Latest Events

Two Reasons for Not Producing OCW

Peter Sefton has a new post addressing two of the most common reasons faculty give him not to produce OCW. From the post: "In this post I want to mention my two favourite objections to going open, which come up every time I start talking (ranting?) about OCW and OERs at USQ [University of Southern Queensland]. "

OER Africa & MedEdPORTAL Announce Formal Partnership

OER Africa and MedEdPORTAL have partnered in order to expand the breadth and depth of high-quality health education and assessment tools in MedEdPORTAL– whilst promoting the concept, adoption and implementation of open educational resources (OER) in Africa. Saide’s recently launched OER Africa initiative brings together all of its OER-related activities under a common conceptual framework including the African Health OER Network, a Hewlett Foundation-supported initiative, to apply the benefits of OER toward building healthcare provider capacity in Africa.

MedEdPORTAL (www.aamc.org/mededportal) is a free online peer-reviewed publication service provided by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) in partnership with the American Dental Education Association (ADEA). MedEdPORTAL was designed to promote educational collaboration by facilitating the open exchange of peer-reviewed teaching resources such as tutorials, virtual patients, simulation cases, lab guides, videos, podcasts, assessment tools, etc. While MedEdPORTAL's primary audiences include health educators and learners around the globe, it is open and available for free to the general public. Users can access quality, peer-reviewed teaching material and assessment tools in both the basic and clinical sciences in medicine and in oral health.

Open Educational Resources Africa: OER for Health and Education

OER Africa was established in 2008, with funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, as a new initiative of the South African Institute for Distance Education (SAIDE). Its goal is to leverage African experts and expertise to harness the concept of open educational resources (OER) to benefit higher education systems, institutions, academics, and students on the Continent and around the world.

The African Health OER Network (www.oerafrica.org/healthoer) was launched in 2009 in conjunction with a consortium of African medical schools and the University of Michigan in order to facilitate the creation and sharing of educational resources in the health sciences - both on the Continent and globally. The Network is collaborating with a large number of institutions around the world.

About the Presenters:
Neil Butcher is based in South Africa, from where he has provided policy and technical advice and support to a range of national and international clients regarding educational planning, uses of educational technology, and distance education. He is currently working as an OER Strategist with SAIDE on its new OER Africa Initiative, which is funded by the Hewlett Foundation and is managing the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa's Educational Technology Initiative.

Lisbeth Levey is a senior advisor to the Hewlett Foundation. She has worked extensively on information and communications technologies (ICT) in Africa, particularly on improving access to information and on dissemination of African information. Ms. Levey was facilitator of the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa (PHEA) from 2002 until 2006. She was also responsible for the start-up of the PHEA African university bandwidth consortium.

Also present would be Peter Donkor, Provost of the College of Health Sciences, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST); Cary Engleberg, Professor in the Departments of Internal Medicine and Microbiology & Immunology of the University of Michigan Medical School; Ted Hanss, Director of Enabling Technologies for the University of Michigan Medical School; Marian Jacobs, Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Cape Town in South Africa; and Catherine Ngugi, Project Director of OER Africa.

Publishing open e-books in Uganda

This project will develop the capacity of publishers and authors in Uganda to produce high quality e-books published under CC licenses following a model which was partially experimented under a previous project, “Publishing and Alternative Licensing Models (PALM) Africa.” The project will also result into 20 new fiction ebooks being published by NABOTU from its collection of manuscripts of creative writing submitted for the annual NABOTU Literary Awards. It will further equip authors with skills to self-publish through the use of blogs and other tools with appropriate open licensing arrangements. The tangible project output will include over 20 works of fiction published by NABOTU in e-book formats and delivery options on the web site www.nabotu.or.ug under a CC license. NABOTU currently holds a collection of over 400 manuscripts of children’s storybooks and poetry as well as novels for teenagers received every year for its literary awards competition. Publishers who participated in the publishing experiment under PALM Africa will use the new skills to be learnt to improve on the 6 titles issued online under the CC licenses by using better e-book formats and set up better tracking system for downloads and usage as well as marketing and promotion. Also the new skills about open e-book publishing is likely to inspire other publishers to join the fray and publish more book titles under CC licenses.

Ghana is set to transform management of intellectual property rights

International research initiatives launched

A number of international initiatives were launched in Africa recently to develop research and innovation across the continent, and to transform new ideas generated by higher education and research into improved products, processes and businesses. The projects include a technology development and transfer network, a continental research framework programme and a science-to-business challenge.

New institute to boost university governance

A new institute to strengthen the governance and management of African universities has been officially inaugurated in Yaoundé, Cameroon. The Pan-African Institute of University Governance aims to improve and modernise practices for the competent running of higher education institutions throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.

Announcing the "WikiEducator Gives Back" Free wiki workshop.

A unique opportunity to interact with some of WikiEducator's most seasoned and experienced facilitators and editors. Give and receive the gift of knowledge: Join us for the free "WikiEducator Gives Back" wiki workshop. The workshop commences on 21 July 2010 and will run for 10 working days. You will need about 15 - 20 minutes a day at times which suite your own schedule. Learning4Content is the world largest attempt to provide free training in building wiki skills for OER. The project is administered by the OER Foundation, an independent non-profit organisation helping individual and organisations achieve their objectives using open education approaches. We have achieved our targets in providing free wiki skills training to over 1000 educators this past year. In celebrating this gift of knowledge, we are hosting the "WikiEducator Gives Back" workshop were all facilitators donate of their time freely to help their WikiNeighbours. In the spirit of open philanthropy, the "WikiEducator Gives Back" annual workshop also provides an opportunity to scale-up our international team of Learning4Content facilitators to widen access to OER development. Join us in returning to the core values of education, namely to share knowledge freely. -- Wayne Mackintosh, Ph.D. Director, International Centre for Open Education, Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand. Board of Directors, OER Foundation. Founder and Community Council Member, Wikieducator, www.wikieducator.org Mobile +64 21 2436 380 User Page: http://wikieducator.org/User:Mackiwg Skype: WGMNZ1 Twitter: OERFoundation, Mackiwg

AAMC president mentions OER Africa

A Word from the AAMC President: "Regaining My Perspective in Dar es Salaam"

Shifting from resources to practice

The rhetoric behind the notion of free educational resources and a vibrant community of sharing and scholarly practices is exciting and visionary. Despite this however, the actual impact on practice has been limited. Yes, OERs are being viewed and used by some teachers and some learners but they are not being used extensively. And evidence of actual reuse is even more scant.

Choosing An Open License

There are a lot of things to consider when it comes to choosing a CC license. The factors are different for everyone, whether you’re an individual creator or an institution. Usually, the decision is made and the process by which it was made fades into memory or only remains via word of mouth or blog posts. The Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) didn’t want this to happen so they decided to document their process when the community held its first workshop in Berlin. A Guide to CHOOSING AN OPEN LICENCE: The Peer 2 Peer University Experience is the result of their efforts.

Call for Applications: Makerere University: Master of Arts in Gender-Aware Economics

Evidence shows that investing in gender equality- such as increasing women’s access to health care, employment and credit - can accelerate economic growth and reduce poverty and that persistent gender inequalities reduce prospects for economic growth. Yet, attention to gender equality is still lacking in economic policy formulation and implementation. The Gender and Economic Policy Management Initiative Africa was created in response to this gap in Africa.The Master of Arts in Gender-Aware Economics is open to students from all over Africa. Programme begins August 2, 2010. Deadline for applications: May 31, 2010.

IAALD papers in the Global Agricultural Research Archive

IAALD is one of the first institutional partners to contribute full text content to the 'Global Agricultural Research Archive' of CAB International. The pilot database currently contains over 2,700 full text records. The archive contains the full text of papers presented at the IAALD 2008 World Congress in Japan. IN the near future, we plan to add papers from the 2010 congress and perhaps the digital archives of the IAALD Quarterly Bulletin. Outgoing IAALD President Peter Ballantyne is "really pleased that IAALD is part of this new initiative. It is a concrete demonstration of our commitment to CIARD and the principle of making our information openly accessible." Access the archive at: http://www.cabi.org/gara/default.aspx?site=173&page=1543

Podcast: The Role of OER in Africa

Open Educational Resources (OER) are becoming more and more important in Africa, but teaching and learning strategies involved are not necessarily effective. The Partnership for Higher Education in Africa facilitates the deployment of OER at several universities on the African continent. In this podcast, Neil Butcher, Educational Consultant at the South African Institute for Distance Education, Johannesburg, talks about this initiative, the role of OER in Africa, and how their benefits can be harnessed effectively.

OpenCourseware Consortium Global 2010

The OpenCourseWare Consortium’s fifth annual conference will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam from 5-7 May, 2010. This conference will bring together educators, administrators, policy makers and other interested participants to examine the capacity of OpenCourseWare to effect large-scale educational improvement worldwide. The conference will focus on the uses and potential uses of OpenCourseWare around the world. OpenCourseWare infrastructure supports overlapping goals in education. These include strengthening curricula, improving educational systems, training teachers, bridging the gap between secondary and higher education, developing an effective workforce, and promoting life-long learning. OpenCourseWare provides a stable yet easily adaptable platform for collaboration among education, government and business sectors towards the achievement of common objectives.

Teacher Education - new theme launched!!!

OER Africa has launched a new theme - Teacher Education. Here you will find resources to help you as you plan and deliver teacher education programmes and courses as well as people involved with teacher education in Africa. Our purpose is to create a space in which teacher educators can support each other in the ‘organization of systematic learning’ for both initial and continuing professional development of teachers (preset and inset).

On Open Teaching Resources

OER for P-12 educators does that. It’s professionals talking to professionals. OER in higher ed doesn’t, for the most part, do that. That’s due to a bunch cultural reasons, but if I had to pick just one reason why OER does not have broader adoption in higher ed, I would say it’s because in general OER does not treat the instructor as a fellow professional. It talks past the instructor to the student.

OpenCourseWare Consortium Dues Adoption

While we were pleased and grateful to announce the recent charter sustaining member commitments, we recognize that the majority of members are not in a position to make a commitment at this level. The regular dues payments made by the broader membership, however, are equally important to the ongoing sustainability of the organization and we appreciate the financial support for the Consortium.

