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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This December, Creative Commons led a CC Certificate Bootcamp, or condensed Certificate training, for faculty and staff from 16 different California Community Colleges implementing Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) degree programs. This marked the second CC Bootcamp for California Community Colleges after the California legislature invested $115 million to expand ZTC degrees and the use of open educational resources (OER) within the statewide California community college system. ZTC degrees and increased use of OER reduce the overall cost of education and shorten the time to degree completion for students. With the average cost of course textbooks estimated at $100/student/course, ZTC degrees are crucial for students’ higher education. Further, students’ grades achieved in ZTC programs are higher than in traditional courses.

The CC Certificate program provides training and tools for ZTC program faculty and staff to legally and effectively implement the open licensing requirements of California’s historic investment in education. After learning about copyright basics, fair use, the public domain, and CC licensing, participants brainstormed and initiated some great ways to support ZTC program faculty and student needs. Examples of participant work include using generative AI to create “Creative Commons Bots,” tools to help others learn about licensing, and test their own knowledge with quiz questions; creating a grants guide for OER funding; drafting a potential strategic plan for OER/ ZTC work (work in progress), and remixing previous courses or resources to address ZTC communications and learning needs for localized audiences (works in progress). See what participants are saying below.

“This is one of the best professional development experiences I’ve had in years”

“Thank you so much for sharing wonderful resources and CC practices. I will share this knowledge with my colleagues”

“You’ve nailed the condensed week workshop. So much fun, and creating work groups was really beneficial”

We are proud to support California Community Colleges’ collaboration as they strengthen their foundations for open education. CC is grateful to the Michelson 20MM Foundation for generously funding this bootcamp at San Bernardino Valley College. Special thanks also go to the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges for their liaison work, expertise and support, to San Bernardino Valley College for hosting the event, and to Fresno Pacific University for providing professional development credits to faculty.

If you’re interested in advancing open education efforts in your own institution, Creative Commons offers an array of learning, training, and consulting opportunities to support our global community in developing open licensing expertise and a deeper understanding of recommended practices for better sharing. Visit the CC Training & Consulting page to learn more about our training services, workshops, lectures, and CC Certificate courses. Register for our next CC Certificate online courses, starting 29 January.

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As we end 2023, we want to showcase the incredible work of CC community members to translate the CC Certificate content. Thanks to 21 volunteers this year and numerous volunteers in the past, the reading content of our CC Certificate training is now available in 10 languages. This makes our fundamental open licensing and open advocacy training more accessible to over one billion people in their native languages. 

The CC Certificate program offers in-depth courses about copyright, CC licenses, open practices and the ethos of our global, shared commons. CC Certificate courses target (1) Academic Librarians, (2) Educators and (3) Open Culture advocates, but are open to everyone. Learn more about the CC Certificate and other professional learning opportunities, then register for a Certificate course today. If you are a CC Certificate graduate and would like to translate course content in 2024, please contact certificate administrators on the alumni listserv. 

Slovak

The Slovak Centre of Scientific and Technical Information contacted CC in 2022, noting the need for CC Certificate content in Slovak. Thanks to Gabriela Fišová, Judita Takačová, Jakub Klech, and Barbora Bieliková, who translated content earlier this year, the Centre now has a complete translation. 

Download the Slovak translation files, view them on the CC Certificate translations webpage, or on Zenodo. 

Bengali

Bangladesh Open University (BOU) faculty, Sadia Afroze Sultana and Mostafa Azad Kamal, translated the CC Certificate content to make open licensing training more accessible to the 184+ million Bengali-speakers worldwide. Sadia is a CC Certificate alumna and facilitator; Mostafa is the CC Bangladesh Chapter Representative and also a CC Certificate alumnus. CC thanks Mostafa and Sadia; CC also thanks BOU faculty Asma Akter Shelly and Ananya Laboni, and graduate students Aminul Islam Rana and Mir Khadija Tahera for reading the translated copies and providing feedback. 

Download the Bengali translation files, or view them on the CC Certificate translations webpage.

