This document defines and discusses open education resources including Creative Commons licenses, open courseware, and WikiEducator. It provides the following information: Creative Commons licenses allow varying levels of reuse and remixing of creative works while providing attribution to the original creator. Open courseware like MIT's makes educational content freely available online, such as lecture materials without providing a full education. WikiEducator is an online community for collaboratively developing open educational resources and sharing educational content and projects.

1. Open Education Resources
Michele Ogle, Ellen Murphy, Joyce McKnight, Claire Miller, Hui-ya Chuang, Robert Kester,
Rebecca Bonanno, Katarina Pisutova, Suzanne Hayes, Kathleen Stone, Deb Staulters
About the OER Task Force Creative Commons License Open CourseWare WikiEducator
What are they? About Open CourseWare (OCW)
This working group will explore the possibilities of What is WikiEducator?
The Creative Commons Licenses are a spectrum of usable licenses that, when applied Just as open source software became available and was appreciated in the world WikiEducator is an evolving community intended for the collaborative:
emerging learning resources and make recommendations to creative works allow users to remix, reuse and build upon creative works in different of computer software, a similar movement began in academia to make • planning of education projects linked with the development of free content;
to the center to identify and include these resources in ways and with varying levels of permission. Placing the license on a creative work also educational content more freely available. With widespread internet access • development of free content on WikiEducator for e-learning;
allows it to be found more easily online, and each license makes it clear how and available, individuals in academia wished to use the internet to share learning
our courses and open learning initiatives. whether or not a creative work can legally and rightfully used.
• work on building open education resources (OERs) on how to create OERs;
content and even to provide the content of entire courses to the world at large, • networking on funding proposals developed as free content.
which prompted institutional discussions about who owns knowledge.
Each Creative Commons license is made up of three layers:
History
• CC Rights Expression Language – the “machine readable” layer
Definitions of Openness • Legal code – the traditional layer of legal language
MITOPENCOURSEWARE WikiEducator was created in 2006 at the University of New Zealand – originally
In 1999 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) launched the first as experimental wiki for sharing educational resources. Managed by Open
• Commons Deed – the “human readable” layer offerings of free MIT Open CourseWare, which consists primarily of lecture Education Resource (OER) Foundation with support from Commonwealth of
notes, videos of lectures, and other materials. These materials are meant as Learning and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, WikiEducator keeps
The 3 layers relate directly to the 3 major
resources for reuse by educators, and proper attribution to the original MIT faculty gaining contributing educators worldwide. Free online trainings focused on Wiki
players of content creation on the web:
author(s) is required. According to MIT’s website (http://mit.ocw.edu) almost all skills for educators started in 2007. By 2008, WikiEducator had almost 6,000
The 3 layers relate their 2000+ courses are available with this disclaimer:
1. content creators, registered users.
2. content users, and “•OCW is not an MIT education.
3. the web. •OCW does not grant degrees or certificates. Strategy
•OCW does not provide access to MIT faculty. “WikiEducator aims to build a thriving and sustainable global community
Each layer has a role to play in the value and •Materials may not reflect entire content of the course.” dedicated to the design, development and delivery of free content for learning in
meaning of the license. No matter who you realisation of a free version of the education curriculum by 2015.”
MIT’s OCW Scholar courses are more complete and contain multimedia http://wikieducator.org/WikiEducator:About
are, there is one layer of the license you can
resources for use by independent learners. These 7 courses are more complete
easily interpret, and therefore, use.
and contain multimedia resources to aid learning. MITx will offer a first
Workshops
experimental course in March 2012, with additional offerings planned for
Learning4Content Workshops are continuously offered
Image credit: www.creativecommons.org CC-BY
September. These MITx courses feature interactive instruction, communication
around the globe as online and face-to-face sessions.
Design Rationale with professor, individual assessment, and ability to earn certificates.
These workshops are still offered free of charge for
(http://mitx.mit.edu)
participants due to the support from William and Flora
CC Licenses:
Hewlett Foundation.
 Strike a balance between copyright law and individual creators’ ability to make use
Open Universities: A group of universities from all over the world that host research of their work; (image credit: http://ocwconsortium.org CC: BY 3.0)
The Open CourseWare Consortium (http://www.ocwconsortium.org) grew out of (Image credit to http://wikieducator.org)
opportunities and academic programs with a goal of increasing accessibility for all -  Provide a simple, standardized way of giving and/or limiting permissions to the use
early work in open courseware. There are 250+ member institutions worldwide,
including those in developing nations - to the right to education and lifelong learning of creative work of all kinds;
 Allow anyone to obtain and maintain credit for their work;
and the consortium is sponsored by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Badges
opportunities. plus the Sustaining Members listed here:
 Have universal meaning and recognition;
Open Textbook: high-quality college texts offered online under a license that allows
 Are perpetual; Lifelong Learning
free digital access and low-cost print options. Students can read the full text free  Have no impact on existing legal freedoms or exceptions, and There is an increase in employers requiring employees to have very specific skills
online, download a printable PDF, or purchase a hard copy at a fraction of the cost of  Present no technological restrictions to access of content. beyond what they may have acquired through traditional educational routes.
traditional books. Learning takes place in many places and through many different ways. Open
Open Educational Resource (OER): teaching and learning materials that are freely CC Licenses + Users = Open Content educational courses have sparked a growing interest in how to assess and
available online for everyone to use, whether you are an instructor, student or self- recognize learning that takes place outside of the traditional classroom. For
learner. They usually have a Creative Commons License associated with them Open content is any content found online that can be copied, edited, revised, reused example, the Learning Resource taskforce members have been taking the
and redistributed, legally. This includes educational content! Openness in Education course, which does not award college credit, but helps
(remember: just because something is on the web, it does not make it free nor an
The OCW Consortium provides a means to search for open courses available those taking it to learn new skills.
OER). The Licenses through the member institutions, and also to provide assistance to member
Open Courseware (OCW): free and available digital publications of high quality, institutions in developing and organizing their own open courseware offerings. What are Badges?
university‐level educational material organized and presented as courses. OCW often Courses are available in languages other than English, and course search by Badges are an answer to the need to recognize learning that takes place through
include course planning materials and evaluation tools as well as thematic content. language is available on the web site. alternative methods. It is the age old idea of lifelong learning, but for the 21st
Open Badges: Badges provide a way for learners to get recognition for gaining new century. Badges are a visual representation of ones skills and achievements.
In addition to these examples, an internet search of “open courseware” or “open They can be collected on websites, resumes, job boards, and more. Badges can
skills and experience using the web and other digital learning environments. Badges
educational resources” will yield many more examples. represent small task completions all the way up to very in depth complicated
are visual representations of 21st century skills and achievements that learners can
skills. They are housed on the web and contain metadata that can link back to the
display to potential employers, schools, colleagues and their community. specific achievements and evaluation used to earn the badge.
Massive Open Online Course (MOOC): an open, participatory course that is OER University
distributed over the internet, and seeks to promote lifelong, networked learning. It has Mozilla Open Badges
Mozilla is currently leading the way in developing an
some of the same elements as an online course - students, content, instruction; a What is OERu?
open badge infrastructure. This infrastructure will
MOOC also provides a variety of ways to connect and collaborate with others while Open Education Resource University (OERu) is an international partnership of
provide a means for issuing, earning, and displaying
gaining digital skills. accredited universities, colleges and polytechnics coordinated by the OER
the badges. The idea is that issuers of badges will be
foundation. Its main goal is to widen access and reduce the cost of tertiary study
Learning Objective Repository (LOR): a digital library. It enables educators to able to award badges through the infrastructure and
for learners who are excluded from the formal education sector.
store, share, manage and use and reuse educational resources, content, and/or learners will have a “badge backpack” on the system
assets. to contain them. The technology is currently be
How does it Work?
Open Licenses: A license is a document that specifies what can and cannot be done developed and piloted by a joint venture with Mozilla
OERu students gain free access to courses that are designed for independent-
and the Peer 2 Peer University for courses in web
with a work (whether sound, text, image or multimedia). It grants permissions and study using OER. OERu learners will receive student support through a global
development, with the full launch to occur early in
states restrictions. Broadly speaking, an open license is one which grants permission network of volunteers and peer support using social software technologies.
2012.
to access, re-use and redistribute a work with few or no restrictions. Students can be assessed for a fee by participating institutions and earn a
Image available from MozillaWiki under CC-BY-SA
credible credential.
Open Source: The term came out of the world of software development, and was
originally used as a way to describe software source code and demonstrate how it's License
developed. The basic principles of “open source” are: Openness, transparency,
collaboration, diversity, and reusability.
Open Access: refers to unrestricted access and reuse of (via the Internet) articles
published in scholarly journals and books.
(Image credit to http://wikieducator.org) This poster licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License 3.0