4C Initiative - Develop a digital content supply network for education

4C Initiative is an initiative designed to improve teachers' capacity to find, use and create digital content for educational purposes. It is basically a series of online sessions informing interested parties of all aspects of digital content for educational purposes. Global experts are lined up to speak and have already had 10 successful sessions. All sessions are online, free and at 3pm GMT. If you've missed some sessions you will be able to access recordings afterwards. Don't miss the upcoming sessions on finding and using educational digital content. The following sessions are lined up for the next couple of weeks - Using Learning Objects, Images, Audio/Video, Reference Content & Lesson Plans (1 session per topic) You can also access recorded versions of the sessions that have already taken place from the free resources section of our website http://4cinitiative.com/?page_id=39 . Here you can view sessions on topics like: • An Introduction to Open Educational Resources • Copyright for Digital Content • Open Source Software for Education • OER Websites & Services • Finding OERs and Educational Content on Google • Evaluating & Downloading Learning Objects, Images, Audio/Video, Reference Content & Lesson Plans (1 session per topic) • Combining Different types of resources • Modifying Lesson Plans

Archive of David Wiley’s Writings

David Wiley is announcing that some of his writings are now available through Brigham Young University’s institutional repository. Many of these writings relate to open education.

The state of OpenCourseWare

Since 2000, when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology established the first OpenCourseWare site, schools — including top names like Harvard and Stanford in the United States and Oxford and Cambridge in Britain — have been releasing educational materials to the public through platforms that include iTunes U, youtube.com/edu and their own sites, like Open Yale Courses.

Science initiative rises to continental needs

Science and education development can only flourish in Africa through support for home grown institutions. The Regional Initiative in Science and Education, RISE, has been striving to achieve this for the past 18 months through university-based networks that train science and engineering academics for African universities. African university leaders wanted qualified science faculty and agreed on a research and training programme for scientists and engineers. In June 2007 the African Academy of Sciences and the Princeton-based Science Initiative Group, sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, met to plan the establishment of RISE.

Open Educational Resources for Design Students

A set of high quality learning resources have been made available under a Creative Commons license, aimed at helping design students to improve their communication skills through drawing. Pencils and Pixels is the work of Pam Locker, a Principle Teaching Fellow and lecturer on the Design for Exhibitions and Museums degree, and her colleagues. There are ten videos available to watch online, subscribe to, download from the website or from iTunes. The videos are accompanied by podcasts and written notes and made available under a CC-BY-NC-SA license.

AWARD Fellowships 2010 for African Women

The African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) Fellowships 2010 is seeking applications from “African women working in agricultural research and development from Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia who have completed a bachelor’s, master’s or doctoral degree in selected disciplines are invited to apply.”

Consumers Misunderstand Copyright

Consumers are confused by copyright laws that mean it is still illegal to copy a CD onto their computer, a watchdog says. Consumer Focus said that copyright law was outdated and millions of people were unaware they were breaking laws. But a legal expert has said that there was no danger of individual consumers being prosecuted for copying music and films for their own use. Instead commercial operations are the focus of law enforcement.

OpenContent: Sharing teaching and learning (UCT)

The University of Cape Town has launched an OpenContent Directory that allows academics to share teaching and learning materials and makes a body of knowledge accessible to all. It will contribute South African resources to the global Knowledge Commons, Vice-chancellor Dr Max Price said, and is the first step towards Open UCT - a broader initiative that will make a vast range of resources, including research and community work, available online.

Open Educational Practices

Gráinne Conole has a new post discussing open educational practices. From the post: Open Educational Practices (OEP) are the set of activities and support around the creation, use and repurposing of Open Educational Resources. It also includes the contextual settings within which these practices occur.

Potential Cost Savings of OER - Part 3

Karen Fasimpaur has a new post concluding her series on the cost savings of open educational resources. From the post: Hundreds of millions of dollars are going into costly interventions to remedy the achievement crises in schools today. Beyond that, it is impossible to calculate the financial burden of high school drop-out rates. If instruction were more effective and engaging, a lot of this expenditure could be avoided.

Teacher Motivations for Participation in Open Access Education

The Commission of Social Issues has posted on teacher motivations in open education. From the post: One of the deepest human pleasures is to create, to see something beautiful or elegant come to life through our own efforts. The great psychologist Ernst Schachtel called the pleasure arising from our spontaneous self-activity “activity affect”. Great teachers love to organize their classrooms as elegant spaces for learning and their lessons and units as aesthetic as well as practical achievements.

Negotiating a Creative Commons License

The website Instructables has a ten-step guide to negotiating a Creative Commons license with content creators.

Open Education: The Nature of Competence

Graham Attwell has a new post discussing competence as it relates to open education. From the post: "In the past few years it has become common to describe curricula in terms of outcomes, rather than the more traditional learning objectives."

Does Creative Commons Change Education?

Imagine the world of OER without CC. The term “open educational resource” would be a vacuous or redundant term at best. “Open” would simply mean freely accessible. Without CC, individuals or organizations would continue to offer their resources under custom terms (aka a custom license*) or under no terms at all.

New Digital Image Collection: Maps of Africa to 1900

The Maps of Africa to 1900 digital collection contains images of maps listed in the bibliography Maps of Africa to 1900: A Checklist of Maps in Atlases and Geographical Journals in the Collections of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (Bassett & Scheven, Urbana: Graduate School of Library and Information Science, 2000). As such, this collection mines not only the Library's map collections, but also its extensive collection of 19th century atlases and geographical journals, including the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society (United Kingdom), the Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Paris (France), and Petermanns Geographische Mittheilungen (Germany). Bassett's and Scheven's original bibliography lists 2,416 maps of which nearly 78 percent date from the 19th century. Africanists and historians of cartography are drawn to this century because the map of the continent changed so rapidly in the wake of European explorations, conquests, and colonization (Bassett & Scheven, p. iii). About a quarter of the collection dates from the sixteenth century, 9 percent from the seventeenth, and 13 percent from the eighteenth century. The Library's Digital Content Creation Unit is digitizing as many of the maps as possible, condition permitting. Jessica Ephron in CAM is creating/inputting the metadata into ContentDM. Maps are added to the ContentDM collection as they are completed. Currently the collection has 512 maps. It can be browsed by geographic name and by year of publication. Keep checking back--eventually, the collection will contain over 2,000 images. Sometime early next year, the collection will also have a new image viewer that will enable users to better view and navigate the maps.

OER Africa Newsletter July - September 2009

Invitation: International Workshops and Short Courses in Windhoek Namibia 2010

The Institute for Capacity Development (ICD) is pleased to announce to you its 2010 short course offerings for the period January to December, to be conducted in Windhoek, Namibia. ICD invites you; your colleagues and your institution to the management development courses that will enhance your skills and make you more effective at the workplace. ICD courses are aimed at skills transfer and course delivery makes use of you work experience and specific needs and integrated computer based problems and simulations. Find attached the 2010 calendar, review and check the training calendar for your training needs. Please note that your institution will immensely benefit from group discounts should you send at least five participants per course on the same dates. As part of capacitating the participants all those who attend ICD short courses will be issued with personal take home Laptops for them to use after their return to the office. Coming to Windhoek, Namibia is also a lifetime experience for some since our learning integrates taking you around Namibia. You will be able to see the Atlantic Ocean side by side with the Namib desert. You will also take a tour of the Great Etosha National Park and other places of interest. For more information on ICD training courses visit our website at www.icdtraining.com or email us at coordinator@icdtraining.com. You can do a direct booking online, fax or by phone. We look forward to receiving your application and enquiries. Draw the attention of your colleagues who may be interested in participating in our courses. Check our website for the training courses and secure your bookings now. ICD is looking forward to a long term working relationship with you in meeting your professional capacity training needs. We would want you to know that our trainers and consultant trainers can also conduct in-house courses at your work places.

The Golden Ratio of OER

David Wiley has posted on changing the value proposition for open educational resources. Wiley argues for a “golden ratio” to measure how beneficial OER might be for an institution. From the post: "The more people I talk to, the more convinced I am that OER has failed to establish a digestible value proposition for formal education."

WikiEducator, Connexions, and MediaWiki join forces in OER Remix Project

WikiEducator’s Wayne Mackintosh announced earlier this week that they were joining forces with Connexions “to provide educators with greater freedom of choice to mix and match the best of two OER worlds, namely “producer-consumer” models with more traditional work flow approaches and commons-based peer production.”

OER and Educational Development

Being open need not be complicated, it doesn’t need to be organized, nor does it even need to be funded. It has to respond to a need that exists. Simple solutions may require a 10% concession from the educator, but a small concession to sustainability can be important.

OER, Trademarks and CC BY

The first CC Learn Advanced Topic is CC Licenses and Trademarks: A Guide for Organizational OER Creators and Distributors. This primer distinguishes between copyright and trademark as they pertain to OER, and clarifies some of the confusion surrounding CC licenses and trademarks. For OER organizations with a strong trademark, or with the plans and capacity to build and sustain one, this primer is a guide to understanding the relationship between your organization’s rights as a copyright owner using CC licenses (particularly CC BY) and your organization’s trademark rights within the context of open educational resources (OER). This primer is not relevant for OER creators generally, as trademark law only pertains to those entities with the capacity to build and sustain a brand.

Limitation of Liability in Creative Commons

a new post comparing Creative Commons to the GNU license. Stafford notes software licensed using Creative Commons does not have any clause limiting liability. From the post: "The issue of liability is not present in the creative commons license – potentially this means that if OER software damaged an end users computer in any way, then the provider of the software could be liable for damage."

Copyright in Teaching

There are three major exceptions to the copyright law that permit instructors to use copyrighted material in their classrooms without permission. See this post for a summary of the situations in which each exception applies and the conditions on the application of each.

100 Open Access Journals

The following open access journals provide top-notch scholarly information available at no cost. Most of these journals are published just once or a few times a year, so subscribe to several so you can keep up-to-date on the latest research coming out of the field of education.

Digital library expansion underway

A two-year programme aimed at establishing and expanding digital libraries in Africa is underway and is expected to run until the end of next year. The initiative by the Southern African Greenstone Support Network, or SAGSN, follows a pilot project undertaken during 2007 and 2008 in 11 African countries.

