Open Everything

Carey HatchAssistant Provost for Library and Information ServicesNovember 2009

Goal of this presentation

• To introduce you to activities the Office of Library and Information Services are undertaking to increase the awareness of the evolving movement for “Open” content

• A quick introduction to various Open initiatives

• To encourage the dialogue within the University about this important topic

The Big Picture

• Provost Palm and Harold Silverman wanted to get BOT resolution passed supporting a “Open” initiatives– May – Faculty Senate (Open Access)– June – Chief Academic Officers (Open

Access)– October – Faculty Council of Community

Colleges (Open Educational Resources, Open Textbooks, Open Courseware)

Open Access – what is it?

• The Berlin Declaration, and the Bethesda Statement on Open Access state it this way:“For a work to be OA, the copyright holder must

consent in advance to let users "copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship...."

A call to Action February 2009

The Call to Action

• In August 2008 these organizations convened a roundtable discussion of provosts, research officers, CIOs, senior faculty, library and University Press Directors.

• Based on the roundtable discussions, the Call to Action is intended to provide guidance to each organization and its members how to advance the Open Access initiative

• The Call to Action recommended all institutions begin to actively discuss what they could do to support Open Access

Open Access

• Critical to promoting access to the high level research

• Becoming a requirement for federal grants

• Long term impact on models of scholarly publishing

Open Access – primarily for research

• Representatives from the Faculty Council for Community Colleges wanted to see if there was a role for them

• SUNY’s teaching footprint is larger than our research footprint

Open Educational Resources – what is it?

• Open educational resources or OER are defined by a report to the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation as follows:– "OER are teaching, learning and research resources

that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials or techniques used to support access to knowledge."

Open Educational Resources what is it?

• OER is a broad umbrella term that includes other “Open” initiatives:– Open Courseware– Open Access publications– Open Textbooks– Open Source software (to a lesser extent)

• Open educational resources are an internet phenomenon, because currently only the internet can offer the almost zero-cost and universal access that characterizes OER.

• OER are generally available for public use, without password-protection or registration requirements.

OER ExamplesOpen Courseware Consortium

• An OpenCourseWare is a free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials, organized as courses. The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a collaboration of more than 200 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model. The mission of the OpenCourseWare Consortium is to advance education and empower people worldwide through opencourseware.

• The Goals of the Consortium– Extend the reach and impact of opencourseware by encouraging the

adoption and adaptation of open educational materials around the world.

– Foster the development of additional opencourseware projects.– Ensure the long-term sustainability of opencourseware projects by

identifying ways to improve effectiveness and reduce costs.

OER ExamplesMerlot

• MERLOT is a leading edge, user-centered, searchable collection of peer reviewed and selected higher education, online learning materials, catalogued by registered members and a set of faculty development support services. MERLOT's vision is to be a premiere online community where faculty, staff, and students from around the world share their learning materials and pedagogy.

• MERLOT's strategic goal is to improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning by increasing the quantity and quality of peer reviewed online learning materials that can be easily incorporated into faculty designed courses.

• MERLOT’s activities are based on the creative collaboration and support of Individual Members, Institutional Partners, Corporate Partners and Editorial Boards.

• Integral to MERLOT’s continuing development of faculty development support services are its:

– Building and sustaining online academic communities– Online teaching and learning initiatives– Building, organizing, reviewing, and developing applications of online teaching-

learning materials

OER ExamplesConnexions

• Connexions is an environment for collaboratively developing, freely sharing, and rapidly publishing scholarly content on the Web. Our 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. All content is free to use and reuse under the Creative Commons "attribution" license.

• Content should be modular and non-linear– Most textbooks are a mass of information in linear format: one topic follows after

another. However, our brains are not linear - we learn by making connections between new concepts and things we already know. Connexions mimics this by breaking down content into smaller chunks, called modules, that can be linked together and arranged in different ways. This lets students see the relationships both within and between topics and helps demonstrate that knowledge is naturally interconnected, not isolated into separate classes or books.

• Sharing is good– Why re-invent the wheel? When people share their knowledge, they can select

from the best ideas to create the most effective learning materials. The knowledge in Connexions can be shared and built upon by all because it is reusable.

OER ExamplesDirectory of Open Access

Repositories• OpenDOAR is an authoritative directory of academic

open access repositories. Each OpenDOAR repository has been visited by project staff to check the information that is recorded here. This in-depth approach does not rely on automated analysis and gives a quality-controlled list of repositories.

• As well as providing a simple repository list, OpenDOAR lets you search for repositories or search repository contents. Additionally, we provide tools and support to both repository administrators and service providers in sharing best practice and improving the quality of the repository infrastructure.

OER ExamplesCommunity College Consortium

for Open Educational Resources

• The primary goal of the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources is to identify, create and/or repurpose existing OER as Open Textbooks and make them available for use by community college students and faculty.  We are seeking the support of faculty to identify, review, evaluate, and make available high quality, accessible and culturally relevant model Open Textbooks.

OER ExamplesCreative Commons

• Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright.

• We provide free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof.

OER - What is SUNY doing

• SUNYConnect has an Open Access repository available. Any SUNY campus may create collections and deposit materials. See http://dspace.sunyconnect.suny.edu

• The SUNY Press is planning a complete transformation into a state-of-the-art, XML-driven Center for Scholarly Communication for all of the SUNY campuses.

• We’ll be looking to see where these concepts can be brought into play with the Chancellor’s Planning Process

OER - What can you do?

• Educate yourself

• Become familiar with Creative Commons licensing. Use it when creating your own classroom materials

• Inform the faculty