European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes and Commission Member Androulla Vassiliou today announced Opening Up Education, an initiative that looks to increase the use of digital technologies for learning and spur the development of Open Educational Resources and policies across the European Union.

The Opening Up Education communication (PDF) indicates a strong support for Open Educational Resources. On the subject of OER, the Commission will:

• Ensure that all educational materials supported by Erasmus+ are available to the public under open licenses and promote similar practices under EU programmes;
• Use the new programmes Erasmus+ and Horizon 2020 to encourage partnerships between creators of educational content (e.g. teachers, publishers, ICT companies), to increase the supply of quality OER and other digital educational materials in different languages, to develop new business models and to develop technical solutions which provide
  transparent information on copyrights and open licenses to users of digital educational resources;
• Launch with this Communication the Open Education Europa portal linking it to existing OER repositories in different languages and bringing learners, teachers and researchers together, so to improve the attractiveness and visibility of quality OERs produced in the EU.

The communication also urged Member States and education institutions to:

• Stimulate open access policies for publicly-funded educational materials;
• Encourage formal education and training institutions to include digital content, including OERs, among the recommended educational materials for learners at all educational levels and encourage the production, including through public procurement, of high-quality educational materials whose copyrights would belong to public authorities.

Kroes and Vassiliou also introduced Open Education Europa, a portal for high quality OER available in a variety of languages. The default licensing for the resources in the portal is CC BY.

The communication document defined OER as “learning resources that are usable, adaptable to specific learning needs, and shareable freely.” We think that it would be better for the Commission to adopt the longstanding and well-understood OER definition promoted by the Hewlett Foundation, which defines OER as “teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others.”

Creative Commons provided feedback last year when the Commission was gathering information from stakeholders on how to proceed around the issues of ICT and OER. Congratulations to the EC on what looks like a promising initiative that will increase access to and reuse of open educational resources and technologies for a wide range of learners in Europe.

Download the press release. (63 KB PDF)

Mountain View, CA, September 25, 2013: Catherine Casserly announced that she will transition out of her role as CEO of Creative Commons in early 2014. Creative Commons, a Silicon Valley nonprofit that provides legal and technological tools for sharing and collaboration, was launched in 2002. Casserly became the organization’s first full-time CEO in 2011 after serving on the board of directors. Casserly helped to secure the organization’s considerable gains from its first decade and to lay a foundation for its second. She worked with the board and staff to integrate and grow existing programs, increase public impact, articulate key priorities and outcomes, and strengthen core operations.

One of Casserly’s significant accomplishments was Creative Commons’ role in the development of open education policies, both in the United States and around the world. In 2012 alone, the governments of Poland and California passed major legislation in support of open educational resources (OER) and others, like British Columbia, provided major public funding for OER. Similarly, the US Department of Labor is currently awarding $2 billion in grants for OER development through the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grant program.

In an email to Creative Commons’ global network of volunteers, Casserly expressed pride in three years of growth as a movement and optimism about the possibilities for the organization’s new leadership. “Together, we’ve grown our community and movement tremendously — both in size and in our ability to impact the world. For me and for the organization, the three-year mark is the right time to usher in a new generation of leadership.”

Creative Commons board chair Paul Brest noted that Cathy’s tenure as CEO has brought major changes to the organization. “The focus that we’ve seen over the past three years is remarkable, and what’s even more impressive is the clarity of mission and priorities that Cathy has brought to the organization. Under her leadership, the growth in the use of CC licenses generally, in the field of OER, and particularly in government-adopted OER mandates, has brought us substantially closer to our vision — universal access to knowledge and culture — than ever before.”

Casserly agreed, and predicted that the next CEO will play a major role in scaling Creative Commons’ achievements. “We’re currently developing products and tools with the potential to transform how sharing and collaboration work on the internet. Realizing that potential will require a CEO who deeply understands both our mission and the broader technology landscape.” The Creative Commons Board of Directors plans to formally begin the search for a new CEO in October.

Edited October 2: Previous version incorrectly listed British Columbia as a government that had passed OER legislation. Read this article for information on British Columbia’s support for OER.

This blog post was written by Teresa Sempere García, CC’s Community Support Intern June-August, 2013. The cycle graphics below were designed by Timothy Vollmer and Teresa Sempere García.