COL Quality Assurance Toolkit Project

earlier the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) requested SAIDE to facilitate a week-long workshop on quality assurance for open schools in September last year. This workshop was attended by 23 delegates from 16 different Commonwealth countries across the globe. Recently, COL asked SAIDE to support the quality project further by developing a quality assurance toolkit. The kit aims to provide guidelines to people working in open schools in setting up and maintaining robust quality management systems to enhance quality open and distance learning (ODL) provisioning. Ephraim Mhlanga reports.

Call for Papers Special Issue of the Journal of Information Technology for Development

Information technology (IT) projects continue to suffer from frequent cost and time overruns and failure to fully deliver on the expected benefits to the users or the organization. Furthermore, what determines the success or failure of information technology implementations and use in developing and emerging economies may differ substantially from generally accepted success factors in highly developed countries. Developing economies are defined by low gross national income per capita, and are generally characterized by low standards of living, a weak industrial and commercial base, and a poor infrastructure. Still developing economies that exhibit robust, continual economic expansion, resulting in fast growing per capita income, and which have administrations that are dedicated towards developing the commercial base and improving the infrastructure are termed emerging economies. IT is generally considered to be a prime factor in the economic and national development of these regions. The aim of this special issue is to provide a forum for research and practice specifically directed at the factors and models that contribute to the success (or failure) of IT implementation and use for economic and national development in developing and emerging economies. Submitted papers, while focusing on specific success factors or exemplary models, must explain how the work makes a contribution to better understanding the role of IT in economic or national development, affecting people's lives and their communities,Submitted work will be evaluated for methodological soundness, empirical completeness, and academic rigor, as well as originality and interestingness. Possible contributions may include, but are not limited to the following: - Organizational culture and IT success factors in developing or emerging economies - Factors and models that contribute to (or may inhibit) technology bringing about economic development - Case studies looking at successful (or failed) models of IT use in developing or emerging economies - Critical success factors in Web service adoption in developing or emerging economies - Differences in success perception of IT between developing/emerging and developed countries - Cultural factors and models in successful IT adoption and use indeveloping countries - Factors and models that may make IT a successful tool for achievingglobal competitiveness

Facilitating Online - Free Book from Centre for Educational Technology, UCT

Thanks for the generosity of the Ford Foundation, the Centre for Educational Technology at the University of Cape Town has copies of Facilitating Online to give to educators with an interest in ICTs in education. Facilitating Online is a course for training educators as online facilitators of fully online and mixed mode courses. It comprised a Course Leader’s Guide and a specimen website. The guide contains the course model, week-by-week learning activities, general guidance to the course leader on how to implement and customise the course and specific guidelines on each learning activity. Please email Shirley Rix at Shirley.Rix@uct.ac.za with your request and your postal details

Assistant Professor in Women & Gender Studies and Religion (tenure-stream appointment)

The Department of Historical Studies, University of Toronto Mississauga invites applications for a tenure-stream appointment in Women & Gender Studies and Religion. The appointment will be at the rank of Assistant Professor and will begin July 1, 2010. Qualified candidates should have completed the PhD in a related discipline with a focus in the area of women and gender studies and religion, and with a demonstrated record of outstanding teaching at the undergraduate level and an emerging record of scholarly accomplishments. Breadth of training and ability to teach a wide range of courses will be a major asset. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience. The successful applicant will be responsible for teaching a diverse program of courses in feminism and sexuality as well as the historical study of religion. The particular religion (or religions) of specialization will be determined by the successful applicant’s profile, but should complement the department’s other resources in the historical study of religion. The successful candidate will also be appointed to the tri-campus graduate Centre for the Study of Religion, with the same graduate responsibilities as colleagues at the other campuses of the University of Toronto. Historical Studies is a transdisciplinary department that provides students with a globally-framed historical education that encompasses programs in Classical Civilization, Diaspora and Transnational Studies, History, History of Religions and the Study of Women and Gender. All applicants should submit a curriculum vitae, a teaching portfolio, and a cover letter of no more than two single-spaced pages outlining their research interests and teaching qualifications. Applicants should also arrange for three letters of reference to be sent to Professor Johnson under separate cover. Applications may be submitted online via the University of Toronto, Academic Career Opportunities website at http://www.jobs.utoronto.ca/faculty.htm (see position ad 0900782); or by e-mail to: historic.utm@utoronto.ca; or in hard copy to: Professor Robert E. Johnson, Chair, Department of Historical Studies, University of Toronto Mississauga, 3359 Mississauga Road North, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L5L 1C6. The deadline for submission of all materials is November 30, 2009. For more information about this position and the Department of Historical Studies, please visit our home page at http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/3387.html. For more information on the graduate Center for the Study of Religion please visit: http://www.religion.utoronto.ca/graduate.htm. The University of Toronto is strongly committed to diversity within its community and especially welcomes applications from visible minority group members, women, Aboriginal persons, persons with disabilities, members of sexual minority groups, and others who may contribute to the further diversification of ideas. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority.

Vacancy: Assistant Professor of Political Science, Gender & Ethnicity - Amsterdam

University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (UvA) is a university with an internationally acclaimed profile, located at the heart of the Dutch capital. As well as a world centre for business and research, Amsterdam is a hub of cultural and media activities. The University of Amsterdam is a member of the League of European Research Universities. The Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences (FMG) is the largest educational and research institution in the social sciences in the Netherlands . The Faculty serves 7,500 students in numerous Bachelor's and Master's programs in Political Science, Sociology, Anthropology, Communication Science, Psychology, Social Geography, Planning and International Development Studies, and Educational Sciences. The academic staff is employed in education as well as research. There are over 1,100 employees at the Faculty department, which resides in a number of buildings in the centre of Amsterdam . The Department of Political Sciences is one of the departments of the FMG. Education and research activities are carried out by special institutes. The College of Social Sciences (GSS) and the Graduate School of Social Sciences (GSSS) are responsible for the undergraduate and graduate teaching programmes in Political Science. Most of the research within the Department is conducted in the research programmes of two research schools, the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies (IMES) and the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research (ASSR). The department is seeking to appoint a tenure track assistant professor of political science to develop and expand its research and teaching in the area of political inequality with a special focus on the role of gender and ethnicity. Assistant Professor of Political Science 1.0 FTE (38 hours per week) vacancy number 09-2095 The way in which social inequality on the basis of gender and ethnicity transcends into the political arena is an essential element of the study of politics. The degree to which political and institutional configurations both at a national and an international level enable different societal groups to articulate their needs in order to gain access to political life touches on core democratic principles, such as equality, representation, justice and fairness. The assistant professorship focusing on gender and ethnicity is developed to deepen and expand the research and teaching regarding these themes within the department of political science. The department is particularly interested in recruiting an experienced researcher with the interest and ability to undertake comparative research on the role of societal norms, institutional features and/or international developments, such as globalization and migration, on political inequality from a temporal and cross-national perspective. Specifically, questions relating to the ways in which political inequality is organized politically or concerning the ways in which institutional features mediate the interest articulation and aggregation of different societal groups in particular women and ethnic minorities would be at the core of such research endeavors. Successful applicants are expected to display an academic interest and research experience in studying political inequality and its consequences which is demonstrated by publications in international peer-reviewed political science journals and other publication venues and formats. In terms of teaching, the applicant should be able to demonstrate extensive teaching experience in political science at both the BA and MA-levels. Ideally, the candidate possesses a strong teaching profile in the area of political inequality grounded in gendered and ethnic differences or would be willing to develop such a profile. Finally, the candidate will be expected to develop new academic courses on topics relating to gender and ethnicity. Tasks • Education in political science, in particular on the topics of gender and ethnicity, both in the Bachelor's phase and the Master's phase • Research in the context of the IMES programme (see the IMES website) • Acquisition of external funding for research projects • Contributions to the management of the Department and study programme Requirements • Completed PhD thesis, preferably in the field of political science • Publications in international peer-reviewed journals and/or in books published by internationally recognized presses • Publications on the topics of gender and ethnicity • Broad knowledge in the field of general political science • Ability to teach and motivate students at both basic and advanced levels • We prefer to hire a candidate with perfect passive and adequate active knowledge of Dutch, candidates who do not speak Dutch should be willing to acquire such knowledge within a relatively short period • Have the Dutch ‘Basic Teaching Qualification' certificate (Basiskwalificatie Onderwijs, BKO) or be willing to acquire it Further information Additional information about the vacancy can be obtained from: Prof. Wouter van der Brug, W.vanderbrug@uva.nl. Appointment The gross monthly salary will be between €3,195 and €4,970, based on a full-time appointment and depending on the appointee's qualifications and experience. The initial appointment will be for two years, and will become tenured upon good research and teaching performance. Job application Applications should comprise a motivation letter, a full CV, including courses taught and developed, and a list of publications. They should be sent before 13 November 2009 to: Ms Leila Abouyaala (l.abouyaala@uva.nl/+31.20.525 8838), Management Assistant, Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam, Oudezijds Achterburgwal 237, 1012 DL Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

African Film Library Launched

M-Net launched the African Film Library in late September. The site has a feature films, shorts, and documentaries from the last 50 years and is available at http://www.africanfilmlibrary.com. It's in beta. You can browse the site by a variety of factors or you can search by keyword. [Catherine Ngugi (GMail)] Click on the title and you'll get details about the film, including a synopsis, length, date it was produced, and language.

Online Learning Resources for Open Schools

Open schools in six Commonwealth countries – Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Seychelles, Trinidad & Tobago and Zambia – are developing new learning materials for 20 subjects through COL’s Open Educational Resources for Open Schools initiative. This two-year partnership between COL and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation is focussed on improving access to secondary education by developing open educational resources (OERs) and training “master teachers” in online materials development. Following training workshops on developing OERs in early 2009, the master teachers are creating self-instructional learning materials. Country Management Committees are ensuring the materials comply with the country’s syllabi and will conduct peer reviews of materials developed in other partner countries. The completed OERs will be freely available for download, adaptation and use by open schools and other institutions, creating a valuable new pool of quality learning resources.

Digital Literacy 09: Copyright and Fair Use

Copyright and Fair Use are perhaps the most challenging and controversial topics in our 7th grade Digital Literacy course. Copyright law is complex, Fair Use guidelines are fluid, and what educators deem “fair” varies widely throughout the profession. Commercial copyright holders and the organizations that represent them are litigiously protective of their work. Conversely, attorneys such as Larry Lessig contend that creativity is being strangled by the law. Diverse opinions notwithstanding, as content consumers and creators, it’s important that we have a working knowledge of how creative works can and cannot be applied to education.

