The CC Open Education community had a busy 2023!  Five project teams, spanning nine countries, worked on open education projects ranging from developing STEAM, interactive, and climate change-related OER, to international curriculum alignment and translation work. Community members also worked on multimedia resources supporting the UNESCO Recommendation on OER, and presented in CC’s biannual Open Education Lightning Talks. Community members reflect on their accomplishments, lessons learned and what is next below. CC staff lightly edited text for clarity.

Building a K-12 Interactive Open Textbook

Update from Werner Westermann: This project developed a K-12 Open Textbook in the subject of Civics and Citizenship subject for 11th and 12th Grade, aligned to the official K-12 curriculum of Chile. With the CC funding, we made 60% progress on one Open Textbook for 11th grade, surpassing our initial goal. We worked with teachers, creators of the interactive resources and a graphic designer on all four learning units of the 11th grade Open Textbook, as defined by Chile’s official curriculum for Civics and Citizenship. To help others’ open education projects, we share some lessons we encountered:

• This type of community engagement requires specific and explicit guidelines and benchmarks for quality. Like any book development, this Open Textbook required a general editor to orchestrate community contributions, manage expectations, and enforce quality guidelines and benchmarks. 
• Standardized workflows are necessary.  It was most efficient to load content, then follow up with graphic and interactive resources, rather than focus on those specifics first. We tested an AI Smart Import tool that creates H5P interactive resources in seconds, in order to save up to 50% development time.  
• Community adoption of a tech tool (the H5P editor in our case) requires flexibility to adapt to the tool for mastery. We had a lot of discussions about what H5P could and could not achieve. For better results, postpone specific expectations and work on what is editor enabled.

What’s next? The next step is to complete the 11th grade Open Textbook development and publish it, pending funding.  We also await an AI tool for Spanish support to speed up production.

Popularization of OER in Ukraine: Small steps to a big goal

Update from Tetiana Kolesnykova: Polytechnic University of Milan and the Ukrainian State University of Science and Technologies (USUST) partnered to translate and localize a MOOC on OER: “Using Open Educational Resources in Teaching.” This OER provides equitable and inclusive access to education amidst full-scale war in Ukraine. Despite the war, the project achieved its aim: there is now a version of the MOOC for Ukrainian learners. Our lessons from this work included: listening to each other, negotiating where needed, and compromise. We were not looking for perfection but for a good result to be achieved within all limitations. With teamwork and strong motivation, we solved the challenges of the project together; and the end result exceeded our expectations. As a result: All MOOC subtitles for each video, the course description and all tests were made available in Ukrainian, ensuring participants gain a better understanding and support with the final assessment. We also created eight additional instructions and illustrations in Ukrainian. We developed a mock-up of the Certificate of Completion of the course “Using Open Educational Resources in Teaching” adapted into Ukrainian. Several faculty and librarians tested the MOOC in Ukrainian.

We started promoting the Ukrainian localisation of the MOOC “Using Open Educational Resources in Teaching” in October. Politecnico di Milano (METID) and the Scientific Library of the Ukrainian State University of Science and Technologies (USUST) presented our collaborative project at international conferences, national webinars, publications, and on the website of the USUST Scientific Library.

While it is too early to measure the success of the Ukrainian MOOC “Using Open Educational Resources in Teaching,” we know it is already raising awareness of OER opportunities among the wider Ukrainian academic community. 

What’s next?  We will continue our teamwork, and ignite new OER adaptations in a sustainable way.

STEAM Ahead with OER in South Africa project

Update from Dan McGuire: This collaborative project between Ghana, South Africa and the US created, curated, and sourced OER content aligned to Ghanaian and South African education standards.  

Our colleague, Peter Amoabil observed that using the MoodleBox and OER materials provided learning opportunities for students without the need to rely on the internet, which is very useful in Ghana where over 95% of schools don’t have internet access. Students were able to use the digital content for all subjects and especially for reading in their mother tongue, Dagbani. Reading materials in Dagbani have previously been very hard to acquire.

In South Africa, we were able to translate both reading materials and math assessments from English into isiXhosa for students in grades Pre-K through 1st grade. Students were excited to learn using WIFI devices.

What’s next? Translating educational materials into the students’ mother tongue is especially valuable and innovative. We plan to expand the professional development for use of digital OER materials aligned to national standards to more teachers in both Ghana and South Africa. This project helped us establish a process to create and deliver learning materials to Pre-K — 6th grade students. We will also be making the OER professional development courses and instructional content available via open repositories.

Climate Change: OER integrating SDG components in Education in two Southeast Asian Countries

Update from Dr. Suma Parahakaran: This project worked with the Malaysian Ministry of Education as well as Malaysian and Laotian schools, creating OER and experiential learning activities. Primary and Secondary school students engaged in cross disciplinary, technical, and integrated learning activities, such as setting up solar panels on rooftops. They got to attend workshops and brainstorms with international experts and teachers. Students also created videos, brochures and other resources focused on ethics, climate change and sustainable development education. Finally, students then entered a competition related to Climate Change and Sustainable Development OER. For more information and results of the competition, view the project website. 

What’s next? While there are private Youtube links to the videos, they will be made public soon. Project lead: Dr. Suma Parahakaran

Alquimetricos

Update from Fernando Daguanno: Alquimétricos is an OER project that uses connectors and sticks to build geometric structures for STEAM education. Through experiential learning, the project develops students’ spatial, mathematical and kinetic understanding. The Alquimétricos Kit Zero is already published online and available to purchase: see our repositories for ready-to-print and fully editable CC BY files, including content, packaging and labeling. 

During 2023 we developed a new product line of elementary-school-oriented kits, drawing from eight years of experiences and research. The kits include a deck of cards with guidelines, a bunch of hubs and sticks that help educators make Alquimétricos’ activities dynamic in the classroom. The new kit was developed and introduced as part of the (FADU-UBA) DiJu post degree “Toys and Games Design” course 2023. It was launched in Argentina at the Open Education Meeting in Bariloche – Argentinian Patagonia, presented at the OpenEd Conference 2023 and displayed at the CC Global Summit in Mexico City.

What’s next? Next steps include translation to Portuguese and English and sharing the project in global OER repositories. We will seek support proofreading and sharking Kit Zero in a community call in early 2024. 

Global Commons: Unlocking Open Education with Creative Commons

Update from Lisa Di Valentino and John Okewole: This project developed a short animated video describing Creative Commons and how CC licenses support the implementation of the United Nations Recommendation on OER. We currently have a first version of the video created by Brainboxx Studios for which we will re-record the English narration. We have also solicited translations of the transcript from other subgroup members in the nine other UNESCO languages, and have offers for translation in Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Italian (of which we now have a draft), and Spanish. 

What’s next? We will finalize the English video and determine how to translate the video text.  We will also design handouts in the various languages explaining the benefits of using Creative Commons licensing for open educational resources.

CC Open Education Lightning Talks

Lightning Talks are seven-minute presentations on a given area of expertise or work. Based on community demand, CC hosted Open Education Lighting Talks online in February and in-person, at the CC Summit in October. Community members’  presentations ranged from explorations of OER for social justice to practical applications, such as using machine translation algorithms for OER translation and recommendations for digital publishing. CC also presented a forthcoming microcredential course on which we are partnering with the University of Nebraska Omaha, in effort to bring more open licensing expertise to new audiences. 

What’s next? We look forward to learning more from the open education community in future CC Open Education Lightning Talks!

Creative Commons extends our gratitude to the inspiring CC community members making a difference in their educational contexts. We look forward to continued open education collaborations in 2024! If you would like to join our Open Education community, visit the CC Open Education Platform site for more information.

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At Creative Commons, we believe that addressing global challenges – like the climate crisis – requires opening the knowledge about those challenges. We are thrilled to announce the release of our “Recommendations for Better Sharing of Climate Data”— the culmination of a nine-month research initiative from our Open Climate Data project. These guidelines are a result of collaboration between Creative Commons and government agencies and intergovernmental organizations. They mark a significant milestone in our ongoing effort to enhance the accessibility, sharing, and reuse of open climate data to address the climate crisis. Our goal is to share strategies that align with existing data sharing principles and pave the way for a more interconnected and accessible future for climate data.

Our recommendations offer practical steps and best practices, crafted in collaboration with key stakeholders and organizations dedicated to advancing open practices in climate data. We provide recommendations for 1) legal and licensing terms, 2) using metadata values for attribution and provenance, and 3) management and governance for better sharing.

The full report can be accessed [link to gdoc] and the PDF version is available here [link]. Access the summary version [link] for a concise overview, including its PDF version [link].

Opening climate data requires an examination of the public’s legal rights to access and use the climate data, often dictated by copyright and licensing. This legal detail is sometimes missing from climate data sharing and legal interoperability conversations. Our recommendations suggest two options: Option A: CC0 + Attribution Request, in order to maximize reuse by dedicating climate data to the public domain, plus a request for attribution; and Option B: CC BY 4.0, for retaining data ownership and legal enforcement of attribution. We address how to navigate license stacking and attribution stacking for climate data hosts and for users working with multiple climate data sources.

We also propose standardized human- and machine-readable metadata values that enhance transparency, reduce guesswork, and ensure broader accessibility to climate data. We built upon existing model metadata schemas and standards, including those that address license and attribution information. These recommendations address a gap and provide metadata schema that standardize the inclusion of upfront, clear values related to attribution, licensing and provenance.

Lastly, we highlight four key aspects of effective climate data management: designating a dedicated technical managing steward, designating a legal and/or policy steward, encouraging collaborative data sharing, and regularly revisiting and updating data sharing policies in accordance with parallel open data policies and standards.

As we release these recommendations, we extend an invitation to join us in an ongoing journey of collaboration. Together, we can continue to develop policies and practices that open up data, fostering advancements in climate research and innovation. Send us your comments at openclimatedata@creativecommons.org.

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2023 was quite a year for the Creative Commons (CC) Open Culture Program, thanks to generous funding from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing & Peter Baldwin. As the team grew from one full time employee to a team of three, we have had increased capacity to carry out our programmatic work. At the same time, pandemic-related travel restrictions eased, allowing the Open Culture Team to lead and participate in events and convenings in diverse locations, including Morocco, Uruguay, USA, Switzerland, UK, Mexico, and Portugal, to name a few. This allowed us to connect with community members in person, further cementing pre-existing strategic partnerships and engaging with new audiences. In this blog post we look back on some of the year’s key achievements.

Here are the top 5 things we are particularly proud of (in no particular order):

1. We started the TAROC initiative (Towards a Recommendation on Open Culture) with the Lisbon Open Culture Roundtable. Our TAROC information brief is available in English, Shqip, français, Español, 日本語, Türkçe, italiano, عربي.
2. We launched Open Culture Matters, our bi-monthly newsletter, which now has 500+ subscribers and counting.
3. We debuted Open Culture Live: A Webinar Series with “Back to Basics: Open Culture for Beginners”. Other topics discussed in the series include “Respectful Terminologies & Changing the Subject”, and “Whose Open Culture? Decolonization, Indigenization, and Restitution.”
4. We completed Open Culture Voices — a series of insightful video interviews with open culture experts from around the world. It came to a close in November, gathering ca. 70K views across all platforms.
5. We created the Open Culture resources webpage. It includes numerous documents available in multiple languages thanks to our community of volunteers, including 2023 publications:
   • Pioneers of Open Culture,  a report on the success of open culture early adopters; and
   • Needs Assessment report, a survey of the needs and challenges of the cultural heritage community vis a vis the CC public domain tool.

In addition, we published blog posts, organized training activities, signed on to advocacy letters, took part in several events to promote open culture (notably our CC Global Summit, WIPO SCCR meetings, MozFest, Wikimania, WikiIndaba, GLAM Wiki, Wikimedia’s conference for the open culture movement, and much more!), and offered the CC certificate on open culture.

We also supported our community through the OC platform, community-led activities and our Medium Publication.

In 2024, we look forward to building on those achievements and continuing to help people (re)connect with their culture(s).

The post What did Creative Commons do for Open Culture in 2023? appeared first on Creative Commons.

In November 2023, the Court of Appeal in THJ v Sheridan¹ offered an important clarification of the originality requirement under UK copyright law, which clears a path for open culture to flourish in the UK.

A game-changing ruling

In setting the copyright originality threshold, the court stated: “What is required is that the author was able to express their creative abilities in the production of the work by making free and creative choices so as to stamp the work created with their personal touch.” Crucially, the court affirmed that “this criterion is not satisfied where the content of the work is dictated by technical considerations, rules or other constraints which leave no room for creative freedom.” For a thorough analysis of the case, see Professor Eleonora Rosatti’s take for the IPKat.

The case is potentially a game-changer in the UK open culture landscape, as noted by open culture advocates Bendor Grosvenor (paywall) and Doug McCarthy. How so? Because by setting the standard for copyright to arise based on “free and creative choices” it effectively bars copyright claims from being made over faithful reproductions of public domain materials (i.e., materials that are no longer or never were protected by copyright).

No copyright for faithful reproductions of public domain materials

This is a position that Creative Commons (CC) has been championing for years as part of our Open Culture Program: digital reproductions of public domain material must remain in the public domain. In other words, no new copyright (or related right) should arise over the creation of a digitized “twin.” Europeana and the Communia Association, among many other open culture organizations, share this position. It is also aligns with Article 14 of the 2019 EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, which states that: “when the term of protection of a work of visual art has expired, any material resulting from an act of reproduction of that work is not subject to copyright […]”.

In practice, this means that CC licenses should not be used by cultural heritage institutions (museums, libraries, archives, etc.) to release digital reproductions of public domain works, since licenses can only be used in connection with in-copyright content. To share digital twins of public domain content, we recommend the public domain dedication tool (CC0) or the public domain mark (PDM).

A widespread but problematic practice

Alas, a great many institutions still claim full copyright or use CC licenses to share faithful reproductions of public domain material, often against payment of a (steep) fee — this is particularly prevalent in the UK, as reported by Dr. Andrea Wallace in her study for the Towards a National Collection program.

