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Opportunity lost when government content isn’t openly licensed

BlogHub,

tl:dr  Publicly funded materials should be openly licensed materials

It is day 2 of the BC open Geography textbook sprint (follow along via blog, Twitter or Flickr). I’m hunkered down with some Geography faculty who are working extremely hard to create a first-year open Geography textbook in 4 days.

The book is very regional, using British Columbia specific case studies, and I’ve been working with our librarian and the faculty to source openly licensed BC specific Geography resources to use in our openly licensed textbook (it will be released with a CC-BY license). The problem is we keep finding useable materials on our own provincial government websites that are protected by copyright and not openly licensed.

Why is this a problem? Well, we can’t use it. We have made a commitment to release anything we create under a Creative Commons license to make it as reusable and shareable as possible.

Now, we could go through the hoops and hurdles and fill out forms and ask the government for permission to use the resources. And we just might get permission to use them for the context of this one book. But anyone who would want to reuse the book down the line would have to go back to the copyright holder (the provincial government), most likely fill out those same forms, wait, and then renegotiate the rights to reuse those resources. It’s not impossible, but a significant barrier to reuse.

Or, we could negotiate to use them in the book with the caveat that anyone down the road would need to remove the copyrighted content, which means that the book is not as complete as it could be. Again, doable, but a barrier for reuse that weakens the book.

We could ask the government to release the content under a Creative Commons license. They may or may not do that. But that will take time and there is no guarantee that it will happen. We need to make a decision about what resources we want to use now. 4 days.

But what bothers me the most is that here we have a project that would benefit the citizens of British Columbia by giving them access to a free learning resource and we cannot use resources that those same citizens have paid for. We have paid to create resources like the charts and graphs in this report, or this historical image from the BC Archives, or this one. And there is this map and this one – resources that would be useful for our Geography textbook. Yet these resources are virtually unusable because they were not released with an open license.

How much more bang for our buck could the taxpayers of BC get if these resources were allowed to be used in other contexts that benefited the citizens of BC?

So, what is the final result? The content is not being used. It is being passed over in favour of openly licensed content. The barriers worked, and that feels like such an unfortunate and unnecessary waste.

The opposite case: Government of Canada

For every frustration I have had with trying to use BC government resources, I have had nothing but success with the federal government. Every resource we have looked at using in the textbook has been openly licensed. We are able to use data, graphs and charts from Stats Canada, and maps from the Atlas of Canada, all openly licensed for reuse. There is a wealth of primary source information that our Geography faculty are using as the basis for the textbook. It has been hugely encouraging to see how much data and information our federal government is releasing and allowing reuse of.

Now obviously, there are important open government initiatives underway in this province, like, uh, well, you know – this little open project that I am working on and DataBC. But I hope that these open initiatives are just the start in British Columbia and that someday in the near future when we are creating more open educational resources that will benefit the citizens of BC, we’ll have the ability to freely use, reuse and redistribute content from our own provincial government.

Image: Day 1 by BCCampus released under a CC-BY-SA 2 license

Lots of Great Open Education Workshops at ETUG in June

BCopenED, BlogHub

I can’t believe how many great open education workshops are happening in the lower BC mainland in the next month. In addition to the stuff happening on my own campus, the ETUG Spring Workshop takes place on June 12-13th and there are lots of amazing open ed sessions listed on the agenda.

ETUG is the BC Educational Technology Users Group, which is a grassroots community of BC educators that are interested in teaching, learning and ed tech in higher ed. Some of  the open education themed sessions that I’m looking forward to include:

Plus, there will be a poster session, 3D printer demo, and, most importantly, a pub night. There’s also nice parallel thread in both the ETUG Workshop and the CTLT Institute on a “do it yourself” approach (something, for example, that can be seen in the ETUG Keynote by Jentery Sayers on maker cultures or in the CTLT VideoCamp).

Lots of Great Open Education Workshops at ETUG in June

BCopenED, BlogHub

I can’t believe how many great open education workshops are happening in the lower BC mainland in the next month. In addition to the stuff happening on my own campus, the ETUG Spring Workshop takes place on June 12-13th and there are lots of amazing open ed sessions listed on the agenda.

ETUG is the BC Educational Technology Users Group, which is a grassroots community of BC educators that are interested in teaching, learning and ed tech in higher ed. Some of  the open education themed sessions that I’m looking forward to include:

Plus, there will be a poster session, 3D printer demo, and, most importantly, a pub night. There’s also nice parallel thread in both the ETUG Workshop and the CTLT Institute on a “do it yourself” approach (something, for example, that can be seen in the ETUG Keynote by Jentery Sayers on maker cultures or in the CTLT VideoCamp).