OER at TESSA

Jophus Anamuah-Mensah, along with others, have published a paper on the development of open educational resources at Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) program. From the paper: "These TESSA materials are designed to be a pedagogic “toolkit” of skills, knowledge and artefacts to enhance the professional knowledge (both subject and pedagogic) of teachers. The school-integrated activities, at the heart of the study units, combine theory and practice, and encourage teachers to learn about teaching through classroom experiences while stimulating experimentation and critical debate."

Openness at the University of Cape Town

Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams and Eve Gray have published a report on OER at the University of Cape Town. The report discusses different levels of openness and introduces “Open Pedagogy.” From the report: While acknowledging the potential value of actual content, we contend, however, that it is the opening up of educational processes, which we are terming Open Pedagogy (OP) enabled by the Web 2.0 technologies, that are set to play the more meaningful role in the collaboration between students and lecturers than content alone.

Yale Expands Free Online Courses

Ten new college courses — ranging from organic chemistry to ancient Roman architecture to the psychology and politics of food — have been added to "Open Yale Courses," the University's free educational initiative, available to anyone with access to the Internet. Each course, recorded in its entirety as it was presented to Yale College students, is taught by one of the University’s most distinguished faculty members. Open Yale Courses may be accessed at http://oyc.yale.edu/. The courses are available in high definition video and audio formats. All of these offerings are multi-media and provide the fullest experience of the Yale classroom to date, with rich visual elements on the screen, supplementary slide presentations, and extensive music clips, as appropriate. Closed captioning is provided for each course, as well as searchable transcripts, syllabi, reading assignments, problem sets and other materials. Yale has partnered with Google/YouTube and Apple iTunes U to make the courses even more accessible and to allow faster downloads. Open Yale Courses content can be accessed through our partner platforms by visiting http://www.youtube.com/yalecourses and http://itunes.yale.edu/.

Women no longer the second sex

Women outnumber men in worldwide university enrollments and graduation rates, according to Unesco's 2009 Global Education Digest. The number of female students in tertiary education rose six-fold between 1970 and 2007compared with a quadrupling of male enrollments during the same period. In terms of graduation, women outnumber men in 75 of the 98 countries, the Digest reports. Tertiary enrollment ratios of men and women reached parity around the year 2003. Since then, the average global participation of females has been exceeding that of males. In 1970, the male-to-female enrollment ratio was 1.6. In 2007, it flipped, with the female-to-male ratio becoming 1.08.

Incorporating Fully Copyrighted Material into OER

Creative commons has a new post on the legal problems in incorporating fully copyrighted material into OER. The post does not go into the, perhaps, larger issue of Creative Commons license incompatibility. From the post: But the inclusion of third party content that is not under the same terms of the license changes the global nature of OER, potentially walling it off from use in other countries. Thus, ccLearn has developed some practical recommendations and alternatives for those OER creators who are concerned with the global reach and impact of their works.

OCW and Sustainability

More free programs may run aground. So argues David Wiley, open education's Everywhere Man, who set up the Utah venture and is now an associate professor of instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young University. A newspaper once likened him to Nostradamus for claiming that universities risked irrelevance by 2020. The education oracle offers another prophecy for open courseware. "Every OCW initiative at a university that does not offer distance courses for credit," he has blogged, "will be dead by the end of calendar 2012."

Best Practices in Fair Use of OpenCourseWare

This document is a code of best practices designed to help those preparing OpenCourseWare (OCW) to interpret and apply fair use under United States copyright law. The OCW movement, which is part of the larger Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, was pioneered in 2002, when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched its OpenCourseWare initiative, making course materials available in digital form on a free and open basis to all. In 2005, MIT helped to organize with the support of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation a group of not-for-profit organizations interested in following the OpenCourseWare model and standardizing the delivery of OCW material. This group of institutions, known as the OCW Consortium (OCWC), has grown into a concern of more than 200 universities worldwide promoting universal access to knowledge on a nonprofit basis. The mission of OCWC is “to advance formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality educational materials organized as courses.”

Exciting position at the Centre for Educational Technology, UCT

Dear colleagues, we at CET are looking for a very special person to join our stimulating and collegial centre. The job is at lecturer or senior lecturer level.

List of Best Open Source Apps

The website Accredited Online Universities has posted a list of the top 100 open source applications. The applications range from multimedia to mind mapping.

AcaWiki Increases Impact of Scholarly Research Using Web 2.0

AcaWiki [http://acawiki.org makes scholarly research more accessible and interactive, by creating a "Wikipedia for academic research", with seed funding from the Hewlett Foundation. Scholars, students, and bloggers can easily post summaries, and discuss academic papers online at http://acawiki.org. AcaWiki's mission is to make academic research more accessible and interactive by creating a "Wikipedia for academic research." "Cutting-edge research is often locked behind firewalls and therefore lacks impact," founder Neeru Paharia explains, "AcaWiki turns research hidden in academic journals into something that is more dynamic and accessible to have a greater influence in scholarship, and society." AcaWiki enables users to easily post and discuss human-readable summaries of academic papers and literature reviews online. AcaWiki also helps users to share and organize summaries through the use of tags and RSS feeds. Vijay Kumar, senior associate dean and director of the Office of Educational Innovation and Technology at MIT, says, "AcaWiki can provide an important 'sense-making' function for enabling easier sharing of knowledge that can help to build bridges across disciplines--and even between academia and those outside."

The Liberation of TextbooksFree Education - Sustaining Open-Source Curriculum?

Free education! Free instructional materials! It seems that if the Internet is free, then education delivered through the Internet should also be free since knowledge should not be proprietary. However, just what does free mean? Free—as in available at no cost? Or free—as in “free beer”—a way to bring people into the restaurant to pay for a meal? Free also means unrestricted use, as in the definition of open educational resources, which are “learning materials that are freely available for use, remixing and redistribution.”

Higher education and development

Several countries have linked higher education to economic development with great success, including Finland and South Korea. Africa, where an upcoming study of university systems across eight countries has unearthed contradictory notions of the role of the university, could draw on international best practice to encourage more flexible, differentiated, networked and development-focused higher education systems better placed to support economic growth. Preliminary findings from ongoing research into African higher education were presented at a seminar held at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, and attended by leading international scholar Professor Manuel Castells. He was impressed, he said, by the rigour and relevance of the research and the "audacity" of many of its proposals.

Challenges for Open Access Journals

The sustainability of *subscription* journals is far from clear after nearly four decades of raising average prices faster than inflation. When the University of California studied the question, its concluded that “[t]he economics of [subscription-based] scholarly journal publishing are incontrovertibly unsustainable.”

Reasons for Remixing an OER

Liam Green-Hughes has a new post on reasons for remixing an OER. Green-Hughes reasons include translation and increasing accessibility. From the post: When I first joined the OLnet project and was telling people about it, a mention of remixing would often prompt people to ask “why would I want to do that?”, a perfectly reasonable question as many will have just experienced education as courses they learn from, but wouldn’t actually change.

10 Essential Tips for Navigating a More Open World

With the world more “flat” and open than ever before, it helps tremendously to have a clear set of strategies for making sense of it all. Curtis Bonk, author of The World is Open, provides some great tips in this guest post for navigating the world of open education. One aspect of the post I particularly like is Curt’s emphasis on reaching out to others, creating new connections, and collaborating. It’s truly difficult to navigate this new world alone!

CALL FOR PAPERS - Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Fifth International Conference of Learning International Networks Consortium (LINC) May 23 – 26, 2010 The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts USA The objective of this conference is to provide an effective and established international forum for discussion and dissemination of recent advances and innovations in technology-enabled education at the university level in emerging nations. Its aim is to allow leading-edge educators and developers in a wide variety of areas concerned with technology-enabled teaching and learning to present their results. Important Dates: •Call for papers open: October 1, 2009 •Paper submission deadline: February 1, 2010 •Notification of acceptance: March 1, 2010 (Reviewers may suggest modifications) •Versions incorporating reviewers’ modifications: April 1, 2010 Scope of the conference The primary focus of this conference is on new and innovative applications of technology-enabled education in universities around the world, especially in emerging countries. We solicit the submission of papers that address novel and challenging ideas and/or report on real applications with concrete results. In particular, this year we are looking for submissions that demonstrate the leadership role of universities in reaching down to secondary schools and reaching up to life-long learners, with the goal of bringing technology-enabled education to learners of all ages. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to, the following areas: •Innovations in educational technology •New media for instruction •Virtual universities •E-learning in emerging nations •New pedagogical models facilitated by technology •Open Education Resources (OER) •Universities and lifelong learning •Universities and STEM education for high school students (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) •Web 2.0 and Social Software To receive details on how to submit a paper, contact: emurray@mit.edu There are a limited number of partial travel scholarships available.

Get it out in the open

From downloads of lectures to entire courses for free, Rebecca Attwood reports on how universities are fitting open educational resources into their missions and marketing

Fearing Open Content

Bill Tucker has published a response to a post critical of open content on Eduwonk. The original post was concerned that openness meant reduced quality. From Tucker’s reply: …nobody sensible is in favor of poor quality instructional materials. But right now, in most states, quality and effectiveness are not the main drivers of purchasing decisions. Billions are solely dedicated to funding textbooks—regardless of the efficacy or quality of alternative options. What we need are policies that allow money to flow to whichever materials are the most effective.

Quality of Education Data

David Wiley has a new post on the quality of education data. Wiley suggests that the real advantage of education technology is not improved effectivness, but increased access and data-driven decision making. From the post: Think of distance learning… Think of opencourseware and open educational resources… Think of the millions of people who now have access that never would have had access otherwise. The impact of using technology to deliver content on increasing access to education is completely unassailable and totally undeniable.

A New Program to Strengthen Research in African Universities Attracts Major Funding from the Wellcome Trust

An innovative program to strengthen research capacity in African universities has received a grant of £3.2 million (420 million in Kenya Shillings) under the African Institutions Initiative by the Wellcome Trust, a UK-based philanthropic organization. This program dubbed the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA) is the brain child of the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC), an international NGO with head offices in Nairobi, Kenya, and the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa. CARTA aims to foster the development of vibrant and viable research hubs at African universities through the provision of a collaborative doctoral training model in public health and population studies.