In an effort to curb this undesirable practice, in 2022, a CC Open Culture Platform working group led by Deborah De Angelis (CC Italy) and Tomoaki Watanabe (CC Japan) investigated this issue and developed proposals for technical, legal, and social interventions to address the problem of “PD BY” (i.e. the use of CC BY licenses to share reproductions of public domain works). On that basis, we are currently developing a set of guidelines to provide alternative design ideas and platform examples to cultural heritage institutions that wish to better share the digitized public domain cultural heritage material in their collections. Stay tuned for their release soon!

A new dawn for open culture in the UK and around the world?

This court case unlocks vast untapped potential for open culture to blossom in the UK cultural heritage sector. We are heartened that by offering enhanced legal certainty, this decision will give a boost to cultural heritage institutions to engage more deeply in the open culture movement and make these vast collections openly accessible to everyone.

Get Involved

For additional guidance and tailored support in developing or implementing open access policies or to get involved in promoting open culture around the world:

• Join the CC Open Culture Platform
• Sign up for our Open Culture Matters newsletter
• Support our policy initiative Towards a Recommendation on Open Culture (TAROC)
• Take our CC Certificate online training
• Contact us at info@creativecommons.org

¹ THJ Systems Limited & Anor v Daniel Sheridan & Anor [2023] EWCA Civ 1354, https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewca/civ/2023/1354

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On Wednesday, 17 January, 2024, at 3:00 pm UTC, CC’s Open Culture Program will be hosting a new webinar in our Open Culture Live series titled “Whose Open Culture? Decolonization, Indigenization, and Restitution.”

As we observed a few years ago, there is growing awareness in the open culture movement about issues related to the acquisition, preservation, access, sharing, and reuse of cultural heritage of Indigenous peoples and local communities (including traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions), heritage in the context of colonization, and culturally-sensitive heritage. Many questions arise in the context of open access, for example:

• Who decides what can be digitized and/or made openly available online, and under which conditions?
• Who has control and who can make governance decisions over their contents?
• How are the consultation and decision-making processes designed and implemented and by whom?
• How can institutions communicate permitted uses to users (including but mostly going beyond CC licenses or tools)?
• When is restitution the answer?
• How do we share ethically, responsibility, and with respect and sensitivity?
• Who should be entitled to answer those questions and take action?

In this webinar, we will discuss the many complex considerations around such heritage and explore some of the different approaches to respectful, sensitive, responsible, and ethical — in sum, better sharing. We will be joined by experts including:

• Jane Anderson, Vice Chair & Founding Member, Strategic Advisor, Co-Founder, Local Contexts
• Maui Hudson, Council Founding Member, Strategic Advisor, Local Contexts
• Camille Callison, Indigenous Librarian and Activist, University of the Fraser Valley
• Erna Lilje, Curator, Indigenous knowledge & material culture, Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen

Register here.

CC is a non-profit that relies on contributions to sustain our work. Support CC in our efforts to promote better sharing at creativecommons.org/donate

Background reading

• Beyond Copyright: the Ethics of Open Sharing by Josie Fraser, 2021. Creative Commons – We Like to Share Medium Blog.
• Traditional Knowledge and Copyright Intersections by Connor Benedict, 2023. Creative Commons – We Like to Share Medium Blog.
• Collaborate, Communicate, and Navigate Ethical Considerations with the Ethical Sharing Card Game by Isaac Oloruntimilehin, 2023. Creative Commons – We Like to Share Medium Blog.
• An Africa centered approach to restitution data  by African Digital Heritage, 2021.
• Response to the 2018 Sarr-Savoy Report: Statement on Intellectual Property Rights and Open Access relevant to the digitization and restitution of African Cultural Heritage and associated materials by Mathilde Pavis & Dr. Andrea Wallace, 2019.
• Restitution with a Catch? The Copyright Perspective on the Sarr-Savoy Report by Camille Francoise, 2020. IFLA Blog.
• Open and Equitable – Questions on how to handle digital copies in collections from colonial contexts (Part III) by Andrea Wallace, 2022. Wikimedia Deutschland Blog.
• Decolonization and Indigenization by Andrea Wallance, 2021. OpenGLAM.
• Preservation or plunder? The battle over the British Museum’s Indigenous Australian show by Paul Daley, 2015. The Guardian.
• Traditional Knowledge and Creative Commons White Paper by Mehtab Khan, 2018
• Sharing Indigenous Cultural Heritage Online an Overview of GLAM Policies by Brigitte Vézina and Alexis Muscat, 2020
• Taking Care Conference 2022 Keynote, Brigitte Vézina

What is Open Culture Live?

In this series, we tackle some of the more complex challenges that face the open culture movement, bringing in speakers with personal and professional expertise on the topic.

• Respectful Terminologies & Changing the Subject 
• Back to Basics: Open Culture for Beginners 

 

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