To commemorate the event, NDU hosted Naeema Zarif, Creative Commons Regional Coordinator for the Arab World. Ms. Zarif met NDU President Fr. Walid Moussa, who expressed the importance of capitalizing on recent trends in open education to broaden access, foster innovation, and alleviate student textbook costs.

During the symposium, Dr. Fawzi Baroud, Assistant Vice President for Information Technology, described the history of  NDU’s involvement with open education beginning with his own participation in the U.S. State Department sponsored Open Book Project in 2014 and the continued collaboration with Creative Commons to create awareness and devise capacity building projects for an optimal OER culture within the university. He also traced the University’s future trajectory with regard to OER and the role it will play in advancing OER in Lebanon and the region. Ms. Zarif went on to speak about CC licenses in a panel titled “Creative Commons Licenses and the Future of Open Education in the Arab World.”

The symposium’s second day (titled “NDU Student Attitudes toward the Use of OER”) focused on the piloting of OER in a university-wide English course targeting close to 600 students in more than twenty sections across three campuses. Dr. Kamal Abouchedid, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, highlighted the integration of OER as a strategic initiative at NDU and as a means of fostering open education.

The design of the course was described by Dr. Sandra Doueiher, Assistant Professor and Coordinator of English. Joining the discussion from Denmark via Skype, Dr. Ena Hodzik spoke about the scholarship of OER, specifically about the issue of quality and utility in the integration of OER. Dr. Hodzik went on to explain that the student survey administered by NDU closely aligned with the major themes in the literature of OER.

Survey results were presented by Dr. George Abdelnour, Chair of the Department of English and Translation. The extensive survey sought student feedback on the use of OER based on general attitudes, effectiveness, quality, and learning outcomes of the resources used. By a 2 to 1 margin, he explained, students showed high levels of satisfaction and engagement with OER. The findings also showed a favorable inclination toward enrolling in courses using OER in the future.

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My name is Dr. Jane-Frances Obiageli Agbu. I am from Onitsha, a small but vibrant town in the Eastern part of Nigeria in West Africa. I work with the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN). I was the Head of NOUN-OER unit from 2014 till July 2016. Currently, I am the Dean of Faculty of Health Sciences of NOUN, which gives me the opportunity to focus on OER-Health. I am also an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology.

Photo by Jane-Frances Agbu, CC BY.

It is natural to view anything that is ‘open’ and ‘freely available’ with a sort of hesitation or anxiety. It is also natural to presume these types of resources to be of less quality because of our contemporary instinct that almost everything should be paid for, and that the more these materials are hoarded, the pricier they will be. The open movement, with its initiatives around ‘Open Education’, ‘Open Access’, and ‘Open Educational Resources’, can make many people very uncomfortable.

I embraced the concept and practices of Open Education in 2006 when I joined the National Open University of Nigeria. Back then, I was a mother of three very young, and I needed to work close to home. NOUN was just five minutes away from my home. It was a perfect situation, and with very minimal knowledge about open education, I applied and got a job there. At the time, NOUN then was just three years old. However, they offered robust training for new entrants in the open education space, since the concept and practice was relatively new in Nigeria.

My friends and colleagues, who were so used to the conventional face-to-face mode of education, were disappointed with me. They asked me, ‘What is “open” about the open university?’ and said, “You should seek appointment in a ‘normal’ university in order to be respected and advance your career”. these comments were both troublesome and motivating. I wondered whether I made a mistake joining NOUN, but a chance encounter in an elevator with one of our students got me thinking. He simply asked, ‘Do you work here?’, and when I nodded my head, he said ‘thank you for giving me the opportunity to work and learn’. It was heartwarming, and 10 years later I am happily still an advocate of open education.

I became more involved in the Open Educational Resources movement in 2013. It was another chance encounter because the invitation to the workshop that introduced me to OER was initially meant for a senior Professor at my University, but he was busy and I was asked to attend. The workshop took place in Abuja, Nigeria and was organized by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) in collaboration with UNESCO and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). There, I met Abel Caine of UNESCO and Alex Gakuru of Creative Commons. Alex said something that really stuck with me: “We are Africans, we live communal lives, we cook together, we work together. It is in us to share, so why are we not sharing knowledge?” I was incredibly captivated with this statement, and I wrote a long proposal to my institution on the need to embrace OER. A year and half later, I was asked to champion OER within NOUN. With support from UNESCO, we were able to organize an OER workshop to educate policy makers, university faculty, and course content developers. In December 2015 we shared our experiences with the Federal government of Nigeria.