Invitation to an International Conference on OER

“Open Education and Open Educational Resources: Challenges and Perspectives,” an international conference on OER, is taking place in São Paulo, Brazil on Oct 29-30. Supported by the Open Society Institute and Direito GV, it will focus on “[bringing] together international and Brazilian OER projects and experiences [to set] the debate on policies to foster OER.” The conference is open and free to all, and simultaneous translations will be provided.

Integrating OCW into a University

OpenCourseWare. Attwood interviews persons from MIT OCW, Oxford and OpenLearn. From the article: This year, it [MIT OCW] will fund close to 50 per cent of the operating costs. Existing grants will run out in the next few years, and the programme is looking for ways to save costs, for example by moving its video footage from a paid-for host to YouTube. OCW receives commission from Amazon for referring visitors to its online bookshop, and is working hard to raise income from fundraising activities.

Professional Position Available

Professional Position Available Membership Services Coordinator The OpenCourseWare Consortium seeks to recruit a Membership Services Coordinator. The Coordinator plays a key role in helping the Consortium grow its membership by establishing and maintaining processes in support of Consortium members through the full cycle of membership, including assisting institutions interested in OpenCourseWare (OCW) in developing their OCW sites. The Coordinator works as part of a small multi-national and multi-cultural team to promote OpenCourseWare and open sharing of educational materials, and to provide services to members worldwide. Key responsibilities include: •Maintain positive relationships with contacts and member institutions in order to provide appropriate services; •Update and create materials in support of members’ OCW efforts; •Respond to membership queries and applications; •Perform initial screening of membership applications and prepare applicant profiles for the Membership Committee; •Follow up on membership dues, including invoicing, tracking and outreach; •Support emerging constituencies within the OCW movement, such as associate consortia and student organizations; •Assist in identifying and developing services for different groups of members; •Promote of the value of OpenCourseWare and Consortium membership; •Maintain awareness—including current status—of open knowledge efforts of all kinds, including following institutions’ open courseware efforts and efforts in other realms of information sharing in higher education, in the library domain, and elsewhere; •Maintain a working knowledge of issues and concepts related to open knowledge sharing and publication, including intellectual property issues and open licensing concepts. Qualifications: •BA or equivalent from an accredited institution; Masters or equivalent preferred •Proven record of success in managing communications and administrative processes at a distance and on-line •Professional presence and excellent communication skills in-person, on-line and on the phone •Strong written and oral communication skills in English; additional language skills highly desirable, particularly in Spanish, Chinese, Japanese or Arabic •Self-starter who is motivated by achieving goals •Ability to work at a distance with little direct supervision •Comfortable with technology and a variety of software, including business applications, social networking tools and other Web 2.0 applications •Ability to be an effective and contributing part of a multi-cultural team •Professional experience in education, such as in teaching, curriculum development, educational technology or library sciences •Experience with distance and/or open education highly desirable •Previous experience with membership services desirable •Reliable internet access is essential The Membership Services Coordinator position is conducted primarily via the internet, allowing great flexibility for where the position is located. Given the virtual nature of the position, reliable internet and communications infrastructure is essential for the performance of regular duties, as is a strong work ethic and the ability to solve problems without a lot of direct supervision. This position will require some flexibility in working hours to respond to members in different time zones and to participate in working groups and meetings. Occasional international travel may be required. About the OpenCourseWare Consortium: The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a community of over 250 universities and associated organizations worldwide committed to advancing OpenCourseWare sharing and its impact on global education. An OpenCourseWare is a free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials – often including syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, and exams – organized as courses. Incorporated as a not-for-profit organization in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, USA in 2008, the Consortium has as its mission the advancement of formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of OpenCourseWare. For additional information, please visit our website: www.ocwconsortium.org. To apply: Please submit a letter of application along with a full résumé or curriculum vitae, including at least one professional reference and contact information for three (3) additional professional references, to: jobs@ocwconsortium.org. Please apply by October 2, 2009 for full consideration. Interviews will be conducted in mid-October, and the selected applicant will be expected to begin work in November, 2009.

OER Success Stories

UNESCO is collecting Open Educational Resources Success Stories. Submit yours! A Duraspace blog posting recently announced a contest to collect OER Success Stories. To be eligible for the $50 prize, submit your OER Success Story by September 28th. Faculty can view a list of all the colleges that have adopted the Collaborative Statistics open textbook at Connexions

Launch of the OER Foundation

The Open Education Resource (OER) Foundation was officially launched on 17 September 2009 by Dr Robin Day, Chair of the board of Directors of the OER Foundation. The OER Foundation is a new not-for-profit organisation that will assist education institutions in New Zealand and around the world to reduce costs through open education resources. These are materials which educators are free to reuse, adapt and modify without restriction.

Reaction to Creative Commons Noncommercial Survey Results

There has been some coverage of the Creative Commons Noncommercial survey results. David Wiley suggests that the survey said very little. Glyn Moody notes the simplicity of the GPL license. Stephen Downes also covers the release in brief. From Wiley’s post: "So what the report provides us is, in effect, a surprisingly coherent statement by a large group of people who have no idea what they’re talking about."

Free E-Books Do Not Hurt Print Sales

Making free e-textbooks available to students does not affect sales of the print books, a new report from a publicly funded group in Britain suggests. But the managing director of a major publishing company is challenging those findings, saying sales of print materials were not as high as expected during the period when e-books were available for free.

Inclusive Design of Open Education Resources (OERs)

This blog post discusses accessibility and open educational resources. The author asks how designers can shape OER to include as many learners as possible. From the post: “What does all of this mean for teachers and students who want, need, and should take advantage of high quality, effective, and meaningful OERs?” As consumers of OERs, what influence can we have on their design? As creators of OERs, how can we adopt a model for accomplishing inclusive design?"

Creative Commons in the quest of defining “non-commercial”

From the Creative Commons blog: “Today, we’re publishing the Defining Noncommercial study report and raw data, released under a CC Attribution license and CC0 public domain waiver respectively — yes, this report on “noncommercial” may unambiguously be used for commercial purposes. Also see today’s press release.” Check a summary of the report at the CC Blog and the report here.

Wikipedia Used for Medical Information Despite Problems

Jacqueline at Laika’s MedLibLog has a new post about the problems with using Wikipedia as a source of medical information. She points out Wikipedia is increasingly used in the medical profession, but suffers from a lack of depth and inaccurate information. From the post: In the field of medicine, several drug companies have been caught altering Wikipedia entries. The first drug company messing with Wikipedia was AstraZeneca. References claiming that Seroquel allegedly made teenagers “more likely to think about harming or killing themselves” were deleted by a user of a computer registered to the drug company, according to Times.

Five Major Universities Sign-Up to Support Open Access

In an effort to support alternatives to traditional scholarly publishing, five major research universities announced their joint commitment to open-access journals on Monday. The institutions—Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California at Berkeley—signed a compact agreeing to the “timely establishment” of mechanisms for providing financial support for free open-access journals.

Copyright Recommendations for Africa

(ACA2K) has a new post providing tips to policy makers in African nations. The recommendations are an interesting mix, suggesting both strict default copyright laws, while promoting open licenses.

UNESCO chair for Pretoria (University of Pretoria)

University of Pretoria law dean Professor Christof Heyns has been awarded a UNESCO Chair of Education Law, the Paris-based UN agency announced last week. Heyns said he would work to tackle common legal challenges faced by education systems in Africa.

Experiences of Book Donations

Lots of effort is provided by many individuals and organisations to get books and information to those that need it but cannot access it, but sadly, whilst there are many good book donations, many are also inappropriate or lack relevance. Book Aid International has developed an online community group, including a wiki, to share and learn about good practices in book donations. It is hosted by the Eldis Community at the Institute of Development Studies in the UK. You can access the group and the Eldis Community, at http://community.eldis.org/.59bc2051/ In particular, we would like to hear about your experiences of book donations in the field of health and beyond so: If you have received book donations, did they meet your needs? Were they useful? How can you ensure you get the books you need? If you have provided donations, what issues did you encounter? How did you know the books you sent were useful? Lots of effort is provided by many individuals and organisations to get books and information to those that need it but cannot access it, but sadly, whilst there are many good book donations, many are also inappropriate or lack relevance. Book Aid International has developed an online community group, including a wiki, to share and learn about good practices in book donations. It is hosted by the Eldis Community at the Institute of Development Studies in the UK. You can access the group and the Eldis Community, at http://community.eldis.org/.59bc2051/ In particular, we would like to hear about your experiences of book donations in the field of health and beyond so: If you have received book donations, did they meet your needs? Were they useful? How can you ensure you get the books you need? If you have provided donations, what issues did you encounter? How did you know the books you sent were useful? Regards, Robert Sarjant Head of Programmes and Operations Book Aid International, 39-41 Coldharbour Lane, London SE5 9NR, UK Direct line +44 (0)20 7326 5818 Email: robert.sarjant@bookaid.org http:/www.bookaid.org Charity no: 313869 Books change lives HIFA2015 profile: Robert Sarjant is head of operations at Book Aid International, UK. Book Aid International promotes literacy in developing countries by creating reading and learning opportunities for disadvantaged people, in order to help them realise their potential and eradicate poverty. robert.sarjant AT bookaid.org Click here to read online. HIFA2015: Healthcare Information For All by 2015 www.hifa2015.org With thanks to our 2009 Sponsors: British Medical Association, Network for Information and Digital Access, Royal College of Midwives, Royal College of Nursing, World Health Organization To join or unsubscribe from HIFA2015, email: hifa2015-admin@dgroups.org To join our sister group CHILD2015 (child health), email: child2015-admin@dgroups.org

Pan-African University to launch in 2010

The Pan-African University, envisaged as a continental network of institutions training postgraduate students and promoting research, is set to open its doors to the first 100 students next February at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa. The centre at Stellenbosch, one of five institutions that will host the project, will focus on space sciences.

