Search and discovery technology for OER

[Cable Green <cable AT creativecommons.org>]

Greetings All:

A few of you have asked for some of the talking points that we at Creative Commons have been kicking around. I hope they are useful. 

CC will be in the chat room to chime in, but please, if you're passionate about talking about any of these points, please do!  And of course, there's plenty of related arguments that are useful beyond these...

Special thanks to Tim Volmer (CC) for drafting this list.

Cable

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CC BY maximizes impact of DOL funded materials by clearly communicating rights

• In order to be used dependably and reliably by teachers, businesses, or education institutions, publicly funded materials must be clearly licensed and marked as such in order to communicate the rights available to reusers.

• Content creators retain copyright; CC licenses are built on top of and encourage respect for copyright and copyright holders; and, CC licenses are non-exclusive.

• CC BY is the gold standard for communicating the DOL’s policy that the public should have access to newly created content produced with DOL TAACCCT funds.

• CC licenses have been adopted as the institutional and governmental standard for key educational initiatives around the world, and similarly for public sector information, scientific publishing, and works curated by cultural heritage institutions such as national museums and libraries.

• CC licenses embody established technical standards that allow teachers, schools, publishers and others to find openly licensed materials using search engines such as Google.

CC BY enables innovative and entrepreneurial uses of DOL funded materials

• CC BY gives individuals, nonprofits and businesses permission to use and build upon material created with public funds, so long as the creator is credited.

• Innovative use of these materials may be made by any teacher, parent, and school district, nationwide and beyond. The materials will be available for reuse and value-add by creative entrepreneurs, education start-ups, and traditional commercial businesses.

• CC BY license does not restrict commercialization of the open content. Commercial publishers can take all new content created with grant funds and change it, make it better, add value, and sell it.

CC BY is compatible with established policy and practice for OER

• Publicly funded educational materials released under CC BY can be easily and seamlessly used in the many systems where CC licenses are already embraced, e.g.:

• OpenCourseWare at dozens of major universities
• innovative K-12 and community college initiatives in states like Virginia and Washington
• education businesses and open textbook publishers such as Flat World Knowledge
• leading foundations that support the creation of educational materials such as Hewlett and Gates

The public deserves free access to educational materials it funds

• DOL is exercising rational, responsible public policy that more efficiently uses public tax dollars to improve education opportunities for community college students and displaced workers.

• The public should not be required to pay twice to access and use educational materials, first via the funding of the research and development of educational resources using their tax dollars, and then again when they purchase materials like textbooks they helped fund or when they pay a license fee to a grant recipient to use the materials.

• "Taxpayer-funded educational resources should be open educational resources."

• This fundamental principle has already been validated and embraced through initiatives such as the National Institute of Health’s Public Access Policy, where the final peer reviewed journal manuscripts resulting from NIH funding must be deposited in a publicly accessible digital archive so that anyone can access them.

The government may set the license terms for content created using its funds

• Just as in the private publishing industry, a funding body is entitled to set commercial terms as a condition of funding.  

• A grant recipient may choose, or not, to accept those terms when funding is offered; the choice is theirs to make, as they can accept the funding and the accompanying terms, or decline of their own free will if they disagree with the terms offered.  

• The government should be granted a wide berth in setting the terms for the copyright of the materials its funding generates.

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On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 8:17 PM, Cable Green <cable AT creativecommons.org> wrote:

Dear OER Colleagues,

 

DOL’s Employment and Training Administration (ETA) will be hosting two web-chat sessions for the public to provide feedback on the first round of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grant program competition. This is the program that just announced the first investment of $500 million in community colleges with the OER requirement on new course/content development. The program is slated to invest $2 billion in total.

 

It is important that those in support of federal open investments participate in this event. Whether and how any further open investments are made in this program will be determined, in part, through public comment sessions such as these.

 

ETA invites interested individuals to participate in either of the TAACCCT Grant Program public comment sessions, scheduled for:

·         Tuesday, October 4, 2011 3:00-4:00pm EDT

·         Thursday, October 6, 2011 3:00-4:00pm EDT

 

To join the public comment session, please use the following link to access the session you are attending:  http://www.dol.gov/dol/chat.htm.  Note that this link is for both sessions.

 

A transcript of the listening sessions will be available to the public at www.doleta.gov/TAACCCT after October 12, 2011

 

The TAACCCT program is designed to meet industry needs while accelerating individual learning and improving college retention and achievement rates.  The overall goal is to increase industry-recognized credential or degree completion rates of participants.  Projects were encouraged to use online or technology-enabled learning to achieve these objectives.  DOL is implementing the TAACCCT program in partnership with the Department of Education. 

 

For more information about the TAACCCT program, as well as a list of grantees awarded under the first round of grants, visit: www.doleta.gov/TAACCCT

Please attend both sessions.  We need all voices on the table.

Thank you,

Cable


Cable Green, PhD
Director of Global Learning

Creative Commons

(e) cable AT creativecommons.org  /  (m) +01 360-790-3114  /  (s) cable.green

(t) @cgreen  /  (b) OER
(b) power of open