You’ll see that my journey toward embracing open education and Open Educational Resources has not been a straightforward one, but it is a life that leaves me with smiles and appreciation. Mysteriously, it appears that some angels have crossed my path in this journey and further helped me to understand the beauty of opening up knowledge for common good.

While pondering on the palpable anxiety for the ‘open’ movement, let me share with you a bit more of my thinking:

• Naturally, with whatever knowledge we have, we want to be the “sage on the stage rather than a guide on the side”. This famous statement from Allison King brings back floods of memories for me. I can still visualize my former professors speaking eloquently in class, filling students with respect and awe. I felt anxious and wondered if I could ever get to be as knowledgeable as my professors. They were knowledge personified. But for me, open education has demystified this sort of reverence toward dissemination of knowledge. Open Educational Resources—with its five Rs (reuse, remix, repurpose, revise, retain) and the flexible license options of Creative Commons—has humanized and democratized teaching and learning. Surely there are some that still believe in sole ownership of knowledge. Those people will continue to feel threatened by the ‘open movement’, but we’ve seen the incredible opportunities of open education, and we’ll continue on our path.
• Some are also hesitant to share knowledge because of fear of scrutiny. This of course is a natural instinct (no one likes to be criticised), but overcoming this shows that you view criticism as an avenue of learning and improvement. I think we will come to see that the costs of being ‘closed’ are much greater than the costs of being ‘open’, and that in the long run ‘open’ will be more personally gratifying, and help the most people.
• Also, is it possible that this initial anxiety toward being more open is triggered by the desire for conformity? It is a lot easier to move with the popular opinion, while advocates of OER and other open initiatives are still in the minority. But we must realize that it takes courage to walk with the less-traveled crowd. And we will realize that we are not alone, and that there is an increasing support network of educators, students, and advocates to rely on and collaborate with.

Photo by Jane-Frances Agbu, CC BY.

In March 2016, I was selected as one of the participants for Institute of Open Leadership (IOL2). I met other beautiful individuals that share a similar vision for ‘open’. In a lush garden up high in mountains of Cape Town, we shared our experiences, our projects, and open policy plans. The beauty remains with me as we continue to receive guidance from our mentors and share information amongst the IOL2 fellows.

IOL2 Fellows + Mentors, by Cable Green , CC BY 2.0

Here are some useful links related to my work:

• The Best of Two Open Worlds at the National Open University of Nigeria
• Embracing the Philosophy of Open Educational Resources
• “It upholds the dignity of mankind”: The power of OER in West Africa
• OER for Teachers video

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Wikipedians are an integral part of the CC Community, and as a key Wikipedian in Wiki Loves Women, WikiAfrica, and Wiki Loves Africa, Isla Haddow-Flood’s work is a crux for that community.

Isla’s accomplishments with these projects are self-evident: a Wikipedian since 2011, she has been integral in illuminating the content gaps and voices of women, Africans, and other marginalized groups within Wikipedia. As the former project manager for WikiAfrica and current volunteer, Isla’s work seeks to create content for all Wikipedians around the world and raise up the voices of the many, rather than the few.

Why is it important for more women to be involved with Wikipedia? What kinds of benefits does a more balanced gender dynamic bring to Wikipedia?

A lot of research has been done into the systemic bias behind the skewed content on Wikipedia. This is especially profound in relation to both content about Africa and content about women. Only 16% of the biographies on the English Wikipedia are about women and on English Wikipedia alone there are, on average,100 times more geotagged articles relating to France than articles similarly geotagged to the continental space of Africa.

There has been similar research done on Wikipedia contributors. The demographic of voluntary contributors has obvious implications on the makeup of the content, and the earlier systemic bias of the content makes sense because only 25% of edits to subjects about the Sub-Saharan region come from within that region and that less than 20% of (all) Wikipedia contributors are female. One analysis of content shows that only 12% of biographies in sub-saharan Africa are about women.

When the the collective impact of content and contribution gaps from women and Africans are combined, it creates not just a gap but an abyss. Women in Africa are some of the most marginalized groups in the world and Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that is meant to reflect the knowledge of all geographies, genders, interests, cultures and perspectives equally and this is not currently happening. The status quo will remain the same until people across Africa, especially women, see themselves and their reality truly and truthfully reflected – until they see they have an equal standing in the world and that they can be part of the global conversation and they see that Wikipedia is relevant to them, only then, will they can contribute their knowledge.