Food Safety Knowledge Network calls for OER

The Food Safety Knowledge network is seeking CC licensed open educational resources in the area of food safety. “With the increasing demand for safe food and the growing globalization of food production and manufacturing, there is a great need for no-cost, accessible training and educational resources for food safety professionals, especially those working in developing countries where such access is not readily available. Michigan State University and the Global Food Safety Initiative have partnered together to create the Food Safety Knowledge Network (FSKN), a directory of open educational resources in the area of food safety, which will make quality content easily and efficiently findable.

Should Publishers Support DRM-free Ebooks?

It seems authors and publishers are often at opposite ends of the tug of war between DRM ebooks and Open [DRM-free] Ebooks. One such author struggled with his publisher over several months to have his books published DRM free. His reasons were typical of the two major hurdles faccing many other ebook authors: Cost - this is largely a legacy issue through years of rather irrational pricing in the print publishing industry. Books seem to be largely priced on type of cover [hard or soft] and the number of page, and only then by the value of the content [if at all].

Comparing Knowledge and Usage of ICT among Male and Female Distance Learners

Distance learning in developing countries has emerged as a way of widening access to education for tertiary applicants who qualify but could not otherwise gain admission due to the limited space in the existing tertiary institutions. The delivery of the program in Ghana, a developing country in Africa, is predominantly print-based and is supported with regular face-to-face tutorials. In this process students face several challenges that could be supported with information and communication technology (ICT). The study looked at the extent to which, at their personal level, students utilize the few ICT facilities that are available in their localities that could form a basis for making a case for the use of interactive electronic platforms in the distance learning programs. The results revealed that both male and female learners have some access to and utilize ICT facilities. They have moderate knowledge and usage of the Internet. Distance learning institutions in developing countries could, therefore, take opportunity of this and gradually introduce some basic ICT applications such as e-mails, text messages, phone contacts, a website for providing detailed information, application and registration, uploading and downloading supplementary readers and other services to facilitate interaction among learners and the institutions. This way not only will quality be enhanced but also those in the remotest parts of developing countries could be conveniently reached.

At Distance-Learning College, Flash Drive Replaces Course-Management System

Soon, online students at Thomas Edison State College won't even have to be online to complete their course work. The college piloted the flash drives this spring in 15 "FlashTrack" courses." Each flash drive contained Open Office versions of word processing, spreadsheet and presentation programs; media players; and folders containing course material. At the end of the class, students took a high-stakes test -- as they would in any other online course -- to complete the course. In this generation of flash drives, the college hopes to install technology that will allow the flash drive to automatically connect to a folder hosted by the college, so students can submit assignments whenever the flash drive detects an Internet connection. The college will also look to add communication and technical-support devices in future versions of the flash drive.

Back to School: Open Educational Resources in Africa

As students around the world return to school, ccLearn blogs about the evolving education landscape, ongoing projects to improve educational resources, education technology, and the future of education. Browse the “Back to School” tag for more posts in this series. In the United States, the turn from August into September means new pencils, books and backpacks as the nation’s students start a new school year. In other parts of the world, students are returning from semester breaks or going on with classes as usual. And in some cases, with almost no books, let alone new ones. This is far too often the case in many African schools. Teachers face not only a lack of student materials, but also a lack of access to teaching resources. For years generous donors have attempted to address this problem by supplying schools copies of textbooks, desks and other equipment. Helpful in many ways, but merely giving supplies doesn’t alleviate some of the biggest problems. Take the text books for example.

Creating Electronic Educational Content" - IADP President Participates in World Bank Virtual Debate

Angus Scrimgeour, the IADP President and Former World Bank Vice President has recently completed a virtual World Bank debate on the subject of "Creating Electronic Educational Content". The debate took place with Richard Rowe, the CEO of the Open Learning Exchange. Angus's opening post was entitled "Low-Cost Devices Are Driving Proprietary and Open Education Resources" and concluding remarks were entitled "Asymmetrical OER Country Problems and Needs"

OCWC webinar: Student-generated OCW contents

The September OCWC webinar is on collaborating with students to generate OCW materials. Many appreciate and value OCW material because it is a production of those who possess the highest form of knowledge in their own respective fields.

Professor post available in Hong Kong

Post available in Hong Kong Professor/ Associate Professor in the Centre for Learning Enhancement And Research (CLEAR) at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.CLEAR is an academic unit supporting teaching and learning at the University through a wide variety of professional development activities and projects in the University's eight Faculties. It also supports the University's quality assurance process for teaching and learning. It is an established research centre in higher education. Further information about the Centre is available at Http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/clear/. For enquiries and discussion about the post and CLEAR, please contact Professor Carmel McNaught Tel: (852) 2609 6028; Email: carmel.mcnaught@cuhk.edu.hk Applicants should have (i) a PhD degree; (ii) a well-established record in academic staff development; (iii) leadership and scholarship supported by evidence of research and publications in higher education; and preferably (iv) experience in leading large projects. A track record in measurement of quality in higher education will be a strong advantage. Appointment will normally be made on contract basis for up to three years initially commencing as soon as practicable, leading to longer-term appointment or substantiation later subject to mutual agreement. Review of applications will begin in the second week of October 2009, and applications will be accepted until the post is filled. Salary will be highly competitive, commensurate with qualifications and experience. The University offers a comprehensive fringe benefit package, including medical care, plus a contract-end gratuity for an appointment of two years or longer and housing benefits for eligible appointee. [Monthly salary ranges: for Professorship: from HK$82,030 to HK$107,795 or above; for Associate Professorship: from HK$64,945 to HK$77,955. Higher salary beyond the stipulated range for Associate Professor may be offered in warranted instances.] Application forms are obtainable at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/personnel Completed forms, together with copies of qualification documents, a publication list and/or abstracts of selected published papers, should be forwarded to Centre for Learning Enhancement And Research (CLEAR), The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong. Please quote the reference number. Material can be sent by email to carmel.mcnaught@cuhk.edu.hk and simon.ho@cuhk.edu.hk

Post-graduate Diploma / Masters in Education (ICT) at UCT in 2010

The Centre for Educational Technology and the School of Education at the University of Cape Town offer a post-graduate programme in Education focused on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Students on this programme may pursue one of the following: Post-graduate diploma (1 year); MEd/MPhil by coursework and mini-dissertation (2 years) or MEd/MPhil by dissertation only (1 year). The entry requirement is an honours or a four-year degree. In 2010 the programme will be offered in weekly blocks (22-27 March; 7-12 June; 19-24 July; and 6-11 Sept). Applicants enrolled on this programme from African countries may apply for a full scholarship, covering tuition, travel, board and lodging for the block sessions. NB: Award of the scholarship is subject to being admitted to the programme. Details of the programme, application process and relevant deadlines are available at: http://www.cet.uct.ac.za/masters

Plan for 15 NextEinstein Institutes

The innovative NextEinstein Initiative providing postgraduate training in mathematics and computing skills to super-bright African graduates is spreading its wings. The first African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in South Africa will be joined in 2011 by a new AIMS in Senegal, followed by institutes in Ethiopia and Ghana. Within a decade the AIMS NewEinstein Initiative plans to launch 15 institutes across Africa.

Talis launches angel fund for Open Education

The Talis Education Division has announced an angel fund to help Open Education projects - the Talis Incubator for Open Education. The Talis Incubator for Open Education provides funding of up to £15,000 to help individuals or small groups who have big ideas about furthering the cause of Open Education. All Talis asks in return is that the project deliverables are ‘open sourced’ and the intellectual property returned back to the community, allowing it to be used freely. Talis won’t, and never will, exert any rights to the intellectual property or ideas that are funded.

OER Copyright Survey

CCLearn and Open.Michigan are working together to study the ways in which copyright law plays a role in the practices of those who create or help facilitate the creation of Open Educational Resources (OER). It is our goal to develop a deeper awareness of the degree to which OER practitioners and users grapple with copyright law issues, and whether those issues pose barriers to the creation, dissemination, and reuse of OER.

Hewlett Foundation donates $500,000 to Wikimedia to improve Open Educational Resources

Looking to contribute to the advancement of free online educational materials that can be used and edited by anyone, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation announced that it has donated a $500,000 grant to the Wikimedia Foundation. "The enormous popularity of Wikipedia and its collaborative premise make the Wikimedia Foundation an ideal vehicle for spreading the open educational resources movement," said Barbara Chow, the director of the education program at Hewlett. "We look forward to a fruitful relationship."

Post-Graduate Programme & Bursaries in Education (ICT)

Post-Graduate Programme & Bursaries in Education (ICT) The Centre for Educational Technology and the School of Education at the University of Cape Town offer a post-graduate programme in Education focused on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Students on this programme may pursue one of the following: Post-graduate diploma (1 year); MEd/MPhil by coursework and mini-dissertation (2 years) or MEd/MPhil by dissertation only (1 year). The entry requirement is an honours or a four-year degree. In 2010 the programme will be offered in weekly blocks (22-27 March; 7-12 June; 19-24 July; and 6-11 Sept). Applicants enrolled on this programme from African countries may apply for a full scholarship, covering tuition, travel, board and lodging for the block sessions. NB: Award of the scholarship is subject to being admitted to the programme. The closing date for applications is 30 September 2009. Details of the programme, application process and relevant deadlines are available at: www.cet.uct.ac.za/masters Dr. Dick Ng'ambi Programme Co-ordinator: MEd (ICT) Centre for Educational Technology University of Cape Town

Research4Life

The collective name for three programmes – HINARI, AGORA and OARE - Research4Life provides developing countries with free or low cost access to academic and professional peer-reviewed content online. Eligible libraries and their users benefit from: - Online access to over 7500 peer-reviewed international scientific journals, books, and databases - Full-text articles which can be downloaded for saving, printing or reading on screen - Searching by keyword, subject, author or language - Resources available in several languages - Training in information literacy and promotional support Research4Life is a public-private partnership of the WHO, FAO, UNEP, Cornell and Yale Universities and the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers. Working together with technology partner Microsoft, the partnership’s goal is to help attain six of the UN’s eight Millennium Development Goals by 2015, reducing the scientific knowledge gap between industrialized countries and the developing world.

Google Books adds Creative Commons license options

Some very exciting news for authors, publishers, and readers. Google launched a program to enable rights holders to make their Creative Commons-licensed books available for the public to download, use, remix, and share via Google Books. The new initiative makes it easy for participants in Google Books’ Partner Program to mark their books with one of the six Creative Commons licenses (or the CC0 waiver). This gives authors and publishers a simple way to articulate the permissions they have granted to the public through a CC license, while giving people a clear indication of the legal rights they have to CC-licensed works found through Google Books.

