Publishers Criticize Federal Investment in Open Educational Resources

On May 24, 2011 the Chronicle of Higher Education posted this story: Publishers Criticize Federal Investment in Open Educational Resources.

Creative Commons supports the US Department of Labor including a CC BY requirement in their recent TAACCCT grant, and CC will actively support the winning grantees.

I wrote the following comment on this Chronicle story:

(1) The US Federal Government has, for decades, provided grants to higher education to produce new research and educational content. To say it is “dangerous for [the Federal Government] to be in the product business” is irrelevant. The Department of Labor (DOL) is exercising rational, responsible public policy that more efficiently uses public tax dollars to improve education opportunities.

The DOL has put forth a simple, effective public policy: Taxpayer-funded educational resources should be open educational resources. 

Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or repurposing by others.

Information that is designed, developed and distributed through the generosity of public tax dollars should be accessible to the public that paid for it -- without undue restrictions or limits.

If you think about this open policy, it makes sense. We, the American taxpayers, should get what we paid for.

(2) Karen Cator is correct: the commercial publishers (textbook, journals, etc.) should be embracing and supporting this new public policy. When publicly funded digital content (courses, textbooks, data, research, etc.) is openly licensed with a CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), everyone can use and modify the open content to meet their needs -- including the commercial publishers. 

Moreover, the CC BY license does not restrict commercialization of the open content. To be clear, the commercial publishers can take all $2B of content created in this DOL grant, change it, make it better, add value, and sell it. The consumer (states, colleges, students) will then have a choice: (a) use the free openly licensed version(s) or (b) purchase the commercial for-a-fee version. If the commercial content / services are worth paying for, people will pay. If not, they won’t.

Next step? We should applaud the Departments of Labor and Education for their work and encourage all US Federal agencies to follow suit: require CC BY licenses on all content produced with federal funding.

Cable Green
Director of Global Learning
Creative Commons

==========

My friend, Tom Caswell, reminded me of the inspiring phrase attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. Open Educational Resources are moving from step 2 to step 3.

The Quiet Revolution in Open Learning

Chronicle:  The Quiet Revolution in Open Learning

"Then, the Education and Labor Departments decided to do something highly uncharacteristic of large federal bureaucracies: They began to talk. To one another. Constructively. What they devised could change higher education for huge numbers of students, many of whom will never attend a community college at all.

The concept is simple: Community colleges that compete for federal money to serve students online will be obliged to make those materials—videos, text, assessments, curricula, diagnostic tools, and more—available to everyone in the world, free, under a Creative Commons license. The materials will become, to use the common term, open educational resources, or OER's."

Cable Green moving to Creative Commons

I am delighted to announce I have accepted the position of “Director of Global Learning” @ Creative Commons (job details below).  CC posted the news this morning.

While I am sad leaving the Washington State Board for Community & Technical Colleges (it has been the best job of my career!), I have an intense passion for open education resources and open policy… and this is an opportunity to work those issues on a global scale.  I believe, as the marginal cost of sharing digital content approaches $0, we have a collective obligation to help learners everywhere access a quality, affordable education.

Creative Commons is about realizing the full potential of the Internet — universal access to research and education, full participation in culture, and driving a new era of development, growth, and productivity.

I think it will be a good fit ;)

Cable

New e-mail: cable@creativecommons.org

===================

JOB TITLE: Director of Global Learning

Supervisor: CEO, Cathy Casserly

PURPOSE OF JOB:

·         Responsible for setting strategic direction and priorities to build regional momentum and a global movement to enable robust and vibrant practices and policies for free sharing of education and learning assets.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

·         Develop relationships with constituent communities (such as high-profile institutions, organizations and governments) to openly license their content, and to promote Creative Commons.

·         Identify and foresee trends in learning and education communities and determine how Creative Commons' licenses and technologies can influence creation, distribution and funding practices.

·         Work with countries, states / provinces / territories, and higher education and K-12 systems / institutions to adopt policies that require publicly funded works to be openly licensed with Creative Commons licensing.

·         Coordinate annual and long-term strategic planning processes with staff and Board committee and work with learning team staff to develop short and long-range work plans with clear objectives and timetables for achieving goals.

·         Work with learning/education vendors and communities to integrate Creative Commons tools into their content creation or distribution processes.

·         Take feedback from the education community and refine existing Creative Commons tool- set to better meet the needs of the community.

·         Ensure timely reporting and communication between the learning team and full Creative Commons staff, board of directors and stakeholders so that all are properly informed of team activities.

·         Serve as an effective and professional spokesperson for Creative Commons; represent the programs and point of view of the organization to agencies, organizations, governments and the general public.

·         Work with CC affiliate network and others to scale impact globally.