Why are you involved with Wiki Loves Women, WikiAfrica, and Wiki Loves Africa? What kinds of projects or events have been the most exciting to organize?

I have been a registered Wikipedian since 2011 and have been involved in supporting the WikiAfrica movement. WikiAfrica is an international project that encourages individuals, interested groups and organisations to create, expand and enhance online content about Africa.

As part of this movement I have partnered with people passionate about the Open Movement, including Florence Devouard, Iolanda Pensa, and Kelsey Wiens on a number of innovative projects in collaboration with several organisations. The interventions have been aimed at activating communities, capacitating volunteers, and encouraging the ‘liberation’ of content from organizations across Africa on to Wikipedia.
Wiki Loves Africa is an annual photographic competition where people contribute photos or media of that year’s specific theme. This year is Music and Dance running from the 1st December 2016 to 31st January 2017. We’ve previously covered Cuisine (2014) and Cultural fashion and adornment (2015). Photography is one of the easiest ways to contribute to Wikipedia via Wikimedia Commons. It requires a good eye, an amazing subject, and an understanding of Creative Commons licences. It has been a successful project that sprung from the belief that there is so much to celebrate on a continent that is so visually and culturally rich.

The Wiki Loves Women project seeks to fill two major subject gaps – women and Africa. These gaps exist in content on these two themes, but also in terms of participation in the editorial level. It currently takes place in Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana and Nigeria in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut.

What compels you to keep doing this work?

Because it is important, and because I love it! For a number of challenging reasons, Africa just doesn’t play in the same knowledge space that other regions do. This has to change, and with technology, it can. To do this,

It is important for people from Africa to tell their own stories: changing the narrative, shaking up stereotypes and sharing what they want to think, and how they want to feel, about being African.

And one way to do this is to share our complex, amorphous reality, both past and present, with the world on Wikipedia.

How does Wiki Loves Women and Wiki Loves Africa bring the offline online?

Both projects work at developing the community of volunteers around the content through training, events and contests.Wiki Loves Women has an amazingly varied array of events offline and online and interventions that the teams runs in the four countries that it is currently active in. You can see the range through the blog posts that are featured on our website.
Every year for Wiki Loves Africa, we reinforce the outreach of the project by supporting focus countries. These countries introduce and train interested individuals to contribute by arranging launch events, photo-hunts, upload, and prize-giving events.

For both projects it is about developing people’s passion about the world they live in, their immediate surroundings, traditions and issues. It is also about widening their understanding of copyright and copyleft – and introducing them to the Open Movement, specifically to Creative Commons to provide a slow yet fun, exciting, and social immersion into the world of Wikipedia. We work closely with Wikimedia volunteers and Usergroups, who in turn work with the CC affiliates and Open Street Maps (where possible) across Africa to ensure that we are all helping each other, and in some cases our activities have supported affiliate development and growth in countries, such as in Ethiopia.

How do you work with varying connectivity as well as offline community building for an online community?

The issue about connectivity and data is a very real one. We have come up with a solution, WikiFundi, that is funded by the Orange Foundation and currently being developed. It should be rolling out to the community in early 2017. WikiFundi is an offline editable environment that provides a similar experience to editing Wikipedia online. WikiFundi allows for training on, and contribution to, Wikipedia when technology, access and electricity outages fail or are not available at all.

To celebrate the launch of WikiFundi, in early 2017 there will be the WikiChallenge African Schools that encourages schools in eight countries in Africa to compete by writing Wikipedia articles about their city, town, village, suburb or local landmark using the WikiFundi software. The competition is a fun introduction to writing Wikipedia articles and will add information about Africa to the global online encyclopedia. Wikipacks, that includes WikiFundi and training resources and information on Wikipedia and Creative Commons, will also be distributed to the Wikimedia volunteer groups in early 2017.

Get involved!

Wiki Loves Women

• Website: www.wikiloveswomen.org
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WikiLovesWomen
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/WikiLovesWomen
• Goethe-Institut page: www.goethe.de/wikiloveswomen
• On Wikipedia:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wiki_Loves_Women

Wiki Loves Africa

• Website: http://wikilovesafrica.org
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wikilovesafrica
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/wikilovesafrica
• On Wikimedia Commons:
  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Africa_2016

WikiAfrica Movement links

• Website: http://www.wikiafrica.net/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WikiAfrica
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/WikiAfrica
• WikiFundi: http://www.wikifundi.org/

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It upholds the dignity of mankind. We need to be open-minded to understand and tap into the beauty of open education.

The post “It upholds the dignity of mankind”: the power of OER in West Africa appeared first on Creative Commons.

Open education is at the core of our work and with many countries going back to school this week, we wanted to kick off our #backtoschool week some more practical advice about how you can use open educational resources in your classroom. From textbooks to courses to entire degree programs, the OER movement has your back with free, CC licensed materials that will help your students access and keep high quality, effective learning resources. Supporting OER means supporting maximum equity and access within education, allowing all students to learn with the up-to-date content, regardless of their economic background.

This post is for teachers and students who want to learn more, get going, and start using OER this year.

Learn about OER

The best place to start is at the OER Strategy document, a living document that tracks the progress of a global OER strategy. This document will help you think through what actions you might take to create, adopt and share OER this year. This OER for K-12 Educators FAQ might also be helpful.

OER must be both free (no cost) for anyone to access and to legally modify (according to the 5R activities: retain, reuse, revise, remix, redistribute).

Find others’ OER and reuse, revise or remix it

Replace expensive textbooks with an open textbook your students can access, keep, and you can modify. Check out the Open Textbook Library or BC Campus for a list of free, CC licensed textbooks.

Why start from scratch every time you need to create a lecture or assemble a slide deck? By using OER, faculty can easily supplement their lectures and learning materials with content that is already openly licensed and available for sharing. By sharing their own work as OER, faculty can maximize the impact and visibility of their scholarly work across the global learning community.

Openly licensed learning materials are easy to find and access, encouraging more independent and flexible learning opportunities for students. OER courses allow students to explore materials before enrolling, making them better prepared before they arrive in the classroom.

Share your work as OER

Using others’ OER is a great first step, and other educators will be thrilled you used their OER and improve it. But don’t forget – you create amazing learning resources for your students all the time as well.

Do you think other teachers, professors, and/or students could benefit from your good work? If yes – and you are willing to share – CC licensing your work is a snap. Many educators openly license their content on technology platforms like Flickr or YouTube, but you can also use the Creative Commons license chooser to put an open license on your work. See also: Marking your work with a CC license.

Give gratitude for OER

When someone gives me a gift, I say “thank you” to express my gratitude. When you use someone’s OER, you are benefitting from the gift that author donated to the commons. Make sure you say “thank you” by giving credit – or providing proper attribution on slides and other materials. Check out CC’s best practices for attribution.

Conclusion

We believe OER will replace much of the expensive, proprietary content used in academic courses – it’s only a matter of time. When OER becomes the default for learning resources, we can have a world in which the public has free, legal and unfettered access to effective, high quality education and research resources, and learning opportunities generating more equitable economic opportunities globally for all learners.

The post How can educators find and use OER in their classrooms? appeared first on Creative Commons.

You’ll notice a focus on our blog and social media this week: With millions of students around the world heading back to school, we thought we’d highlight some of the most exciting OER news from around the world.

To begin, we’re recapping the work from CC HQ to promote and facilitate the spread of OER. Working with open education leaders around the world, our community of educators has been busy and excited to be involved with a number of projects this year.

Some highlights from Cable Green, Director of Open Education at Creative Commons:

• In September 2017, we’ll be at the UNESCO 2nd World OER Congress in Ljubljana, Slovenia. We’re working with a team from UNESCO, the Commonwealth of Learning, the Hewlett Foundation, and the country of Slovenia on open education for governments regional consultations.
• We’re writing an OER Policy brief for the Commonwealth, a voluntary association of 53 independent and equal sovereign states, to help governments better understand OER, open licensing, and open policy.
• Learn more about the Creative Commons Certificate for Government, part of the Creative Commons Certificate program. (Stay tuned for exciting news from that project this week!)
• Our posts from the CC Legal and the Open Education community on defending the printing of NC licensed OER.
• Cable and others are co-writing an Open Licensing Playbook for Government, designed for government employees responsible for implementing open licensing policies to ensure publicly funded education resources are openly licensed.
• We’re helping the Open Textbook Network and Library think through how to remix collections of OER (with different CC licenses) into open textbooks.

Where in the world can you find us?

• The International Day for Universal Access to Information (UNESCO), September 28, 2016
• Pan Commonwealth Forum, Malaysia, November 27-30, 2016
• The State of Digital Education: Engaging with Connected, Blended and Open Learning, Malta
• Future Ready Summits, United States, this fall

What are you doing for OER? Let us know! Tweet @creativecommons or post on our Facebook to highlight your work for students and teachers globally. Welcome back, educators!

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I was privileged to attend the second Institute for Open Leadership (IOL2), held in Cape Town, in March of this year. It was an amazing experience, during which I worked with various mentors and a small group of fellow open colleagues from around the world. One of the plusses of the Institute was hearing about the challenges that everyone faced and how they had gone about, or were going about overcoming them albeit, in some cases, with what many would consider relatively small wins. That, however, is the nature of the OER world. Lots of small wins are what ultimately lead to the big wins.

IOL Fellows atop Table Mountain, by bella_velo, CC BY 2.0

One issue that emerged is that there are no quick fixes when it comes to promoting the concept of open educational resources (OER). Tertiary institutions are a particularly difficult nut to crack, as the concept of knowledge sharing is not a popular one in what is, more often than not, an environment in which research ideas are cultivated and jealously guarded in the safe spaces of minds and offices. Not surprisingly, this does not make for fertile ground in which to plant the idea of knowledge sharing, but we persevere.

The fact that the OER movement has not quite taken off has been a cause of frustration for many of us for some time now. To those of us involved in the movement, the benefits of sharing would appear be a ‘no brainer’. However, over the course of my time as an OER Specialist at my current institution, I have had time to reflect on why the concept of OER is such a difficult one to communicate, even on a basic level.

To put things into perspective: We are on the brink of finalizing a joint Open Access/Open Educational Resources policy. We have been working on an internal online OER course and a booklet on Creative Commons licensing and OER, both of which will soon be released. We are also currently in the process of developing a range of courses together with the Office of Student Support in the Faculty of Health Sciences, which are intended to support the first year experience and will be released with an open license. I should be elated by these wins but, in my opinion, the impetus created by them will be difficult to maintain without a larger mindset change—that goes well beyond the reach of our current two-year project.

Many people become rather uncomfortable when you start to talk about openness in this somewhat esoteric vein, which is why I suspect so many OER projects are expected to produce facts, stats, quantity and research. What I think mitigates against the full success of projects which use this sort of approach, and structure, is that the concept of openness is not, at its heart, a purely quantitative or researchable one. True openness, and a willingness to share, will not flourish in an environment that is dominated, primarily, by a production line or microscopic analysis. It seems to me that we have become too cautious about addressing the real face of openness which is, in essence, an altruistic project which should ultimately benefit the world at large. In my opinion, it is the main reason why so many open initiatives disappear into the ether once the funding dries up. We have lost sight of the real spirit of the open movement because we are reluctant to admit that it doesn’t lend itself readily to the commercial, quantitative structures of our world.

We have been conditioned to believe that by being truly open to the world and people around us that we will lose something of ourselves and gain nothing in return. In some circumstances this may be true but, in reality, the world will gain something from us and something of our unique perspective on the world. All of us have knowledge to share, openly and freely, that will be of benefit to others and that can be repurposed in a way that will communicate that benefit across a range of cultures.

Openness and trust go hand-in-glove. Trust can only come from a willingness to share which, in the final analysis, stems from a concern for the common good. It really is as simple as that. That, in my opinion, is the foundation upon which the future of the open movement lies. If we don’t come from that starting point, we will remain trapped in theoretical frameworks, and the initial impetus of the movement will eventually be relegated to the world of academic research. Is that something we really want, or do we still believe that the open movement will ultimately be of benefit to the world at large?

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As a Ugandan science educator with a background in computer science, I have witnessed thousands of kids dropping out of school because their parents cannot afford buying the textbooks that schools require. This is exacerbated by the fact that teachers have limited access to affordable and up-to-date educational content. Only recently, I was appointed as a board member of a school that does not have a single textbook!

Photo by Vincent Kizza, CC BY 4.0

When I was introduced to Open Educational Resources around 2011, it appeared to me that these resources could go a long way in helping to solve our predicament in Uganda. Since then, I’ve spent time researching OER and the concept of “openness”, but I didn’t fully understand more complex issues like open licensing. For that reason, the invitation to attend the 2nd Institute for Open Leadership seemed like an incredible opportunity to learn more about open licensing, and how it could assist us in improving access to educational materials in schools.