Can eBooks Satisfy? Creating Content for ICT-enabled Classrooms

While there is much effort & focus on deploying educational hardware in the developing world, much less hype and attention is focusing on the content students will use once these systems are in the hands of hungry young minds. How can educational systems, and the stakeholders that support them, adapt existing and new content onto these devices? Will this adaptation be able to challenge the existing income streams and vested interests of current content production & dissemination models? And should this content focus on ebooks and other electronic media the replicates existing content, or is this an opportunity to change the way in which content is created, teacher’s educate, and students learn?

Study identifies 20 HE challenges

A study of higher education in 15 countries of the Southern African Development Community, SADC, has identified 20 leadership challenges facing the region, governments and institutions. They range from improved data collection, access, student success, staffing and funding to policy and planning, capacity, infrastructure, private provision and quality. The challenges identified, says a just-published report of the study, show the considerable amount of work needed to build a strong and sustainable higher education system across the region.

WIPO, CC, and Nurturing the Public Domain

For the past year, Creative Commons has been working on tools to help increase access to works in the public domain. Often, it is not clear whether a work has entered the public domain or is still covered by copyright protection. This lack of clarity can cause a lot of problems, and Creative Commons is not the only one concerned about the issue. For example, WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Organization) has begun research on tools for increasing access to the public domain, which relates to what we do at CC in several ways. Part of the WIPO research includes a comparative Scoping Study that will look at different countries’ legislation to see how how the public domain is defined and how public domain works are located. Encouragingly, Severine Dusollier, head of Intellectual Property Rights at Centre de Recherches Informatique et Droit and Creative Commons’ Belgium project lead, is in charge of this study. CC conducted a similar study last year and we’re paying close attention to how our results relate to WIPO’s. (Please note: the CC study is closed; no new input from the form will be accepted.) Part of WIPO’s study reviews private copyright documentation systems, including Creative Commons. Other samples in the study will include traditional collective rights management organizations

OpenLearn Research Report published

The Open University has published a research report which is now available online (see link below). The report evaluates the impact OpenLearn has had internally and externally and the challenges that lie ahead in open content and establishing open learning networks. The research report brings together several case studies, reports and reflections from the OpenLearn team over the last two years, delivering several perspectives on the provision of Open Educational Resources (OER).

30 Reasons for Openness

Curtis Bonk shares ten reasons for sharing from the perspective of institutions, instructors, and course designers as well as why potential learners might use OER

Reuse of material in the context of education and research

The report “Reuse of material in the context of education and research” is now available in English. The report was produced by Creative Commons Netherlands and SURF’s Digital Rights Expert Community (SURFdirect). From the introduction: SURFdirect has indicated that the choice of license must not create barriers to the future use of educational and research material, that it can be applied at both research universities and universities of applied sciences, and that this can in fact be done in 80% of cases, this report recommends using the most liberal Creative Commons license for textual output.

Communal Webcasting platform to beef up campus's popular educational content

Dubbed "Opencast Matterhorn" and funded with grants from the Andrew W. Mellon and William and Flora Hewlett foundations totaling $1.5 million, the project will bring together programmers and educational technology experts from an international consortium of higher education institutions, including ETH Zürich in Switzerland, University of Osnabrück in Germany, Cambridge University in the United Kingdom and Canada's University of Saskatchewan. The software will support the scheduling, capture, encoding and delivery of educational content to video-and-audio sharing sites such as YouTube and iTunes, so that learners can access lectures when and where they need it. With additional funding, expertise and labor from other members of the consortium, the Opencast Matterhorn platform is scheduled to be up and running by summer 2010.

55 Open Source Apps Transforming Education

While some educators have been quick to grasp the potential and promise of open source software, many others have been hesitant to stray from the comfortable zone of commercial applications. Yet that’s changing. More teachers and institutions are now participating with organizations like SchoolForge, the Open Source Education Foundation, and Open Source Schools. These educators are beginning to see that the open source philosophy has the power to transform education in several key ways.

OER Africa u-Now evaluation

OER Africa helped with a usability evaluation of u-Now, importantly this evaluation is from potential end-users and highlights areas for improvement going forward. Many positives to take from this, in particular "‘clean’, ‘uncluttered’, fresh’, and ‘clear’ [design], with the content logically grouped and organised". The main negative to be highlighted however is the limited range of items currently available (61). Of course, and reassuringly, the BERLiN project aims to directly address this. http://webapps.nottingham.ac.uk/elgg/berlin/files/

UNESCO publishes “OER: Conversations in Cyberspace”

UNESCO has released its first openly licensed publication. Open Educational Resources: Conversations in Cyberspace which brings together the background papers and reports from the first three years of activities in the UNESCO OER Community. Access the online edition at:

Open Library to Create Catalog Including Every Book

Open Library is a project of the non-profit Internet Archive, and is funded in part by a grant from the California State Library. We have a small team of fantastic programmers who have accomplished a lot, but we can’t do it alone! This is an Open project – the software is open, the data is open, the documentation is open, and the site is open. The purpose of the project is “one web page for every book ever published.”

Maldives participates in Virtual University

The Maldives is part of a network of 30 countries developing a Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC), said State Minister for Education Dr Ahmed Ali Manik. The countries have been developing this project since 2000 with Manik estimating the courses will be available online, free of charge, within the next couple of years. “Through open educational resources, we will be able to access courses in other small states. It’s a network for higher education,” said Manik, who participated in a five-day conference for Commonwealth Education Ministers earlier this month. Read more at:

Picasa Adds CC Search

Creative Commons search has been added to Google’s image-editing software, Picasa. Read more at:

Short Video Explaining Creative Commons Licensing

This video explains what a Creative Commons license actually is. Its aim is to dispel any preconceived notions that individuals may have about Creative Commons. A useful video mainly about CC-BY-NC-SA, but it is helpful in explaining that authors retain copyright. Access it at:

Plagiarism Detection to Track OER Reuse

Brandon Muramatsu at MIT suggests the use of plagiarism software to detect OER reuse. Muramatsu mentions the idea originating at discussions at COSL, and was mentioned in Sean Duncan’s recent dissertation on OER reuse. Read more at:

Brigham Young University (BYU) has launched its Opencourseware pilot

The pilot includes three university-level courses and three high school-level courses (BYU IS offers 250 university-level courses online for credit and another 250 high school-level courses online for credit). The courses in BYU IS OCW are content-complete – that is, they are the full courses as delivered online without the need of additional textbooks or other materials (only graded assessments have been removed). Read more at:

Google launches Translator Kit

At Google, we consider translation a key part of making information universally accessible to everyone around the world. While we think Google Translate, our automatic translation system, is pretty neat, sometimes machine translation could use a human touch. Yesterday, we launched Google Translator Toolkit, a powerful but easy-to-use editor that enables translators to bring that human touch to machine translation. Read more at

Open Educator as DJ

The metaphor of "Teacher as DJ" isn't new - ever since the phrase "Rip, Mix, Burn" entered the popular consciousness via Apple's advertising campaign, it began to be applied to how educators might approach digital educational resources. But with the ever increasing number of quality free open educational resources, the advent of 'mashups' as a widespread model of innovation both artistic and commercial, as well as the new breeds of online media tools and alternative interfaces, the "Educator as DJ" is fast moving from high level metaphor to practical art. This presentation from Scott Leslie digs deeper into this metaphor and demonstrates live what the actual practice of the open educator as DJ might look like. The presentation is available at:

Patterns of Learning Object Reuse in the Connexions Repository

Since the term learning object was first published, there has been either an explicit or implicit expectation of reuse. There has also been a lot of speculation about why learning objects are, or are not, reused. This study conducted by S.M. Duncan quantitatively examined the actual amount and type of learning object use, to include reuse, modification, and translation, within a single open educational resource repository–Connexions. Access it online at:

Major U.K. University Goes Open Access

University College London has joined the growing list of universities that are moving forward with open access, which means they will post copies of faculty members' published journal articles in a free online repository. UCL announced a new board that will implement a policy adopted by faculty last October. It follows the lead of Harvard and Stanford Universities, where some schools adopted open access "mandates" last year, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which voted for university-wide open access this spring. Like most other institutions, UCL will observe journals' copyright policies, which means they don't post the papers until the journal itself has made the full text freely available (most now do so within 12 months). But even though the article may already be online, proponents say these institutional archives are important because they provide one-stop shopping for a school's research and make the articles easier for the public to find. United Kingdom open access experts powwowed on the movement's impact at a

Award for Africa's leading teacher education initiative

Africa’s largest teacher education project, TESSA (Teaching Education in Sub-Saharan Africa), has been awarded the Leadership Award by the e-Learning Africa Awards for Exemplary Open Educational Resource (OER) Practices at a ceremony in Dakar. Read more at:

What are free YouTube classes worth?