French 2.0

Building on last year’s French Translation, a community of volunteers from seven countries embarked on a two-week French translation 2.0 sprint, to increase the accessibility of the French translation for different francophone audiences. Nicolas Simon, a CC community member who provided the original French translation supported the sprint, and reviewed the final draft. Adou Jean-Constant Atta, Aman Ado, Emmanuelle Guebo Kakou, Fawaz Tairou, Karen Ferreira-Meyers, Kamel Belhamel, Nyirahabihirwe Clementine, Touré Kahou, Namon Moussa Traore, and Yao Hippolyte Bondouho added local contextual considerations such as recommended links. 

Download the French translation files, or view them on the CC Certificate translations webpage.

With these translations, the CC Certificate reading content is accessible in 10 languages: Arabic, Bengali, Burmese, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Slovak, Turkish, and Yoruba. The latest translations make our open licensing training more accessible than ever before and we thank open community members for making that possible. 

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Crossposted with permission from The Michelson 20MM Foundation 23 Aug 2023 blog post.

“Open Educational Resources 2023 Spark Grantees” used with permission from The Michelson 20MM Foundation.

Creative Commons licenses enable much of the open content across the arts, sciences, and academia, including open educational resources (OER). Creative Commons (CC) offers CC Certificate courses, or training on CC licensing and open tools, which have become a key tool for open communities around the world. Currently, 1,459 people from 65 countries have been  Creative Commons (CC) Certified, having taken and passed one of the CC Certificate courses. Given Governor Gavin Newsom’s historic investment in California Community Colleges’ (CCCs) Zero-Textbook-Cost (ZTC) degree programs, it is critical to ensure faculty, students, and staff have the capacity they need to create, use, and share the open resources supported by this funding. For this reason, The Michelson 20MM Foundation is elated to award a 2023 OER Spark Grant to Creative Commons.

“Creative Commons likes to say we put the open in open educational resources,” Jennryn Wetzler, Creative Commons Director of Learning and Training shared. “We have six different licenses and two public domain tools that enable creators to legally share their copyrighted content much more flexibly than traditional, ‘all rights reserved’ copyright. They’re applied to over 2.5 billion works online and enable sharing, enable adaptation, and remix — and so much innovation and learning.”

The Creative Commons Bootcamp is a proven model in California and beyond. CC has found that just one CC graduate on a campus can have a ripple effect — increasing open education awareness, acceptance, and use within their community. In January, Creative Commons, in partnership with the CCC Academic Senate’s OER Initiative, helped 12 individuals from the CCC system receive their CC Certification through a Michelson Spark Grant. Less than eight months later, the 12 graduates have hosted OER tutorials, planned OER conferences, developed LibreTexts training for faculty, and mapped ZTC conversions courses — further exemplifying the value of having a CC Certified individual on campus.

Building upon the success of the Bay Area Bootcamp, and acutely aware of the importance of an impactful ZTC funding implementation throughout the CCC system, CC is partnering with the CCC Academic Senate’s OER Initiative again to host a Bootcamp for 25 Southern California CCC faculty. Not only does the expanded training further the goal of bringing more CC Certified experts to the 116 CCCs, but also it provides key stakeholders within the CCC system the opportunity to be connected with OER and ZTC experts throughout the world, providing support as the newly CC Certified individuals work on creating, adopting, and maintaining ZTC programs on their campuses.

True to the nature of open access, CC Certificate courses are openly licensed, which enables graduates to not only reuse, but also remix the material within their institutions if other faculty and staff members are interested. This means that the investment in individuals from 25 community colleges has the potential to impact at least 22% of the CCC system.

As OER gains momentum throughout the state and nation, CC anticipates that the Bootcamp will fill up quickly. In order to ensure it has the intended impact, CC and the CCC Academic Senate will share registration information; they will focus on priority registration, but also establish a wait-list to maximize the number of CCC campuses involved. It will be exciting to see how the 25 campuses leverage the training and inspire other CCCs to embrace OER.

“OER lets students have access to the materials they need to succeed free of cost, largely due to open copyright and Creative Commons licenses,” Cailyn Nagle, OER Program Manager stated. “Creative Commons has been an invaluable resource to the state — and beyond — and we are thrilled to extend CC Bootcamp participation to an additional 25 California Community Colleges.”

Register now to earn a CC Certificate in 2023 or learn more about the CC Certificate Program.

The post How CC Will Advance Open Licensing Understanding Within 25 California Community Colleges appeared first on Creative Commons.