The current system for public access to research articles and educational materials is broken: ownership is often unclear, and the reuse of knowledge is limited by policies that do not maximize the impact of public funding. The following graphics will try to simplify and compare two alternative funding cycles for research publications and educational resources that emphasize the positive impacts of open policies on publicly-funded grants. More information and links to a current directory of current and proposed OER open policies can be found in the OER Policy Registry on the Creative Commons Wiki.

Cycles for Research Articles

The existing system for producing and distributing publicly funded research articles is expensive and doesn’t take advantage of the possibilities of innovations like open licensing. Without a free-flowing system, access to the results of scientific research is limited to institutions that are able to commit to hefty journal subscriptions — paid for year after year — which don’t allow for broad redistribution, or repurposing for activities such as text and data mining without additional permissions from the rightsholder. This closed system limits the impact on the scientific and scholarly community and progress is slowed significantly.

A Closed Research Model

When funding cycles for research include open license requirements for publications, increased access and opportunities for reuse extends the value of research funding. As an example, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy requires the published results of all NIH-funded research to be deposited in PubMed Central’s repository, the peer-reviewed manuscript immediately, and the final journal article within twelve months of publication. Similarly, the recent directive issued by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy mandates that federal agencies with more than $100 million in research expenditures must make the results of their research publicly available within one year of publication, and better manage the resultant data supporting their results. These policies utilize aspects of the optimized cycle below, and are a step in the right direction for making better use of public funding for research articles.

An Open Research Model

Cycles for Educational Resources

The incumbent system for developing and sharing publicly funded educational resources doesn’t guarantee materials are accessible and reusable by the public that paid for their creation.

A Closed Education Model

If policies are put in place that mandate open licenses on publicly funded educational resources, knowledge can flow more freely because the public is clear about how they may reuse educational content, and the funders can realize a more impactful return on their investments. An example of better use of public funding for the production of educational resources, the US DOL TAACCCT Program mandates that all content created or modified using grant funds are openly-licensed (CC BY) and deposited in a public repository upon completion of the project. Being conducted in four waves, the TAACCCT program is making better use of a large (US$2 billion) investment of US taxpayer money by ensuring the public will have access the educational resources created during the four-year term, and is able to reuse and adapt them beyond what automatic copyright allows. The following graphic demonstrates an open funding model, with licensing and access recommendations to remove barriers to sharing and help speed access and reuse of publicly funded educational content.

An Open Education Model

Summary

Open policy — specifically, the idea that publicly funded materials should be openly licensed materials — is a sensible solution that ensures the public’s right to reuse the materials it paid for, and improves the efficiency of government grant funding. Open licensing is a sensible requirement for publicly funded grant programs.

Join us for a fun evening event on 24 October in London! The School of Open community along with members of the Open Knowledge Foundation and FLOSS Manuals Foundation is holding a meetup at the Large Common Room in the William Goodenough House (yes, that’s a real name!). Details at the Eventbrite and below.

Sport (?) 1911 (LOC) / Bain News Service,, publisher / No known copyright restrictions

Hit the Road Map: A Human Timeline of the Open Education Space

Join the School of Open (Creative Commons & P2PU), the Open Knowledge Foundation, and FLOSS Manuals Foundation for a fun evening to connect with your peers in the open education space! So many efforts exist to “open” up education around the world. How can we help connect these efforts? We’d like to start by collaboratively building a human timeline of open education — Do you remember when and where you first became aware of open education? When did you first become passionate about “open” or participate in an “open” event or job? Where and what was it? What else in this area has most inspired you? We will share experiences and manually place ourselves along a real world timeline (think rolls of butcher paper, markers, glitter is optional). Then we’ll start fleshing out the timeline with key events and persons that we think brought the open education and knowledge movement to where it is today. We’ll stop whenever we get tired, make merry with refreshments and snacks, and digitize whatever we have by the end of the evening for further contributions from everyone and anyone on the web. We’ll make the resulting timeline available openly (either via CC0, CC BY, or CC BY-SA), and feature it in a chapter of the Open Education Handbook!

Due to the awesome, but limited space, this event will be first come, first serve, capping registrations at 30 participants. Please update your registration if you cannot make it to make room for those on the waiting list!

It’s Software Freedom Day! All over the world today, hackers, designers, and free software enthusiasts are participating in meetups, hackathons, cultural events, and more. Check out the map to find out if there’s an event near you.