Open Education Related Events at the CTLT Institute

BCopenED, BlogHub, Events

Every spring, the UBC Centre for Teaching, Learning & Technology hosts the CTLT Institute, a series of workshops that share practice and research around teaching, learning and educational technologies. This year, the CTLT Institute takes place from June 3-10, and features 27 workshops led by 44 facilitators from 36 UBC departments and four universities. A number of these workshop are organized around the theme of “opening pedagogies” and relate to different aspects of open education. There are some really amazing speakers and interesting sessions planned, including:

Open Badges, Flexible Pedagogies
Jun 4, 2014, 1:15pm – 2:15pm
Irving K Barber Learning Centre – Fraser River Room 2.27

An open badge is a digital symbol that signifies concrete evidence of accomplishments, skills, qualities, or participation in experiences. It can provide a visual record of a learner’s achievement and development combined with the required proof. Furthermore, instructors and instructional designers can use educational badges to influence engagement and learning through the provision of focused goals, tasks, and affirmation of performance. This interactive session will explore open badges and how they may be used in higher educations. It will also be used to help inform the development of a Flexible Learning-TLEF funded project that will be developing a badge infrastructure and framework at UBC.

Teaching and Learning in the Open: Why/Not?
Jun 5, 2014, 1:15pm – 3:45pm
Irving K Barber Learning Centre – Fraser River Room 2.27

Open education has been much in the news lately in the form of Massive, Open, Online Courses (MOOCs). But there are numerous ways to engage in “open education,” some of them lost in the MOOC-hype of late. In this session we will discuss several ways in which one might make one’s courses more open, ranging from putting course materials online with a license allowing them to be revised and reused, to assigning open texts (those that are free to use, reuse and revise), to inviting people outside the university to participate in one’s on-campus course in limited ways (without making the course into a MOOC). We will also engage in a discussion of the possible upsides and downsides of doing any of these things.

VideoCamp: Let’s Make Some Videos!
Jun 6, 2014, 1:15pm – 4:00pm
Irving K. Barber Learning Centre – Seminar Room 2.22A/B

VideoCamp is an informal, three-part participatory workshop focused on building skills and community for “do It yourself” (DIY) style media creation at UBC. We’ll strap on our hiking boots and backpacks and set out together to explore the ins-and-outs of creating effective educational videos. Come share your own projects and ideas as we take a hands-on look at principals, techniques, and best practices for self-created media. Inspire and be inspired as we play with different tools and look at some available resources for creating videos without large budgets.

Student as Producers: Enhancing Student Learning Through Meaningful Participation
Jun 9, 2014, 1:15pm – 3:45pm
Irving K. Barber Learning Centre – Seminar Room 2.22A/B

The student as producer pedagogical model emphasizes the role of the student as collaborators in the production of knowledge. In this model, the university’s approaches to learning and research are closer aligned; for example, students, similar to researchers, are asked to share their work with others and not only with their immediate instructor or advisor. This session will examine both how educators and technologies can support learners’ in their role as active participants in their learning. We will hear from educators and academic leaders at the University of British Columbia and Vanderbilt University.

Be sure to check out the full listing for more information, including speaker bios. Registration for these events are free.

Open Education Related Events at the CTLT Institute

BCopenED, BlogHub, Events

Every spring, the UBC Centre for Teaching, Learning & Technology hosts the CTLT Institute, a series of workshops that share practice and research around teaching, learning and educational technologies. This year, the CTLT Institute takes place from June 3-10, and features 27 workshops led by 44 facilitators from 36 UBC departments and four universities. A number of these workshop are organized around the theme of “opening pedagogies” and relate to different aspects of open education. There are some really amazing speakers and interesting sessions planned, including:

Open Badges, Flexible Pedagogies
Jun 4, 2014, 1:15pm – 2:15pm
Irving K Barber Learning Centre – Fraser River Room 2.27

An open badge is a digital symbol that signifies concrete evidence of accomplishments, skills, qualities, or participation in experiences. It can provide a visual record of a learner’s achievement and development combined with the required proof. Furthermore, instructors and instructional designers can use educational badges to influence engagement and learning through the provision of focused goals, tasks, and affirmation of performance. This interactive session will explore open badges and how they may be used in higher educations. It will also be used to help inform the development of a Flexible Learning-TLEF funded project that will be developing a badge infrastructure and framework at UBC.

Teaching and Learning in the Open: Why/Not?
Jun 5, 2014, 1:15pm – 3:45pm
Irving K Barber Learning Centre – Fraser River Room 2.27

Open education has been much in the news lately in the form of Massive, Open, Online Courses (MOOCs). But there are numerous ways to engage in “open education,” some of them lost in the MOOC-hype of late. In this session we will discuss several ways in which one might make one’s courses more open, ranging from putting course materials online with a license allowing them to be revised and reused, to assigning open texts (those that are free to use, reuse and revise), to inviting people outside the university to participate in one’s on-campus course in limited ways (without making the course into a MOOC). We will also engage in a discussion of the possible upsides and downsides of doing any of these things.