This post was prepared collaboratively by Jennryn Wetzler, Werner Westermann, Lisa Di Valentino, Dr. Suma Parahakaran, Tetiana Kolesnykova, Paola Corti, Dan McGuire, and Fernando Daguanno.

“Abstract Backgrounds” by NichoDesign is licensed via CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

In February and March, the CC Open Education Platform community voted on five winning ideas to advance open education globally. Five project teams, spanning Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ghana, Italy, Malaysia, Ukraine, South Africa, and the USA have received CC Open Education funds. The CC Open Education Platform also funded ongoing global community work supporting the UNESCO Recommendation on OER. We are delighted to share updates about the projects now underway.

CC lauds all of the open education community efforts, and we look forward to sharing additional highlights at the end of this year.

Title: Building a K-12 Interactive Open Textbook

Contact: Werner Westermann
Location: Chile

“Educación Ciudadana” by Werner Westermann is licensed via CC BY 4.0, except where otherwise noted.

Summary: The Building a K-12 Interactive Open Textbook project works with community members to support the development of 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. Thus far, the project has gathered a core team focusing on content selection, H5P deployment, and graphic design. The core team has discussed: curricular alignment and structuring learning chapters; textual content creation and reuse; graphical content selection using Wikimedia Commons; creating learning chapters and reusing previous developments, using Interactive Book H5P tool. The team has H5P packages and trials hosted in Pressbooks, thanks to support of REBUS Foundation.

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

Contact: Dr. Suma Parahakaran
Location: Malaysia and Laos PDR

Summary: This project supports OER for Climate Change and the sustainable development goals (SDGs); it focuses on OER creation through experiential activities in schools. Where Malaysia’s Global Environment Center (GEC) focused on climate change and water resources education, Laotian Sri Sathya Sai Institution focused on climate change work, installing solar lights and solar-generated electricity to reduce a primary and secondary school’s carbon footprint and energy costs. The project has also created a greenspace within the Laotian school for students and staff to engage in outdoor learning and gardening.

The project will be compiling OER content from both education centers, and displaying videos, activities and other media outputs on the project website. Next steps include hosting a competition for Climate Change and network building for collaboration.

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

Contact: Tetiana Kolesnykova
Locations: Ukraine and Italy

Image from Using Open Educational Resources in Teaching by Politecnico di Milano – METID is licensed via CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Summary: Polytechnic University of Milan has partnered with the Ukrainian State University of Science and Technologies (USUST) to translate and localize a MOOC on OER. The Polytechnic University’s learning innovation unit (METID) developed and shared a MOOC, “Using Open Educational Resources in Teaching” to meet the needs of Ukrainian teachers and academic library professionals. This partnership overcomes language barriers and ensures equitable and inclusive access to education in times of a full-scale war.

After METID and USUST agreed on a process and the necessary parameters to ensure the project would be sustainable for both partners, they adapted subtitles, infographics, the course description and summative weekly quizzes. USUST also created a bilingual version of the quizzes, which helps students in obtaining the MOOC’s final Certificate of Completion. Next steps include: creating instructions in Ukrainian; debugging video subtitles; verifying the MOOC content; and testing the process with teachers and librarians. USUST will also develop a mock-up of the Certificate of Completion of the course “Using Open Educational Resources in Teaching” released by Polimi Open Knowledge platform adapted into Ukrainian. The certificate will be generated in Ukrainian at the Ukrainian State University of Science and Technologies, indicating the amount of training in ECTS credits.

Title: STEAM Ahead with OER in South Africa project

Contact: Dan McGuire
Locations: Ghana, South Africa, and USA

Screenshot of the website for Rural Literacy Solutions.

Summary: This collaborative project creates, curates, and sources OER content that meets the needs of elementary students and is aligned with Ghanaian Education standards as well as South African standards. The project has a special emphasis on incorporating materials edited and adapted for and translated to the local languages in addition to the use of English language materials. Dan McGruire and colleague, Peter Amoabil, created a video explainer about the Ghanaian portion of the project, which works Amoabil’s nonprofit, Rural Literacy Solutions. There are some great pictures on their website of students reading OER materials in their local language on the server in their classroom that is not connected to the internet via an open source learning management system.

Title: Alquimetricos

Contact: Fernando Daguanno
Locations: Argentina and Brazil

Icon for Alquimétricos.

