he or she wants to share the work without charge. But they agree with Lessig that the system should not slide out of balance any further. The Creative Commons initiative therefore is very positive, because it provides low barriers for licensing work in any way a person wants. And clear information as well, which is needed to get people and institutions aware of the lost value of overprotecting works. The barriers are extremely low, and it provides, in absence of good copyright legislation, a great counterpart that will make the increasingly complex and abundant online world of information more transparent and useful.

OpenED: An overview of initiatives

Week 5: Example Open Education Programs

This week I will discuss the following Open Education Programs

• Open University (UK) Open Content Initiative
• Rice Connexions
• Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative
• UNESCO Open Training Platform
• MIT OCW
• National Repository of Online Courses

I will describe similarities and differences between them. I also elaborate on the idea of "quality" of the programs or resources they offer.

I will scrutinize the first three discussed open education initiatives according to a number of factors. These factors, not surprisingly influence sustainability in an open education program, such as an OCW. Wiley mentioned these previously, in OECD (2007) and Wiley (2006), and concern:

• Organization; how the initiative is organized, which merely concerns the level of decentralization. Who manages it? How is support provided? Who are able to contribute?
• Motivation; on how much intrinsic motivation does the project rely on to be successful? How is this motivation found and utilized?
• Types of resources; what kind of resources are offered? What can be said about this?
• Types of reuse; how are people intended to reuse the material, what are their possibilities, what kind of support is offered?
• Funding & Revenue; in what way is the initiative bringing in money to be sustainable?

These issues more or less cover the sustainability issue, and will be discussed in this post. The factors influence each other; for example, the needed intrinsic motivation depends on the level of decentralization. There is, of course, not a single bullet-proof configuration, since the context of the initiative (the university, embedded technology, culture) is of paramount influence on the final configuration of an open education program. Not all initiatives are scrutinized according these factors; only the first three, after that only the interesting and remarkable issues are mentioned.


Open University (UK) Open Content Initiative. The Open University is open to people, places, methods and ideas. The goals of the OU itself are (i) promoting educational opportunity and social justice by providing high-quality university education to all who wish to realise their ambitions and fulfil their potential; and (ii) striving for world leadership in the design, content and delivery of supported open and distance learning through academic research, pedagogic innovation and collaborative partnerships. With its OCI, it provides a large number of open learning resources for free. The Open University set up OpenLearn in 2006 to better understand the implications of open educational resources for the future of learning. By April 2008, 5,400 learning hours of content will be available online. It is an interesting initiative, because it has two different sites. One is called LearningSpace, and the other, more experimental for both the initiators as the users, LabSpace. In addition, the site offers a truly learning experience, by including instructional design in the resources. About the OCI, the university states the following:

"In October 2006 The Open University became the first UK university to provide free access to its course materials with the launch of an open educational resources website. For decades The Open University has transformed the lives of people whose background and experience barred their entry to traditional universities. The OU believes that open educational resources have the potential to dramatically increase the number of lives that can be improved through education, in the UK and internationally. Through OpenLearn it hopes to achieve this.

• OpenLearn enables learners with limited experience and confidence to become better prepared for formal education.
• It offers structured learning materials and tools to support teachers working with under-represented groups.
• It supplies ‘reintegration’ level material for those wishing to return to higher education after time out.
• It provides workers with an opportunity to upgrade their skill base and progress their career."

When it comes to the factors described above, the following can be said;

• Organization: Interestingly, the LearningSpace is organized rather top-down and centralized, and resources are added by OU teachers, who are supported by the university. LabSpace, in contrary, enables users to change and add units. Both sites offer different tools, such as Instant Messaging, knowledge mapping, discussion forum, Flash-meeting, and personal learning journal. You can also rate each unit.
  
• Motivation: The motivation needed for the success of the sites differ as well. LabSpace depends on the content of LearningSpace, since initially, the courses are copied to LabSpace. So initially teachers have to be motivated to put their content online, but they are supported by the university to do that. More intrinsic motivation is needed for the development of resources on LabSpace, since the users are not given any specific support or reward for their contributions.
  
• Types of resources: As mentioned, a true learning experience is offered with full courses or single units, which sometimes include video-material. The materials are rich enough to be understood without recourse to a teacher, unlike Open Courseware materials.
  
• Types of reuse: The user is intended to be able to use the material as-is, or download it for personal use/adaptation. On the LabSpace site users can contribute derivative works, and get a teacher status. There is software available that supports this, but physical support is not given to non-OU individuals. Some knowledge about Moodle (the Learning Management System used) is needed to be able to work with it.
• Funding & Revenue: In total, a substantive grant of about $7 million (US) was given by the Hewlett foundation. Clearly, in the longer run, the OU hopes to interest users, so they will subscribe to a paid course of their interest. The initiative caused quite a bit of media attention, and new users worldwide, who are potential new students.

The content on the site, somewhat logical, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence. In Connexions (discussed below), where content is created in a wiki-way by anyone in the world, the works are licensed under the less restrictive Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license.

Personal comments on the initiative
I think the initiative is great, offering numerous very interesting courses in a variety of domains. I must confess that I have watched several of their videos (on YouTube) and read through several courses this year. I hope they will get sustainable and find a way to offer more and more resources for free. Regarding LabSpace, if they want to tap into the vast pool of incremental efforts by individuals online, the tools they offer to support these activities must improve, it is too elaborate and difficult to change a unit, and on top of it, above all, it has to be done offline (download, change, upload). Connexions, in contrast, offers a very easy-to-use online tool to change courses, modules, and content. The ugly layout and slow speed of the website are more easily changed aspects (I reckon), but not less important.



Connexions. This initiative dates back to 1999, so even before the MIT OCW initiative. Richard Baraniuk, and some others had a vision of creating an online space where anyone can contribute, share and collaboratively create scholarly materials. Connexions is a place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc. Anyone may view or contribute:

• authors create and collaborate
• instructors rapidly build and share custom collections
• learners find and explore content

Their Content Commons contains educational materials for everyone — from children to college students to professionals — organized in small modules that are easily connected into larger collections or courses. Modularity and non-linearity is an essential quality, which represents our brains and our learning much better than for example Open Courseware, or textbooks. The software, the content, and the whole philosophy is open. Collaboration happens in workgroups, and by co-authorship and maintenance. Users can suggest changes to modules, or derive a copy and start a differentiated module. Uploading from different formats is easy, and translated into the XML language that enables flexible reuse and remix of content. The content is, as mentioned, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license. The reasons for this license are explained here.

It is my favorite initiative. Not because it is finished, or perfect, but because this initiative in my eyes really has the greatest potential for growth and sustainability. It enables users to make connections between granular chunks of knowledge, and combine them into some personalized learning experience. It also empowers users to contribute in a very easy and intuitive way. In addition, users can create lenses that make it possible for institutions or individuals to include a certain quality level on resources.

Regarding sustainability the following.

• Organization: Truly bottom-up approach. Contributors can be anyone, and the support is all online, by anyone as well. Tools are in place to improve and adapt resources, and to support users.
• Motivation: The CC Attribution license is chosen so authors are attributed for their works. The barriers of participation and contribution are quite low (because of the easy-to-use tools), so less motivation is needed for that.
• Types of resources: Modules can be aggregated into courses, and can be considered learning resources, and allow learning without recourse to a teacher or the contributor. I have not seen a lot of media-rich content, which is understandable, because contributions are not sponsored.
• Types of reuse: Reuse and remix is the foundation on which this initiative builds. People can derive copies, suggest changes, make their own content, all very easily.
• Funding and revenues: Besides initial funding from the Hewlett foundation, Connexions shows particular interest in relations and partnerships with non- and for-profit institutions and universities. Little money (close to nothing) is needed to create and publish educational materials. The software is open source, and maintained in a similar fashion as the Content Commons. The money is spent on technological infrastructure, improving access, R&D, and marketing.
  

Comments
As said, I am impressed with the initiative for the reasons of scalability, the technology and the overall philosophical foundations. Still, a number of issues are eligible for improvement. For example, the layout does not appeal the least to me. My opinion is that if you want to promote collaboration and communities, the website itself should feel home, and personalized. Its start page must show relevant information, friends and colleagues, people online, newest blog or forum posts, scribbles, personal messages, etc. It should feel like my personal webpage, where I can add, change, and see resources, connect to others, and discuss. I want to connect to others in communities, not just collaborate in workgroups. Regarding the ability to discuss modules: it is on an external site (USU Open Learn Support), which is not good either. There are quite a bit of things that I miss, such as rating and favouriting modules, social factors as explained above, inability to share modules with others, little multimedia support (it seems as if you cannot embed external multimedia: just upload and embed), and more. The underlying technology and principles seems alright, but the appearance of the site is a bit awkward.

In a nutshell, it is a nice site to make resources, but not a true Web 2.0 site where it is easy to connect and collaborate with people. Still, I see a great potential, if they keep on developing and create great tools, such as the the mentioned lenses.


Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative. I encountered the Carnegie Mellon OLI about a year ago, and immediately used it. I was impressed by the great visual and multimedia aspects, the good setup of courses, and overall appearance. I had a French girlfriend at the time, so I spent some time improving this beautiful language with their free online French course. The course was of very high quality: it included videos, spoken text, short assessments, and normal texts to guide the learning and improve my skills. When you create an account, you can keep track of your scores, and make personal notes.

The focus of CM OLI is on instructional design, formative evaluation, and iterative course improvement based on results. Innovative features include cognitive tutors, virtual laboratories, group experiments, and simulations. The resources are open for anyone to use, but CM-students have access additional services and formal evaluation. The initiative itself is an experiment for cognitive designers as well, who try to improve the courses themselves, but also to contribute to a growing understanding of effective practices in online learning environments. Constant evaluation is done on different aspects, such as the relative effectiveness of the courses, their underlying pedagogical rationality, the soundness of the assessment strategies and tools, and the features that make unique effective online learning.

Through the initiative, CM tries to create communities that in the end will be partly responsible for the development of the resources. These are, therefore, created in a modular fashion to enhance the reusability. The courses that are created are then made freely available to individuals, and for little costs to institutions. With the initiative, CM tries to branch off into a new direction of open educational resources, through the enhancement of the quality of instruction and the provision of a model for a new generation of online courses and course materials that teach more effectively and appeal to students more powerfully than anything in existence today.

Organization, motivation, resources, reuse, funding model
The initiative can be compared best with the LearningSpace site of the Open University (UK) Open Content Initiative. The difference is that the site looks nicer, resources and assessments much more professional. Similar to LabSpace, CM strives for communities that will be involved in developing resources, but it happens on a much more closed manner (probably through closed communication channels).

Another interesting difference is the way the project is funded. I do not mean the funds given by normal foundations, such as the Hewlett foundation (in this case: Mellon foundation and others). I mean that there are companies and institutions funding a specific domain of study that is relevant for the industry they operate in. Another interesting aspect is that they offer created content for a small price to institutions and instructors, meanwhile offering students the content for nothing, which is interesting. Instructors get the opportunity to use the resources with only their own students, but they need to pay for
that service.

Comments
I like the resources on this site, they really are sound, and compared to resources on Connexions (not to mention MIT OCW), of great quality. Apparently, the courses can be modularized, and localized by instructors, but after payment. Because the offered resources are of such quality, I think this business model will work. The interest of companies and institutions can be a bit higher because of this, making it more probable that they will donate to make resources in the domain they operate in. There are, I think, quite some value-added services thinkable. The scope of this initiative will remain quite low, since the production and maintenance of the resources, and the evaluation is costly. As long as it keeps on creating high-quality resources, the initiative may become sustainable. But quality is a highly contextual concept, and in this ever-changing world, just that context is changing rapidly.


UNESCO Open Training Platform. On this website free access is offered to existing free training courses, specifically to enhance and support development within specialized user groups (such as policy makers, educators, civil servants, farmers, etc.) and local communities in developing countries. The guidelines, learning and teaching resources, which address practical needs in the social, health, and economical domains can be used for self-learning, teaching, and other non-commercial purposes.

The first thing that is catches the eye is the type of resources. The site is a referatory, meaning that, contrary to the above, the resources are made and to be found outside the website. It is very similar to MERLOT, where these referred to resources can be peer-reviewed in discipline communities. The UNESCO Open Training Platform enables the user to submit trainings, subscribe to certain disciplines (and their resources), bookmark resources, and review materials.

Comments
Quality is an important issue, since anyone can contribute trainings. Quality assessment happens in a distributed fashion as well through rating and reviewing resources. This function did not appear to function well. The most important critique I have on the site is that there is no way to interact or connect with other people... what a pity. It will probably be more attractive to users to contribute and participate in making it a better website of higher quality if they can connect with others, when others can see their contributions, interests, ask questions etc. There are so-called communities, but the only "members" are the linked resources.


MIT OCW. The flagship open courseware initiative, the largest provider of open courseware worldwide, the first and the most well-known. The project started in 2001, and their goal of having published all their courses online by 2008 has been attained. Through OCW, MIT tries to express in an immediate and far-reaching way its goal of advancing education around the world. It has set the example for many open courseware initiatives worldwide, including the current OCW project at my university. Their resources concern courseware from different disciplines, such as Architecture, Engineering, Science, and Economics, but also Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. There are translations in different languages, such as Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, French, etc.

Comments
MIT OCW is an incredible resource. It more or less covers all the courses at this great (in size and name) university. Still, I ask myself, does it really appeal to me? To me as a learner, it does not to a high extent. Still, the largest user group are my kind: self-learners. Does it mean that there is some value in the resources I did not see? Or that for educators the resources are even more useless?

To me, courseware is boring and not mine. It offers a glimpse on the course, the syllabi, notes taken, exams given, assignments, and sometimes even video lectures. But the site is intrinsically static, and above all, the separate coursewares show the vision of one educator or a few. The resources cannot be reassembled and sequenced in a way more appropriate to my or other people's use, because they are neither granular or flexible (in an XML format, such as Connexions). Some courses offer good resources, but many of the courses do not. There is no way to know the quality of a course other than really seeing and trying. Personalization, contribution, rating, giving feedback, connecting to other users, favouriting courses, making and sharing personal collections, are not included in the options of the website. Actually, the only option available for the user is "Sit back en watch/read". Oh yeah, you can discuss courses, but again on an external site, again the USU Open Learn Support website.

A positive thing about the project is that, because of its sheer size, there are some nice sub-projects, such as iLabs, MIT TechTV and several others. Also, the variety of domains and resources make it a place where you will likely succeed in finding something in your liking. Whether you can use it as you want remains a question.

All the content comes from teachers, and flows through a centralized office, where copyright is cleared, and possibly adapted. It is quite an expensive workflow, and the average costs for publishing one course on the website is $10.000 (Wiley, 2007), which is about one hundred $100 laptops for kids. For such an expensive and popular project it is a pity, and such a waste, that they do not use the enormous amount of users (+2million a month) in a more efficient and effective way. Imagine having a huge library, with different departments, and within these departments, specific domains. People here are only able to see the things they are interested in, but they cannot see each other. Offering a hardly used external discussion forum makes me laugh and cry at the same time. The internet is not made to be quite, it is not a library.

Concerning quality; MIT makes sure that the resources are clear of copyrighted material, but the quality is not always as good. First of all, courses are not updated very regularly. Secondly, more than once I have seen PDF files with hardly readable and less understandable handwritten lecture notes. What is the point, please??! In conclusion I must say that the initiative is great, but that its full potential is far from reached.


National Repository of Online Courses. This beautiful resource is the only one new to me. But a very pleasant surprise, with media-rich and high quality learning resources. The NROC is a growing library of high-quality online courses for students and faculty in higher education, high school and Advanced Placement. This project, supported by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, facilitates collaboration among a community of content developers to reach students and teachers worldwide. Most resources are made and maintained by developers of online-learning programs across the USA (in collaboration with NROC), and have to meet certain standards of scholarship, instructional value and quality criteria to be published in the repository. The offered courses are designed to cover the breadth and depth of topics based on generally accepted national curricula and can also be customized within a course management system. The NROC courses include video, animation, still graphics, simulations, text and audio. The website mentions that courses also focus on student activities, interaction and collaboration that take advantage of online communication tools, but I have not seen any examples of that. The range of subjects is limited to US History, US Politics, Physics, Calculus & Algebra, Religions of the World, Environmental Science, and Biology.

It is an initiative similar to the Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative, because it offers institutions to publish courses on their systems at little cost. The difference is that the initiative works with several institutions and companies in the USA, whereas CM is the only institution providing resources on its site. More interesting are the membership options (for institutions, consortia, and systems) the NROC offers to sustain its activities. Members (fee ranging from $3000 to $25.000) get access to special services and people. The following is offered:

• Collaboratively developed (Social Authored) high-quality, online content that is beyond the financial resources and development capabilities of any individual institution;
• Unlimited access to NROC content, customizable by faculty for any online or classroom use;
• Professional development support and training workshops, webinars, and asynchronous events;
• Online journals for publishing research, case studies, and white papers;
• Access to expert developer, technologist, faculty, and administrator Network partners;
• Priority status as NROC subject matter experts, contributors, and reviewers.

As can be seen, it is intended that users can customize/reuse/localize content, but are also able to contribute to it through social authoring.

The NROC also partners with publishers of education textbooks offering them powerful and direct marketing possibilities on their HippoCampus. Resources are licensed depending on the intended licensee. In case of commercial vendors, they are licensed fee-based, for publishers use-based, and in case of non-profit organizations, for free.


Wrapping up... A lot can be said about these different initiatives, but let's focus on quality. First of all, what is quality? Is it in the eye of the beholder, like beauty? Or can it sometimes be clear to distinguish what quality is, and what not? Regarding the online educational resources discussed, I think the latter. I think resources from the National Repository of Online Courses, Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative and Open University (UK) Open Content Initiative are of high quality because instructional design , multimedia, and assessment played a part in the creation of them. These "high-quality" resources enhance the user experience, and therefore the learning. But this is not the only criterium, no, you can look at the initiatives at a different perspective, which can be the empowerment of the user. The Open University (UK) Open Content Initiative and Connexions have taken the right direction, allowing the users to change and contribute materials, and connect to other users. Still, the potential of this has not yet been reached, as I have discussed above.