VideoCamp: Let’s Make Some Videos!
Jun 6, 2014, 1:15pm – 4:00pm
Irving K. Barber Learning Centre – Seminar Room 2.22A/B

VideoCamp is an informal, three-part participatory workshop focused on building skills and community for “do It yourself” (DIY) style media creation at UBC. We’ll strap on our hiking boots and backpacks and set out together to explore the ins-and-outs of creating effective educational videos. Come share your own projects and ideas as we take a hands-on look at principals, techniques, and best practices for self-created media. Inspire and be inspired as we play with different tools and look at some available resources for creating videos without large budgets.

Student as Producers: Enhancing Student Learning Through Meaningful Participation
Jun 9, 2014, 1:15pm – 3:45pm
Irving K. Barber Learning Centre – Seminar Room 2.22A/B

The student as producer pedagogical model emphasizes the role of the student as collaborators in the production of knowledge. In this model, the university’s approaches to learning and research are closer aligned; for example, students, similar to researchers, are asked to share their work with others and not only with their immediate instructor or advisor. This session will examine both how educators and technologies can support learners’ in their role as active participants in their learning. We will hear from educators and academic leaders at the University of British Columbia and Vanderbilt University.

Be sure to check out the full listing for more information, including speaker bios. Registration for these events are free.

The Media & The Message (Slides)

BCopenED, BlogHub, Student as Producer

“What we are teaching and the tools we are teaching it with are in dialogue; how we teach can be an example of what we teach.” – Jon Festinger

I recently had the opportunity to give a talk for the BC Council on Admissions and Transfer‘s Communications and Media Articulation Committee (CAMAC). When I was invited, I was given the rather non-specific topic of online education, copyright, and technology – which, to be honest, delighted me as these three areas are often the holy trifecta of open education. The general thread of my presentation was that:

  • The future of education is not about information transmission but about scaffolding learning and knowledge building around information
  • Open licenses (such as Creative Commons) provide a simple solution in contrast to the complexity involved in aspects of copyright
  • Open education resource (OER) adoption and creation provide for the ability to build and improve the scaffolding of learning
  • Open approaches are highly effective methods for enabling this learning
  • The alignment of the student as owner of their learning and as collaborators in knowledge creation (e.g. the Student as Producer Model) is dependent on open approaches and open licenses
  • Open technologies and an alignment with the open internet are necessary to enable effective use of both OER and open pedagogies

Most of this I’ve talked about before but enjoyed compiling some independent aspects into a single talk. Here are the slides from the presentation:

The Media & The Message (Slides)

BCopenED, BlogHub, Student as Producer

“What we are teaching and the tools we are teaching it with are in dialogue; how we teach can be an example of what we teach.” – Jon Festinger

I recently had the opportunity to give a talk for the BC Council on Admissions and Transfer‘s Communications and Media Articulation Committee (CAMAC). When I was invited, I was given the rather non-specific topic of online education, copyright, and technology – which, to be honest, delighted me as these three areas are often the holy trifecta of open education. The general thread of my presentation was that:

  • The future of education is not about information transmission but about scaffolding learning and knowledge building around information
  • Open licenses (such as Creative Commons) provide a simple solution in contrast to the complexity involved in aspects of copyright
  • Open education resource (OER) adoption and creation provide for the ability to build and improve the scaffolding of learning
  • Open approaches are highly effective methods for enabling this learning
  • The alignment of the student as owner of their learning and as collaborators in knowledge creation (e.g. the Student as Producer Model) is dependent on open approaches and open licenses
  • Open technologies and an alignment with the open internet are necessary to enable effective use of both OER and open pedagogies

Most of this I’ve talked about before but enjoyed compiling some independent aspects into a single talk. Here are the slides from the presentation:

Informal, anonymous survey on open education

BlogHub

I’m doing a workshop on open education at UBC in June, and another at the American Association of Philosophy Teacher’s conference in July.

Here’s a teaching kit for the UBC workshop I made with Mozilla Thimble by remixing another teaching kit.

I know a fair bit about why I think being more open in teaching and learning is a good thing, but I’d like to hear from others what they think (positive and negative) to help me plan the workshops. I’d also like to use the anonymous responses to this survey in the workshops themselves, in case there are things there that we don’t come up with ourselves in discussion!

No matter your views on open education, I’d like to hear them! Here’s the survey (on Google Forms, but you don’t need a Google Account to fill it out). All that I can see of the responses is the day/time and what was said, nothing more (no IP addresses even). So from my end, it’s quite anonymous, though I can’t say exactly what Google collects when you fill out these types of forms (at least probably info on your browser, where you got to the survey from, and the like, but a thorough review of the terms of service and privacy policy from Google didn’t answer this question for me with any specifics).

If you’d be happy to participate but would rather just send the info to me personally (and I promise not to reveal any identifying information if you do!), you can send me an email: clhendricksbc@gmail.com

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