Photo by Vincent Kizza, CC BY 4.0

I’ll remember the IOL fellowship meeting in Cape Town for a very long time. For the first time in my life, I met with world-class professionals passionate about sharing their knowledge, skills, and experience. It was very refreshing to learn from people who have had experience in doing all types of “open” projects, and it seemed like every question I raised was answered from the diverse group of participants. In addition to assisting me in my work within open education, we discussed related concepts such as open data, open science research, open business models, and the application of open concepts in the museums sector. I was also able for the first time in my life to see a fully open textbook in print form (as most of the time they are offered only in digital format). This was very interesting and I’m grateful to Kelsey Wiens of CC South Africa for sharing her experiences of working on an open textbook project there. The institute meeting was relaxed and fun-filled, so this was great!

Photo by Vincent Kizza, CC BY 4.0

Initially, my open policy project was focused primarily on advocacy for open textbook policy adoption. I wanted to figure out the best way to support the new national school curriculum that will be launching in 2017. At first, the target for the policy was the Ugandan government, but during the fellowship my mentor David Ernest (who was extremely kind and helpful!) pushed me to diversify my project. My revised policy project engages individual teachers in school clusters to create OERs in support of teaching at their schools. It also aims to engage government on both the local and national levels. The open educational resources that are created by the schools will be used as the raw materials to later be aggregated into creating complete open textbooks.

My greatest achievement thus far has been at the level of the school cluster: I’ve been able to convince the National Curriculum Development Centre to re-think their contract with commercial publishers. So far, they’ve not re-signed it, which is a good signal that they are reconsidering how educational materials could be provisioned for the schools. I hope to continue working with them on advocating for openly licensed textbooks. Learn more about our work for the Ugandan schools.

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By way of some background, I am currently the digital publishing manager at the African branch of Cambridge University Press (CUP), the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Prior to joining CUP, I worked as a consultant conceptualising and implementing innovative digital solutions for academic and local government initiatives in South Africa. During this period I launched The Ulwazi Programme with collaborators from the eThekwini Municipality. This collaborative digital library project collated user-generated, local-language, indigenous knowledge content and published it openly under a Creative Commons license. Based on this experience, as well as my desire to explore how a traditional publishing business could engage with with the open movement and the plethora of freely-available content online, I applied to attend the Institute of Open Leadership (IOL) workshops. The week-long sessions were intense; a bootcamp in open licensing and open education. More importantly, the workshop brought together some of the top minds currently working on open ideas. In formal and informal discussions, these mentors shared their thinking with me on open business models, providing examples of successful and sustainable open initiatives.

Mabusi Kgwete from the Ulwazi Programme training volunteer fieldworkers on how to use the MediaWiki platform. Photo by Niall McNulty, CC-BY

Understanding rights, and why they matter now more than ever

Everyone who spends time online is now a producer of content. It’s how the digital world works. And this content is multifaceted too. It could be the blog posts you write, photographs you take and share, research articles you publish, videos you upload – the list goes on and on. Fortunately ,as the producer of the content, you get to decide how to license it. You can retain copyright (current standard and in most cases automatically assigned); you can decide to use a Creative Commons license and retain some rights; or you can release the content into the public domain, relinquishing all rights.

One of the direct outcomes of attending the IOL workshops was to critically examine my personal content output, and how I had licensed it. I have a Flickr account, where I have uploaded several hundred photographs, as well as a personal blog where I write about education and technology. Both were licensed using Creative Commons, but with noncommercial and sharealike restrictions. I’ve realised that these licenses, while open, did not allow the adaptation and re-use I believe in, especially when it comes to the potential for innovation and new creations. I also realised that I had chosen them out of a misplaced fear that someone might benefit commercially from using the content I’ve created. Logically I know this fear is largely unfounded and any commercial benefit will be because they have spent time and effort developing this content further. Based on this realisation, I have now changed the licensing on all my online output to CC-BY, allowing for both adaptation and commercial use. Let’s see what happens

A lotus flower blooming in the Durban Botanic Gardenes – now available for re-use and remixing. Photo by Niall McNulty, CC-BY

Part of my work now, as a member of the IOL group, is to look how open resources can be incorporated into existing product development processes at CUP, building a business case for open through small, successful projects. At the same time, I am interested in the changing role of the publisher – what purpose does it serve when there is an excess of freely available, high-quality content available online?

But first, is Cambridge an open university?

The University of Cambridge states that it “is committed to disseminating its research and scholarship as widely as possible” and supports staff in making their research freely available. There is an open policy in place at the institution, which guides how researchers and staff make content and data available, and a board that oversees this work. The University itself hosts a research repository which includes published articles, conference papers, datasets, theses and video content – basically anything that is considered research output. There are also internal teams available who assist with preparing content and data for open distribution, advise on funding requirements with regard to open access, and provide guidance on sharing datasets.

Cambridge, United Kingdom. By Niall McNulty, CC-BY. [Cropped from original]

CUP, as a unit of the University, has an open access publishing division called Cambridge Open, centered on academic journal and book publishing. The principles of Cambridge Open (paraphrased) are:

• Knowledge is for everyone. No one should be denied the discoveries and advances of learning or the ability to contribute to the pool of knowledge – whatever their academic status, means of funding or country of origin.
• CUP has long history and reputation for producing high quality, authoritative content and the Open Access programme develops this further by bringing together a greater diversity of researchers and thinkers, creating a vigorous and fertile exchange of ideas.

They do this by supporting Gold Open Access, where the author or institution pays an article processing charge to be published and the article is then made freely available, as well as Green Open Access, where authors deposit articles or research (submission copies as opposed to final published copies) in institutional repositories. Both these approaches allows authors to comply with funding requirements of many research donors.

Open business models

Sub-Saharan Africa has a vibrant and diverse publishing industry, with local and international players producing content in a number of languages across various genres. Due to market conditions, however, many print books need to be sold at low-price points, e.g. full-colour, senior level textbooks are sold for less than $3 in some countries. At the same time governments and NGOs are constantly looking for ways to make content freely available as budgets for learning and teaching resource material are squeezed. See for example Siyavula, which develops free maths and science textbooks, and ELRU which maintains an open access database of early childhood development resources, both in South Africa. So, my interest lies in what the publisher’s’ role is when content is freely available in the digital environment, how a publisher can engage with and use open resources, how this sits alongside copyrighted content, and what other revenue streams or business models can a publisher embrace to develop sustainable businesses. Paul Stacey, one of our IOL mentors, has written extensively about open business models and how they can generate revenue while contributing to social good (see also the very useful Open Business Model generation tool, adapted by Paul Stacey), and I must thank him for some really interesting conversations we had when he was in Cape Town.

In the past few months I’ve worked on two example projects, outlined below, as well as developing my thinking around a few other potential business models.

Re-using existing content

The first of these involved a recent submission of materials to the Namibian education ministry. The Ministry released a call for submission for curriculum-based content for secondary schools. CUP developed print resources for learners and teachers, as well as an additional digital component. The digital component was originally simply positioned as a value-add, provided freely to teachers who had adopted the CUP course. It included things such as class evaluation tools, rubrics, teaching guidelines, and multimedia content. For the mathematics course, the Namibian authors highlighted the difficulty learners had with certain concepts in algebra and geometry. After some online research, I discovered the 2,600 videos James Sousa had released under a Creative Commons CC-BY license. This license is the most open of the Creative Commons license suite. It permits  adaptation, sharing, and repurposing for any use, even commercially, as long as the creator of the work is attributed. The video clips explain mathematical concepts clearly and succinctly, using easy to understand animations. The videos were pitched at the correct level for the Namibian learners and covered the subjects highlighted by the authors as problematic. I contacted James directly to explain how I would like to use his content and to confirm whether he was happy with this. He was, and I agreed to get back to him with any comments from the Namibian teachers. The video clips were selected from those available and mapped to the Namibian curriculum. These were made available on a CD-ROM (Internet connectivity in Namibia is still an issue, precluding online delivery), alongside copyrighted and other licensed content. The open content provided content unavailable from commercial video libraries, allowing us to make the course affordable for Namibian teachers and fulfilling CUP’s mission of disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education and learning.

A sample of one of James Sousa’s openly-licensed videos.

Adapting content for local context

The second project I am currently developing involves conceptualising and producing an online course for South African teachers on using technology to aid teaching and learning in the classroom. The course will prepare teachers inexperienced with regard to digital tools  to effectively use them in the classroom to enhance teaching and learner and fulfil curriculum requirements. Written to the ICT level of teachers in South Africa, the course content will be aware of the particular issues that teachers might experience in their classrooms.

At the suggestion of colleagues from Cambridge University, I made contact with Dr. Sara Hennessy from the Education Department at University of Cambridge. Dr. Hennessy has done extension work in training African teachers to use ICTs in the classroom in Zambia, as part of an ongoing research project (see www.oer4schools.org). Content produced by Dr. Hennessy and her team is available for re-use and adaptation under a Creative Commons license. This content includes professional learning resources for teachers – focusing on interactive pedagogy for teaching with  ICTs – and consists of videos, images, lesson and activity plans and templates.