As cash-strapped college students struggle to finance their tuition, many are wondering if they might find a better alternative in Ivy League courses that have recently become available online, anytime, and completely free. Read full article at:

USA, Canada and the EU attempt to kill treaty to protect blind people’s access to written material

Right now, in Geneva, at the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization, history is being made. For the first time in WIPO history, the body that creates the world’s copyright treaties is attempting to write a copyright treaty dedicated to protecting the interests of copyright users, not just copyright owners. At issue is a treaty to protect the rights of blind people and people with other disabilities that affect reading (people with dyslexia, people who are paralyzed or lack arms or hands for turning pages). This should be a slam dunk: who wouldn’t want a harmonized system of copyright exceptions that ensure that it’s possible for disabled people to get access to the written word? Read the latest at:

EFF Teaches Copyright, without an agenda

When it comes to copyright, our youth are too often bombarded with extremes. The entertainment industry giants propagate a skewed perspective by launching anti-copying educational programs, leaving out much of the balanced information necessary to cultivating user’s awareness about her real rights to a resource. The Electronic Frontier Foundation recognized this problem and went to work on a copyright curriculum that would not only be fair and balanced in perspective, but comprehensive in its scope by encouraging discussion and self-education. Access it online at

Creative Commons Encouraging GFDL Wiki Migration

Since Wikipedia’s decision to migrate to a Creative Commons licence, Creative Commons is encouraging other GFDL-licensed wikis to migrate by August 1st. Mike Linksvayer at Creative Commons notes that Wikimedia has created an “outreach” page for GFDL-licensed wikis. Read online at:

First OA Mandate for South Africa

The University of Pretoria has voted unanimously to adopt an open access mandate. This mandate marks a first for South Africa. Access to articles is subject to publisher’s permission, but faculty are encouraged to submit to OA journals. Read article at:

Online Education Is More Beneficial (23/05/2009)

Binshan Lin and John Vassar at the College of Business Administration, Louisiana State University in Shreveport, suggest that online learning communities have many benefits because they offer learners social networks to effectively and easily acquire and share knowledge among themselves. However, key to success, they have found is individual self-governance. Read article at:

DiscoverEd Prototype Slides Available

Slides from ccLearn’s Ahrash Bissell and Nathan Yergler presentation at OCWC Global 2009 are now available. These slides provide an interesting look at the thinking behind DiscoverEd, a search engine for OER. View them online at:

Wikipedia Selects CC License

As a result of a community vote (reported last by OEN), Wikipedia will now switch its license from the GNU Free Documentation License to CC-BY-SA. Wikimedia reports that 75.8% of the community voted in favor of the measure. Read more at

OCWC Names New Director

The OCWC Board of Directors is delighted to announce that Mary Lou Forward, of Brattleboro, Vermont, has accepted its offer of the OCWC Executive Director position. Read more at

Where is the open education movement going?

Brian Lamb, along with others such as Dave Cormier, Alec Couros, and Gardner Campbell discuss the future of open education. Read more and access the transcript from the Live discussion at:

Remix Culture: Fair Use Is Your Friend

The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video is a stellar resource for online video creators looking to better understand their fair use rights. Previously released as a PDF-download by American University’s Center for Social Media, the document now has a fitting video counterpart titled Remix Culture: Fair Use Is Your Friend. Read more at:

How “Open” is Open Curriculum?

David Warlick shares his thoughts on open curriculum. He discusses the challenge of getting teachers to share and questions why some want that content vetted by a higher authority. Read full article at:

Blues skies thinking for design and Open Educational Resources

Grainne Cole, a Professor of E-Learning at The Open University, shares her notes on a keynote given at the University of Limerick. The presentation discusses a wide range of topics including design issues and pedagogical implications. View the article at

Why Share OER?

Curt Bonk at Indiana University gives 10 reasons instructors share their courses online. Bonk also gives a list of notable OER and OCW projects. Read full article at:

MGF / RUFORUM

RUFORUM hosted a meeting of potential partners in this BMGF initiative, at its headquarters in Kampala, Uganda on 6 & 7 May, 2009. The meeting provided an opportunity for OER Africa to share with RUFORUM a draft MoU to formalise an already cordial relationship between the two entities. Over the course of the two days, OER Africa and RUFOROM worked closely with Christine Geith of the Michigan University, who has been mandated by BMGF to work with particular partners towards the finalisation of an of a project around OER and agriculture.

CC Case Studies: Share your Story

With upwards of 150 million CC-licensed works published from every corner of the world, no single use case can tell the whole story. Creators and users come to CC for different reasons, and for many, CC solves different problems. We’re trying to capture the diversity of CC creators and content by building a resource that inspires new works and informs free culture. Creative Commons Case Studies 2009 kicks off today – and we want to hear your story! We’re collecting cases big and small on our re-launched Case Studies wiki, an online portal to upload and discover documentation about CC-licensed projects. Find out

Vietnam to Host 2010 OpenCourseWare Global Meeting

Vietnam has been selected to host the 2010 Annual OpenCourseWare Consortium (OCWC) Global Meeting, which is scheduled for May 5-7, 2010.The event will be co-organised by the OCWC, the US’s Vietnam Education Foundation (VEF) and the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training (MOET).Read more

YouTube EDU Launched

Google has launched YouTube EDU, which centralizes the content from over 100 universities and colleges .This robust collection gives you access to lectures by professors and world-renowned thought leaders, new research and campus tours. At the moment, you can access over 200 full courses from leading universities, including MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Yale and IIT/IISc. And it’s all searchable within YouTube EDU. Read more at:

New Open Book about Mobile Learning

A new book about mobile learning titled, “Mobile Learning: Transforming the Delivery of Education and Training”, has been released by Athabasca University Press. The book covers a wide range of topics such as designing mobile learning objects and using mobile learning in international distance education programs. It is licensed BY-NC-ND and is available free as an e-book on the Athabasca University Press site at

Oxford University Press Releases “Lessons from the Identity Trail” Under CC License

Lessons From The Identity Trail: Anonymity, Privacy and Identity in a Networked Society is a collection of essays edited by Ian Kerr, Valerie Steeves, and Carole Lucock recently published by Oxford University Press. Focusing on “the importance and impact of anonymity and privacy in a networked society”, Lessons From The Identity Trail is being released under a CC BY-NC-ND license, allowing for the free sharing and spreading of the work. You can access the full book online at:

Online version of the OER Remix Game (Beta) Available

For a little fun, play this online game to learn about the license compatibility difficulties involved in remixing. You can find it at

The Place for Open Textbooks

Peter Suber at Open Access News is reporting on a new paper from Gary Matkin about open textbooks. The article defines open textbooks, provides a survey of previous open textbook efforts and how they are distributed. From the article: “The lack of quality standards is a problem as well as a barrier to adoption. If we can’t define quality in open resources, or describe the methods we will use to assure its maintenance, how can we convince governments and individuals to consume OER even if it is free?”

Video by David Wiley Released: A Brief Introduction to Open Education Resources

This video by David Wiley presents a brief introduction to Open Educational Resources to the SPARC-ACRL Forum in January. The presentation is only fifteen minutes long. You can access it at:

ccLearn Productions Announces New Guides

Jane Park at Creative Commons announces ccLearn Recommendations, ccLearn Explanations and ccLearn Step-by-Step Guides. ccLearn Recommendations are resources for sites crafting licenses and terms of use when hosting OER. ccLearn Explanations introduces open education concepts to educators. ccLearn Step-by-Step Guides is a basic guide to people who would like to apply a Creative Commons license to their work. Read more

Against Non-Commercial

David Wiley has posted a lengthy response to a post written by Stephen Downes in December. Wiley and Downes have had fundamental disagreements about Creative Commons Non-Commercial clause and have exchanged posts for several years on this topic. Read more at:

Open Educational Resources (OER) find its way at the M-2009

M-2009 - 7-10 June 2009 in Maastricht in the Netherland- is a one-time merger of the bi-annual World Conference of ICDE (International Council for Open and Distance Education) and the annual European Conference of EADTU (European Association of Distance Teaching Universities). The theme for M-2009 is ‘Flexible Education for All: Open – Global – Innovative’.

OCW Finder, OER Recommender Future Directions Meeting

Folksemantic is a project to create tools that increase the impact of open education resources by helping people find, filter, collaborate around, and remix them. As part of the project, work is underway to integrate the OCW Finder, OER Recommender, and Luvfoo. Read more at:

MIT adopts a university-wide OA mandate

The Faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is committed to disseminating the fruits of its research and scholarship as widely as possible. In keeping with that commitment, the Faculty adopts the following policy: Each Faculty member grants to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology nonexclusive permission to make available his or her scholarly articles and to exercise the copyright in those articles for the purpose of open dissemination. Read full article

Delivering Online Course Reserves in All Formats: A Story of Successful Collaboration

Brown University has developed an open-source course reserves management system that allows faculty to submit, track, and edit requests for all formats. The system is integrated with MyCourses (Blackboard), incorporates copyright checks, and uses the library's context-sensitive linking application to channel requests to library-licensed, full-text resources. Read more at:

Writing Spaces initiative to Offer Peer-Reviewed Textbooks

Professors at Grand Valley State University have started the Writing Spaces initiative. The project is a series of books containing peer-reviewed essays written by teachers and students using a Creative Commons license. You can read more

Hewlett Foundation Grantees Meeting

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation hosted its annual grantees meeting in Monterey, California. This year’s meeting was a gathering of Open Educational Resources advocates, practitioners and funders. It was co-hosted by the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The meeting commenced on Tuesday 3rd March, 2009 with an Opening Panel on which Catherine Ngugi, OER Africa Project Director, participated as one of three panellists invited to speak on emerging trends in the field. The Panel, facilitated by Vic Vuchic of the Hewlett Foundation comprised Catherine Ngugi, James Woolliscroft, Dean University of Michigan Medical School and Rachel Wise, Director of Secondary Education, Omaha Public Schools.

YouTube Tests Download and Creative Commons License Options

Many of you probably caught the news that YouTube has finally agreed to integrate CC licensing into their platform. This means that institutions generating video opencourseware can now share those videos via YouTube in a manner that makes it clear to users that some rights are reserved. They are starting off by only allowing licensing integration with educational "partners", and several institutions have already signed up. The hope is that this functionality will be expanded to include all users and all possible CC licenses, but in the meantime, additional partners will help to deepen the impact. We encourage you to consider joining the effort if you are producing open educational videos. You can read more

Estimating Reuse / Remix Value of 7 OER Projects

In this article, author Jared Stein explores a number of OER projects and conducts a preliminary assessment of the reusability and remixability of the OER hosted in each. As he reviews each of the seven different OER projects he attempts to give each collection a reuse/remix value rating based on his initial impressions and observations. Read the full article at:

Blackboards without Borders: Introducing University of the People: New Online Institution Revolutionizes Higher Education with Tuition-Free Model

Millions of people never have the chance to attend college because of economic and geographic constraints. With the help of technology and a visionary educator, this is about to change. In April 2009, entrepreneur Shai Reshef is opening the virtual gates to the world’s first tuition-free, internet-based academic institution. As a non-profit venture, the University of the People (UoP; http://www.UoPeople.org) promises to revolutionize higher education by providing universal access to college studies—even in the poorest parts of the world.

New For-Profit Web Site Repackages Free Lecture Videos From Colleges

A new company called Academic Earth offers free online videos of lectures from some of the world’s most renowned scholars teaching at leading universities. The company has simply grabbed the videos off the universities’ own Web sites and plans to offer tools to students who want to talk about the content — along with a chance to grade the quality of the lectures. Read full article at: