Open Educational Resources for Global Education C Sidney

Open Educational Resources for Global Education C. Sidney Burrus The Connexions Project Rice University, Houston, Texas USA csb@rice. edu http: //cnx. org/ May 5, 2010 1

Disruptive Technologies Disruptive technologies change the world in two phases: 1. The new technology first does what the old technology did, only better. Results are often “Intended Consequences” 2. The new technology then redefines the problem, asks new questions that were not possible in the first phase. Where surprising innovation is observed. Results often “Unintended Consequences” 2

Two Phases of the Web • Web 1. 0: HTML, presentation (looks and layout), hypertext links, searchable, two dimensional. Contains shared data and information. Readable by educated people (like a book). • Web 2. 0: XML, presentation and content, meta-data, smart hypertext links, smart searchable, three dimensional. Contains data, information, and some knowledge! Readable by literate people and by some machines. 3

Open Educational Resources The Open Educational Resource (OER) movement was inspired by the Open Source movement in software. Information is freely usable, re-usable , mixable, modifiable, etc. • • • Open Course Ware “OCW” (MIT) Connexions “Cnx” (Rice) Wikipedia (Wikibooks, etc. ) Siyavula project (Shuttleworth Foundation) Curriki, PLo. S, Pub. Med, EOL, etc. 4

What is Connexions? 1. A repository of modules of information available through the web on the Internet • Modules (and collections) encoded in XML, one concept, a few pages, a quantum of information 2. A set of tools for authoring, maintaining and using the content of the repository • Module editor, importer, course or book composer, repository organizer, Creative Commons license, tools for printing books 3. A community of people who share educational interests and information • Interest groups (authors, instructors, students), 5

Authors Ideas, information Module Instructors Students Commons or Repository Course, book 6

Modular Structure of Connexions • The module contains a stand-alone concept. It is a quantum of knowledge. • The module should make sense if found by a search engine such as Google or Bing. • A collection or book is a coherent collection of modules. • Analogy with a CD as being a collection of songs, or a play-list for a band or MP 3 player, or a concert program, or an anthology • Analogy with the degree requirements for a major at a university 7

Books and On-Line Use with XML Books from Connexions: • Personalized, on-demand printing, up-to-date, inexpensive, collaboratively authored, allows pre and post publication review, never “out of print”, “Long tail” publications, content for e. Books, one button to buy printed book On-Line use of Connexions: • Allows modern pedagogy: concept-based, problem solving-based, discovery-based learning. Dynamic, interactive, linked, adapts to learning style, student and author driven, allows “assessment and evaluation”, Virtual Labs 8

Possible Ways to Use • Bound and printed paper books that look like traditional books but are low cost and always up-to-date. This is phase one. • Down Loadable pfd files which are free and can be used on a e. Book reader or printed locally. This is also phase one. • Free, interactive, dynamic on-line use on a screen such as a computer or hand-held device (i. Pad or i. Phone). This is phase two! • New methods that we cannot imagine now. 9 This is the definition of phase two.

Create, Author stanford illinois michigan wisconsin berkeley ohio state ga tech utep rice cambridge South Africa Vietman Macedonia 10

Author of Music Content Catherine Schmidt-Jones well over 600, 000 page views per month many by US K-12 teachers 11

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Vietnam opencourseware MOET 13

Connexions in Spanish DSPanish 14

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Non-English Modules 16

Language of Modules & Collections • • • English 13, 300 Vietnamese 655 Afrikaans 331 Spanish 320 Macedonian 54 Chinese 34 Italian 26 Ukrainian 25 Japanese 22 Portuguese 20 607 163 28 39 7 5 3 2 3 6 17

Interactive, Dynamic Virtual Lab 18

Multimedia 19

Educational Paradox From: Inside Higher Education, Jan. 3, 2008 “It’s the central paradox of 21 st-century college students: Despite embracing radically new ways of communicating with each other and learning about the world, they still remain wedded to the oldfashioned, paper-bound textbook. ” 20

The Traditional Book The book is the central tool or technology in education at all levels and for all aspects. The book is a mature technology that is not improving. It and the supporting infrastructure are the answer to the educational questions of the 19 th century, maybe the first part of the 20 th century. They are now the “bottle neck” or “barrier”. They are no longer the answer, they are the problem Think about the Kindle, i. Pad or even the i. Phone 21

Global use of Connexions Possible tool to respond to the challenges of the present and future in education • Training and education of the workforce for the 21 st century and the global economy (put PASI papers in Connexions) • Becoming part of an international community using a global standard technology in both Higher Education and general education. Not fragmented. 22