Although contextualised mainly for Zambian teachers, the content is largely appropriate for the South African environment and can be adapted and rewritten for the local teachers and curriculum requirements. We plan to match (and use) appropriate content from the OER4Schools project and then develop missing modules or components for the course. The course will be made freely available to teachers in South Africa, complying with the original content license of CC-BY-NC.

Introducing digital Open Educational Resources into Zambian schools.

At the same time I have been exploring other open business models that could support the development and distribution of educational content.

Data as a commercial model

We are constantly generating data by using digital tools and platforms. Feedback in education is a two-way process: learners, through feedback, can revise and improve, but teachers benefit equally from getting feedback on learners’ progress. Learning analytics in educational technology make it easy to identify and flag issues and provide learners with responsive, adaptive learning opportunities. Particular kinds of learner data collection have always been used to monitor progress and reward achievement in education, such as the grading systems used around the world. Learning analytics today are being used to track many more elements, such as:

• The time learners spend completing specific online tasks
• How learners engage with educational content both in learning management systems and on social media, e.g. what they access and how long they spend engaging with specific content

In 2011, education theorist George Siemens described how analytics empower educators to make informed changes in education. Educators can understand better ‘how [their] inputs influence or produce outputs.’ When high-quality content is provided freely and openly to learners they generate data through engaging with this content. The data, and its analysis, has value to education ministries, schools and teachers, and can be used as revenue a stream to fund the creation and publishing of open content. This data would need to be anonymised and follow local privacy laws, such as POPI in South Africa. Tech companies such as Facebook and Google have built entire business models out of the commoditisation of data generated by users.

Innovation, pedagogy, and the changing nature of content

The global buzz unleashed by the release of the Pokémon Go game for smartphones in 2016 exemplifies how augmented reality (AR) technology is growing. AR refers to  the use of technology (such as smartphones and tablets that have integrated microphones and cameras) to augment or overlay additional digital content to a real-world activity, in real time. Simply put, AR is used to superimpose visual data over real-world backgrounds. As would be expected, the educational possibilities of the technology are innumerable. In 2015, for example, CUP made use of AR when they released the ‘Cambridge Experience’ app for iOS devices. Cambridge designed this AR app to ‘bring classroom materials to life’ and so when users point their smartphones or tablets at the companion  posters, course books and other learning materials, additional information such as fact pop ups, educational videos or illustrative photography is displayed on-screen. This functionality adds value to the physical products and makes it possible for educators to give learners a more interactive, novel learning experiences.

In terms of further possibilities in this field, UK-based magazine Education Technology identified applications such as:

• Enhancing static content such as posters with helpful facts and newer insights
• Helping learners to visualize complex problems such as maths equations
• Making abstract concepts easier to understand via animated visualizations

In this scenario, the core content is made available freely to the learner but additional resources that complement the open resource or extends the learner, such as AR data or additional assessment, is available as a premium.

Conclusion

While still in the early phases of my thinking and experimentation around open business models and the relationship to education and publishing, it does seem that opportunities exist to explore new revenue streams that can embrace and re-use open content while at the same time providing sound pedagogic solutions to learners in sub-Saharan Africa that are innovative and of a high-standard. I am interested in developing these ideas further and encourage interested readers to leave comments below or contact me at niallmcnulty.com.

Thanks to my mentor Kelsey Wiens (Creative Commons South Africa Lead) for assistance in developing these ideas and guidance in the IOL process.

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June was a big month for OER in the United States, so here’s a quick roundup of some highlights, including a new open copyright policy from Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the launch packet for districts incorporating open educational resources into their curriculum, and new funding for OER degrees in California!

• US Department of Education: #GoOpen Launch Packet released
  The #GoOpen launch packet supports “districts that have decided to implement a systematic approach to incorporating openly licensed educational resources into their curriculum.”

• Allocations for OER degrees in California

  California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law the state’s budget for 2016-2017, including a$5M allocation (see p. 18) for the creation of OER-based degrees (see SEC. 16. Article 4) at California Community Colleges. This funding will facilitate the creation of approximately 25 OER-based Z-degrees at CA community colleges.
  

• Hillary Clinton announces open technology and innovation initiative

  Hillary Clinton calls for: effective copyright policy and open licenses on publicly funded education & science. 

• Bringing down the high cost of textbooks

  The Washington Post published a concise article about the cost of textbooks and its effect on students. As textbook costs soar, Achieving the Dream announced $9.8 million dollars in grants for developing OER degree programs.

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