Summary: Alquimetricos is a STEAM OER project that inspires wonder, using card games, connectors and sticks to build geometric sculptures. Through experiential learning, the project develops students’ spatial, mathematical and kinetic understanding. For this phase of project work, Alquimetricos is developing a STEAM OER collection repository translated to English, Portuguese, and Spanish. The first draft translations will be machine-generated. Alquimetricos will then organize a set of online workshops and collabora-thons to share, revise translations and document the contents and replication process, inviting Creative Commons community members to join.

The project is also developing a card game, which teachers can download and share with their K-12 classes for STEAM education. The digital version will be free, and the printed version will be available for sale. Fernando piloted the project and card games with students and teachers at the International book fair at Comodoro Rivadavia, in Chubut, Argentina, a 10-day learning fair for over 10,000 people.

Next steps include: (1) providing a demo of the card deck at the CC Summit, in Mexico City this October. (2) Alquimetricos will also produce a short video summarizing case studies of its CC BY-licensed educational products being used.

Title: Global Commons: Unlocking Open Education with Creative Commons

Contacts: Lisa Di Valentino, John Okewole
Locations: Nigeria, USA, and global

Summary: This project is developing a short animated video describing Creative Commons and how it would accommodate the implementation of the UN recommendations for OER. The video will have narrations in different languages, potentially including: English, French, Spanish, Hindi, Mandarin could be the initial ones that would hopefully be ready by the end of the year. Team members are also developing 2-3 one-page graphic handouts explaining Creative Commons licenses, and the CC organization, also in different languages. Handouts will be shipped to CC Open Education Platform community members engaging in communications around the UNESCO Recommendation for OER.

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“Creative Commons a vessel ideas” by opensourceway is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0..

We ran a successful French translation, as well as the first ever Spanish language sprint for the CC Certificate course reading content. Thanks to the efforts of CC Certificate graduates and additional translators,² 569 million more people will have access to CC Certificate open educational resources (OER) in their native languages. These published works enable 493 million native Spanish speakers and 76 million native French speakers to access translations in their languages — not to mention others who have Spanish or French as a second language.

CC continued its partnership with InclusiveAccess.org, a community-driven initiative that launched in 2021, to raise awareness of the facts about textbook sales models that add the cost of digital course materials into students’ tuition and fees. Learn more about it in our Open Minds Podcast interview with Trudi Radke.

We interviewed Jennifer Miller about her Open Syllabus for Open Science project (see lightning talk below), which provides a complete but flexible way for early career researchers to learn about open science.

We ran CC Open Education Lightning Talks in March and August. Lightning talks are concise presentations that provide a specific update or story. During the talks, open education practitioners highlighted OER into capstone courses, discussed funding opportunities within open education, and explored how the CC Network can provide support for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Practitioners also discussed leveraging tax legislation for open education funding, theories and practices around OER, fireside stories of open sharing, and even led a Texas Sing-a-long! 

• “Open Syllabus: UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science” by Jennifer Miller. 
• “More OER for Free!” by Jonathan Poritz.
• “Open Climate Campaign” by Dr. Cable Green, and Dr. Monica Granados
• “Building OER into Capstone Courses” by Dr. Carolyn Stevenson
• “Improve It Challenge” by Jamison Miller
• “Enabling OERs at no additional cost” by Kathryn Kure
• “Promoting Educational Equity through OERs and Open Degree Plans” by Carolyn Stevenson 
• “The Venn Diagram of OEP and Ungrading is a Circle” by Sybil Priebe 
• “Still Amazing: True Stories of Openness” by Alan Levine 
• “Student Scholars: Publishing Student OER Work” by Liza Long 
•  “Evolution of a state-wide OER Initiative” by Suzanne Wakim
• “Deep in the Open Heart of Texas” by Judith Sebesta 

CC continued to engage global partners and stakeholders in our work on Open Education.

CC staff and network colleagues presented at six regional UNESCO hosted meetings to support national governments and NGOs in understanding and implementing the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Education Resources. We highlighted the importance of using standard international CC open copyright licenses in open education policies and open educational resources (slides).

CC participated in the United Nations Transforming Education Summit, presenting sessions on effective educational ecosystems, approaches to implementing the UNESCO Recommendation on OER, and our recently launched Open Climate Campaign.