Global use of Connexions • Allows progressive teaching techniques (from modern learning theory) at all levels and in all disciplines. • Leap-frogs old educational methods and jumps into the future (the way cell phones are doing). Connexions is currently being used in US, Europe, Asia. Allows scaling. • Produce high quality, accessible educational content in most of the world’s languages. 23

Global use of Connexions • Supports traditional class rooms, distance education, virtual labs, self learning, teacher training • Use of “unicode” allows the rendering of virtually all the world’s alphabets. We need work on including Arabic • Makes education accessible to all. Is sustainable, is scalable 24

Two Global References 1. C. S. Burrus, R. G. Baraniuk, J. P. Frantz, and C. Holmes, “Connexions: Sharing Knowledge and Building Communities for Global Education”, ASEE International Colloquium on Engineering Education, Beijing, China, 2004. 2. C. Sidney Burrus, “The Impact of OER, Web 2. 0, and XML on Education”, plenary lecture at the conference on Information and Management Sciences (IMS-2008), Urumqi, China, 2008 25

Two More Global References 1. Ricardo F. von Borries, Richard G. Baraniuk, C. Sidney Burrus, and B. Flores, “DSPanish: OER for Engineering in Spanish”, Engineering Education in the Americas and Beyond, Rio de Janeiro, October 9 -12, 2006. 2. Sidney Burrus, D. Marcek, Ricardo von Borries, and Richard Baraniuk, “An OER for the Americas”, the Latin American and Caribbean Consortium of Engineering Institutions (LACCEI) conference. Tampico 26 Mexico, May 29 -31, 2007.

What is new since 2008? • Growth in the number of modules in the repository from 6, 200 to 16, 262. Growing exponentially! • Input content directly, from MS Word, or from La. Te. X • Peer-review using Lenses • Better math. ML input and display • Global use greatly increased • Can down-load book pdf free, or purchase bound book at low cost 27

e. Xtendable Markup Language XML can also be thought of as “X” being an unknown that can be defined: • math. ML x 3 + 7 x 2 – 2 x + 1 = 0 • chemistry. ML H 2 O • music. ML (a music score) • “whatever you are teaching”ML where the rules of your subject define the markup language. The language “understands” your subject!! 28 The XMLs use semantic “tags” and meta-data

ecosystem – primordial state 29

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personalize 31

reuse 32

Selected Partners Shuttleworth Foundation’s Siyavula proj. Foothill-De Anza Community College 33

Peer Review Connexions: inclusive open-contribution policy how to find high quality materials? what is quality? who decides? who is the expert? Post-publication review rather than (or in addition to) pre-publication review system wikipedia, bloggers poster sessions at a conference IEEE Signal Processing Soc project in Open Educational Resources is with Connexions 34

Lenses social software for peer review inspiration: Flickr, de. licio. us, … Rice University IEEE. org/cnx PASI 35

The Connexions System 36

Quality Assurance Connexions lenses for peer review and quality control. 37

Alternative Copyright Licenses Traditional “All rights reserved” copyright inhibits collaboration and sometimes inhibits creativity and innovation. Putting content in the Public Domain is not easy. • Creative Commons “Some rights reserved” copyright (Larry Lessig, James Boyle) • General Public License “GPL” (Richard Stallman) and the GNU project • Copyleft, Share alike, etc. 38

Usage Current State Repository: 16, 262 modules, 20, 000 revisions, 994 courses or books, over 10, 000 author accounts, 147 countries, over 200 print-on-demand books In Sept. 2006: 17 M hits, 1. 2 M pages views, 520 K unique users from 157 countries Globalization Europe: Germany, Norway, Macedonia, France, etc. Asia: China, India, Pakistan, Japan, Vietnam, etc LACCEI: “Connexions in the Americas” project 39

Current State Tools Import: La. Te. X converter, Word converter, inplace editor, etc Dynamic, Interactive: Labview player in use, talking with Wolfram, Integre, etc. Flash, Java, jpeg, etc. User Environment: Basic but improving. 40

Growth of Numbers of Modules 41

Exponential Growth If people involved with Connections in some way cause other people to become involved and they, in turn, cause still other people to become involved, the growth is exponential and the spread is called "viral". This is what success on the Internet looks like. 42

Exponential Growth A graph of the logarithm of the number of modules would be linear if the growth itself is exponential 43

Log Plot of Numbers of Modules 44

Growth of Numbers of Collections 45

Growth of Numbers of Authors 46

The Connexions Project was started at Rice University in 1999, but now is global and one of the most used OERs worldwide. An invitation to you and your university If you are interested in being involved in Connexions, see http: //cnx. org/ or contact: 47 csb@rice. edu