Monthly Archives: June 2009

Wiley: “Church of OER Reuse”

David Wiley has posted a response to criticisms of Sean Duncan’s dissertation on reuse within the Connexions repository (original OEN article, OEN article linking to one critique). He responds to “apologists” who would suggest that much of the OER reuse isn’t readily trackable by comparing it to the “dark matter” concept in Astronomy. From the article:

Rather than accepting the message of data which indicate that reuse is occurring only very infrequently, the apologists imagine an unobservable space offline in which reuse must surely be occurring. With the irrational zeal of the too often caricatured believer, members of the Church of Reuse seem rather resilient in the face of data.

Stephen Downes commentary on Wiley’s post.

Fake Paper Appears in Open Access Journal

The Chronicle of Higher Education News Blog is reporting an open access journal (which charges fees to authors) accepted a nonsensical paper from a doctoral student at Cornell. The student delibrately sent in the paper as revenge for receiving multiple unsolicited e-mails from the journal’s publisher. From the article:

Similar scammers have had success in the past, most notably the hoax published in the journal Social Text in 1996 by Alan D. Sokal, a physicist at New York University.

Both Peter Suber and Stephen Downes have related commentary.

BYU Begins OCW Pilot

Jane Park at Creative Commons is reporting on David Wiley’s announcement that Brigham Young University will begin its own OCW pilot. The pilot starts will six courses licensed CC-BY-NC-SA. Intriguingly, Wiley reports that 85 out of 3500 visitors enroll in for-credit course, potentially pointing a way to sustainability. From Wiley’s post:

This pilot is part of a dissertation study to measure the impact of OCW courses on paying enrollments. In other words, the study will answer questions like “Does providing access to OCW versions of courses undercut the market for the for-credit versions of the courses?” and “Can OCW versions of courses that can be taken for credit at a distance generate enough revenue (as a lead generation mechanism) to financially sustain an ongoing OCW effort?”

Student Organizations Support Open Access

A group of student organizations have signed a statement of support for open access, according to a SPARC press release. Full text of the statement can be found at RightToResearch.org. From the SPARC press release:

“As both taxpayers and students, we deserve access to the research that our tuition and tax dollars have financed,” said Nick Shockey, recent graduate and Student Senator at Trinity University in San Antonio. “Our education should not be limited by the number of journal subscriptions our library can afford – a number that is drastically shrinking with recession-induced budget cuts at universities across the country.”

Thanks to Gavin Baker at Open Access News for the link.

OpenEd 2009 Program Announced

Jim Groom has pointed out that the Open Education 2009 conference program is now available. The list of speakers come from a wide range of institutions from Otago Polytechnic New Zealand Aoteoroa to MIT. The conference is Aug. 12-14 in Vancouver. From Groom’s blog post:

But beyond that, and even more exciting, is the fact that some many amazing folks within the edtech field will be converging on Vancouver this August to set what I believe will be an entirely different tone for the future direction of the open education movement. If the folks who have committed to this party can be thought of as a barometer, I would have to venture that this conference will be intelligent, irreverent, possibly raucous, certainly refreshing, and downright fun.

Creative Commons Responds to Crown Copyright Study

Yesterday OEN reported a on survey conducted by the UK Office of Public Sector information (brought to our attention by Glyn Moody). Creative Commons has now posted a response on their blog to the research. From CC’s blog post:

Overall, it is fantastic that this survey was done and published. Clearly the public wants to be encouraged to make use of its own information and a non-transactional alternative to default copyright is necessary to make that encouragement.

California Chooses Online Textbooks

BBC News and Slashdot are reporting that California is adopting online textbooks statewide. The move is due to California’s budget shortfall and hopes to save some of the $350 million spent on textbooks last year. Note that this decision does not automatically mean open textbooks. From the BBC News article:

From the beginning of the next school year in August, maths and science students in California’s high schools will have access to online texts that have passed an academic standards review.

Response to OER Reuse Dissertation

Stian Haklev has posted a response to Sean Duncan’s dissertation regarding reuse in Connexions (reported by OEN). The post discusses research methods and a little digression about file formats. From the blog post:

The first question is how Connexions is actually used – is it used mainly by self-learners, who wish to find useful material for their own studying? Or who want to study an entire “collection”? Or is it used more by educators, who “pre-package” content for their students, into collections? Or are the collections made by some self-learners, who package stuff they find neat for other possible future users?

Creative Commons Recognition

Glyn Moody points to a survey conducted by UK’s Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) regarding copyright terminology and presentation on government websites. The results found that 75% of the public did not recognize the Creative Commons license logos, nor what they means. The survey had 1350 respondents. From the survey results:

Only those likely to be more familiar with copyright (inferred from their route to the survey) are likely to have a previous understanding of Creative Commons terminology and imagery. One might argue that if these are used moving forward, more people will become more familiar with these, however, the benefits at this stage of shared / added meaning would only really apply to a minority…

OER Startup Meeting in UK

“Terrymc” on Blogging for Bioscience notes that there is a meeting regarding OER startups in the UK. No details about the meeting are provided, but attendees will be using the #oerstartup for tweets on Twitter. From the blog post:

My perception (so far) is that, for the academic community in general, OER appears to be seen as an eventual emergent property from various bits of courseware becoming visible. This is missing the point – OER needs to be stimulated by some excellent examples of production with the OER purpose in mind.