CC is working with UNICEF and others to find OER curriculum and openly licensed psycho-social support materials to help Syrian and Turkish children and their teachers who have been displaced by the devastating earthquakes.

The CC team expanded our Certificate program. We ran 16 online courses in 2022, raising the total number of graduates to over 1255 from 65 countries by the end of 2022. We piloted two open pedagogy CC Certificate courses in September, which encouraged participants’ greater agency in the course and also as contributions to their larger communities.  

We also launched the CC Certificate for GLAM with three courses and 93 participants. With Evelin Heidel (nickname: Scann), we were able to also offer a facilitator training for this program, thereby certifying additional instructors to teach the course. We also offered 38 scholarships to Certificate participants, expanding the program’s global reach. The CC Certificate program also continued facilitation and evaluation measures, ensuring the CC Certificate program is on a trajectory of continuous improvement. Thanks to Jonathan Poritz’s analysis, we learned four key takeaways from evaluating the CC Certificate.

Aside from the CC Certificate courses, CC continued its training, including a workshop for the U.S. Department of State’s TechCamp Morocco, thanks to facilitation from Shanna Hollich; a workshop for the UK National Lottery Heritage Fund, and training for Open Education Fellows at Lafayette College, among others. 

In addition to these efforts, many more community members noted their work advancing open education in CC Open Education Platform meetings, ongoing conversations and collaborations. While we cannot cite everyone’s efforts here, we are honored to work with and learn from this community. Interested in joining us? If you are not yet a member, learn more about the CC Open Education Platform – we hope to hear from you! 

This work is essential. While Open Education Week has ended, our efforts in support of open education march on as strong as ever.  We believe access to knowledge is a human right, and CC is working hard to ensure that open educational opportunities are available to all.

…

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This January, Creative Commons led a CC Certificate Bootcamp, or condensed training for 12 faculty and staff from 11 California Community Colleges implementing Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) degree programs. Building on a successful pilot ZTC Pathways program, the California Legislator invested $115 million to expand Zero Textbook Cost degrees and OER within the California community college system. The California ZTC programs reduce the overall cost of education and reduce the time to degree completion for California community college students. With the average costs of course textbooks estimated at $100/student/course, ZTC programs have the potential to save students nearly a billion dollars in the coming years, offering a more than 800% return on investment, according to SPARC. 

The CC Certificate Bootcamp provided needed training and tools for ZTC program staff to legally and effectively implement the open licensing requirements of the $115 investment. 

But, beyond open licensing lessons, the CC training strengthened a network of open advocates. The week offered engagement with copyright lawyers, and open advocates, space for collaborative brainstorming, play, and iterative problem solving. From participant-focused brainstorms emerged three clear interventions to address needs in the ZTC program development and expansion. Participant work kickstarted (1) a guide to support faculty in using and integrating LibreTexts OER in Canvas; (2) a ZTC Conversion Faculty Resource guide, sharing resources for both OER liaisons and interested faculty supporting the process of ZTC course development; and (3) the outline of wholistic considerations and needs for roadmapping ZTC programs efficiently and effectively, as the Michelson 20MM Foundation highlighted.  In less than two months since the bootcamp, faculty and staff have continued to collaborate and champion for OER in their institutions, by:

• Presenting simple guides and presentations for faculty and administrators to absorb to mitigate overwhelm with the program;
• Presenting Creative Commons License tutorials, as well as additional needs for adjacent networks, at professional development days, to the Academic Senate and Deans of various departments;
• Planning OER conferences;
• Launching a survey for the ZTC program;
• Setting up mapping to the degrees in smartsheets, which can pull survey data to courses and identify what courses have been converted to ZTCs;
• Sharing a guide about what the ZTC funding (with legislation definitions, how is the funding working and more) 

CC Bootcamp collaborations moved beyond the initial goals of supporting cost savings for students–faculty and staff worked toward interventions addressing barriers to teaching and learning in their systems. As Cailyn Nagle notes, OER are worth more than their cost savings. “They have the power to free, to be liberatory. When educators are able to craft the ideal materials their students can use without barriers, and librarians are able to curate that knowledge for everyone’s benefit, we come closer to the promise of Open.” We applaud California Community Colleges increased collaborative work–strengthening a foundation for that freedom. 

As we revel in the offerings of Open Education Week and our collaborations, I hope we can draw from the energy of California Community Colleges’ faculty and staff, striving toward increasingly liberatory structures in the future. 

CC thanks the Michelson 20MM Foundation for generously funding the bootcamp. 

Special thanks also go to the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges for their liaison work, expertise and support, to Skyline College for hosting the event, and to Fresno Pacific University for providing professional development credits to faculty.

At Creative Commons, we offer an array of learning and training opportunities to support our global community in developing open licensing expertise and a deeper understanding of recommended practices for better sharing. Visit the CC Trainings page to learn about our workshops, consulting options, lectures, and our CC Certificate courses.

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As we gear up for Open Education Week 2023 (6 – 10 March), Creative Commons wants to recognize the contributions of our open education and related open communities. In the past several months, our community members have shared their knowledge and inquiry through lightning talks, panel discussions, presentations, and working groups. The list below offers a glimpse into some of the areas of knowledge shared, and is not exhaustive. While most events focus directly on open education topics, we recognize the rich areas of overlap with our open culture and copyright communities, and have shared a glimpse into some related efforts as well.

Community-Led Efforts

• CC Open Education Lightning Talks: Seven-minute presentations that offer glimpses into our open education community’s expertise. Over the last year, community members have presented on topics ranging from OER and the “work for hire” doctrine, building OER into capstone courses, funding opportunities within open education, open educational resources (OER) as tools for social justice, work/life balance, climate change and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as the LibreTexts and Curationist platforms. Learn about open licensing and OER, copyright, the public domain, and more in these pithy tutorials!
  • August 2022 CC Open Education Lightning Talks: Included discussions on building OER into capstone courses, funding opportunities within open education, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
    • “Open Syllabus: UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science” by Jennifer Miller, civic technologist and open knowledge advocate.
    • “More OER for Free!” by Jonathan Poritz, former mathematics faculty member and OER Coordinator at a public university in Colorado, USA, and ongoing facilitator for the CC Certificate course.
    • “Open Climate Campaign” by Dr. Cable Green, Director of Open Knowledge at Creative Commons, and Dr. Monica Granados, Assistant Director for Creative Commons Open Climate program.
    • “Building OER into Capstone Courses” by Dr. Carolyn Stevenson, faculty member and faculty advisor for Purdue University Global, School of General Education, Department of Professional Studies.
    • “Improve It Challenge” by Jamison Miller, Open Education advocate and PhD candidate at William and Mary School of Education.
  • February 2023 CC Open Education Lightning Talks: Topics included reimagining open education as social justice, using machine translation algorithms for non-English language OER textbooks, and integrating values and ethics in OER for climate change and the SDGs. 
    • “Reimagining Open Education as Social Justice” by Ravon Ruffin, Educational Programs Manager at MHz Foundation, and Amanda Figueroa, Community Director at MHz Foundation.
    • “LibreTexts 101: Building the Textbook of the Future” by Delmar Larsen, Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Davis, and Founder and Director of the LibreTexts project.
    • “Using Machine Translation Algorithms to Effectively generate Non-English language OER Textbooks” by Delmar Larsen, Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Davis, and Founder and Director of the LibreTexts project.
    • “Integration of Values and Ethics in OER for Climate Change and the SDGs” by Dr. Suma Parahakaran, head of the Faculty of Education at Manipal Globalnxt.
    • “OER as a Social Justice tool, the case of digital accessibility” by Nicolas Simon, Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Criminology, and Social Work at Eastern Connecticut State University.
    • “Get the Balance Right: Using Mindfulness OER for Intentional Work and Life Practices” by Dr. Carolyn Stevenson, faculty member and faculty advisor for Purdue University Global, School of General Education, Department of Professional Studies.
• Anticolonial Knowledge: Discussion with Stacy Allison-Cassin: a Q&A discussion led by moderator Jen Hughes, CC Certificate Facilitator and Archives, New Media and Educational Initiatives Librarian at Salt Lake Community College, and featured Stacy Allison-Cassin, PhD, Assistant Professor at the School of Information Management at Dalhousie University. The discussion focused on the challenges and considerations for anti-colonial knowledge efforts within knowledge institutions. Watch the recording.
• February 2023 SDSN US Summit on Transformative Education, Panel Discussion: Sustainability Education: Nonformal and Informal Education (Dr. Green’s slides): The Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) spans six continents and draws upon the knowledge and educational capacity of over 1,600-member institutions. The panel speakers included CC’s Dr. Cable Green, Amlata Persaud of Childhood Education International, Karen Robinson of Human Rights Org, Toland Kister of Hudron Riverpark.org, and Tim Mahoney (moderator). Watch the recording.

Additional community efforts from the fields of open culture, open climate and copyright 

• CC’s copyright platform 2022 working groups share their highlights: Led by André Houang and Emine Yildirim, the two working groups presented their position papers on international user rights and data sharing policies. View their highlights.
• CC’s open culture platform 2022 five working groups share their highlights: In 2022, CC’s open culture platform had five working groups, each focused on different areas of interest. These included the Digital Community Heritage Working Group led by Bettina Fabos and Mariana Ziku; the Traditional Knowledge and Copyright Intersections Working Group led by Connor Benedict and Alhassan Mohammed Awal; the Open GLAM for Smaller Organizations Working Group led by Connor Benedict and Abdul Dube; the CC Licenses for Cultural Heritage Institutions Working Group led by Deborah De Angelis and Tomoaki Watanabe; and the Practical Resources for the Open Culture Sector Working Group led by Revekka Kefalea and Jesse Carson. View their highlights.
• Open Culture VOICES Archives: A series of short interviews with open GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) experts from around the world. CC asks each guest four questions about the benefits, barriers, inspiration, and advice to share about open culture. Watch the latest episode from season 2.
• February 2023 Scanning 3D: Cultural Heritage Preservation, Access and Revitalization: In February 2023, we hosted a global Q&A and panel discussion on 3D scanning for cultural heritage preservation, access, and revitalization. The discussion focused on the legal, policy, cultural, and ethical considerations surrounding this topic.
  The speakers included Michael Weinberg, Executive Director of the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy at the NYU School of Law; Cosmo Wenman, an open access advocate and 3D design and fabrication consultant; Teresa Nobre, Legal Director of COMMUNIA; Thomas Flynn, Cultural Heritage Lead at Sketchfab; Jonas Heide Smith, Head of Digital at SMK – National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst); and Jennryn Wetzler, Director of Learning and Training at Creative Commons, who served as the moderator. Watch the recording.

CC is grateful to community members in these conversations and others. Their thoughtful presentations enrich Open Education Week, and our broader open knowledge and open culture work.

To find out what else Creative Commons is doing to celebrate Open Education, visit the Open Education Week website. 

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The Lightning Talk Presenters:

Reimagining Open Education as Social Justice

Ravon Ruffin, Educational Programs Manager at MHz Foundation, and Amanda Figueroa, Community Director at MHz Foundation, showcased the Curationist platform for decolonial methodologies in curation, education, and art.

LibreTexts 101: Building the Textbook of the Future

Delmar Larsen, Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Davis, and Founder and Director of the LibreTexts project, provided an overview of LibreVerse, a suite of tools and technologies to advance OER textbooks and assessments.

Using Machine Translation Algorithms to Effectively Generate Non-English Language OER Textbooks

Delmar Larsen also discussed machine translation algorithms for non-English language OER textbooks.

Integration of Values and Ethics in OER for Climate Change and the SDGs

Dr. Suma Parahakaran, Head of the Faculty of Education at Manipal Globalnxt University in Malaysia, highlighted options for collaborative OER for learning communities focused on climate change and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

OER as a Social Justice Tool, the Case of Digital Accessibility

Nicolas Simon, Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Criminology, and Social Work at Eastern Connecticut State University, discussed the use of OER for digital accessibility and promoting inclusion, diversity, equity, and social justice.

Get the Balance Right: Using Mindfulness OER for Intentional Work and Life Practices

Dr. Carolyn Stevenson, Full-time faculty member and Faculty Advisor for Purdue University Global, School of General Education, Department of Professional Studies, provided resources for using mindfulness OER for a healthy work/life balance.

Keep track of what CC Open Education Platform is doing by subscribing to our calendar and learn more about the CC Open Education Platform on our website. 

The post CC Open Education Platform Lightning Talks February 2023: Recordings and Slides appeared first on Creative Commons.

The Creative Commons Open Education Platform community welcomes you to our Lightning Talks, or seven-minute presentations on specific updates or stories in open education.

Kicking off our Lightning Talks series for 2023, presenters will highlight: open educational resources (OER) as tools for social justice, work/life balance, climate change and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Presenters will also focus on particular platforms, such as LibreTexts and Curationist, which provide technical advancements for open education. Learn more about the presentations below. 

Register and join us via Zoom at 4:00 PM UTC on 2 February 2023, ready to learn. Determine the meeting time in your local time zone. 

Reimagining Open Education as Social Justice

• Speakers: 
  • Ravon Ruffin, Educational Programs Manager at MHz Foundation. Ruffin is also CEO and co-founder of the creative studio and arts incubator Brown Art Ink. 
  • Amanda Figueroa, Community Director at MHz Foundation. Figueroa is also the co-founder of Brown Art Ink.
• Summary: This session will be an overview and exploration of the Curationist platform, a digital open access tool for publishing materials found in the Creative Commons and public domain. This tool brings together arts and culture communities to find, share, collaborate, and reimagine cultural narratives. Curationist is a response to the urgent call for decolonial methodologies within curation, education, and art, and will exist as a vital resource within openGLAM, OER, and Indigenous data sovereignty.

LibreTexts 101: Building the Textbook of the Future

• Speaker: Delmar Larsen, Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Davis, and Founder and Director of the LibreTexts project.
• Summary: Larsen will provide a topical overview of the LibreVerse – the suite of tools and technologies to advance the building and usage of OER textbooks, assessments, and other activities. The overview will include a discussion of the Libraries, ADAPT homework system, jupyter, Commons&Conductor, SOLO, bots and more. The key approach to the LibreVerse is to build and use technology to advance specific goals and avoid its limitations. Hence, a multi-goals effort like LibreTexts requires a multi-technology platform – the LibreVerse.

Using Machine Translation Algorithms to Effectively generate Non-English language OER Textbooks

• Speaker: Delmar Larsen, Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Davis, and Founder and Director of the LibreTexts project.
• Summary: Larsen’s presentation will outline recent efforts of leveraging the centralized corpus of OER textbooks hosted on the LibreTexts platform toward a greater global impact. Larson will also discuss the implementation and impact of two approaches in building non-English language OER textbooks via modern machine translation algorithms. Key to these approaches is recognizing that while modern machine translation algorithms have developed significantly over the past few years, and they are still 90-95% perfect, their implementation makes them far more useful to students than the alternative human implemented translation effort at 100% implemented at a limited scale and with significant costs.

Integration of Values and Ethics in OER for Climate Change and the SDG’s

• Speaker: Dr Suma Parahakaran is head of the Faculty of Education at Manipal Globalnxt University in Malaysia and serves as a Visiting Professor at the American University of Sovereign Nations. She was also part of the task force for training teachers to integrate Values and Ethics into the Curriculum content for the UNHABITAT water education project. 
• Summary: This presentation will highlight options for collaborative OER for learning communities. 

OER as a Social Justice tool, the case of digital accessibility

• Speaker: Nicolas Simon, Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Criminology, and Social Work at Eastern Connecticut State University. 
• Summary: By being cost-free, Open Educational Resources (OER) are electronically available for all students. The economic inclusion of all learners is the first step toward social justice. Another step is to use OER, which are specifically digitally accessible to include all types of learners. By using OER, we educators can promote and teach about digital accessibility. Then we can invite our students to use digital accessibility in the creation of new OER. In this sense, OER are good opportunities to advocate for inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility, and social justice.

Get the Balance Right: Using Mindfulness OER for Intentional Work and Life Practices

• Speaker: Dr. Carolyn Stevenson is currently a full-time faculty member and faculty advisor for Purdue University Global, School of General Education, Department of Professional Studies, with over 23 years teaching and administrative experience in higher education at both the undergraduate and graduate level. She completed her Ed.D. from Roosevelt University, M.B.A. from Kaplan University, M.A. in Communications from Governor’s State University and B.A. in English from Northern Illinois University.
• Summary: This session will discuss using mindfulness OER to foster a health work/life balance. The session will also provide participants with resources and will include a brief meditation exercise.

Register and join us via Zoom at 4:00 PM UTC on 2 February 2023, ready to learn. Determine the meeting time in your local time zone. 

The post CC Open Education Platform Lightning Talks: Join us on 2 February 2023 appeared first on Creative Commons.