Open Educational Resources

Motivation

Agenda

OER: What?

OER: UNESCO Definition

• Open Educational Resources (OER)

  • OER are “teaching, learning and research materials in any medium, digital or otherwise, that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.” [Une12]

    “OER Global Logo” by Jonathasmello under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported; from Wikimedia Commons

  • Usually, Creative Commons licensing
    • Legal “standards” for international/global use
    • Permit 5 Rs of openness [Wil14],[HWSJ10]: retain, reuse, revise, remix, redistribute
  • Briefly, such licenses offer freedoms that would otherwise be prevented by copyright law

OER: Examples

• Physical or digital resources
  • E.g., AR, article, artwork, audio, book, data, figure, game, MOOC, podcast, presentation, quiz, simulation, slideshow, video, VR
  • E.g., this presentation (source file)

OER: Licensing

• Sample licenses in line with UNESCO’s OER definition
  • CC0, public domain: Creator waives all rights
    • Beware! Proper academic conduct requires attribution anyways
  • CC BY (Attribution): License and creator need to be credited
  • CC BY-SA (Attribution and ShareAlike): License and creator need to be credited and derived works must be distributed under “same” license terms

• Other licenses, incompatible with 5 Rs
  • Non Commercial: Does not grant right to reuse, e.g., on Wikipedia or at university
  • No Derivatives: Does not grant rights to revise and remix

Incomplete Rules of Thumb for Licensing

• TASL by Creative Commons

  “licensing” by Ralf Schmitzer under CC BY 3.0 US; cropped from the Noun Project

  • Title, author, source, license
• TULLU in Germany
  • Titel, Urheber*in, Lizenz, Link, Ursprungsort
• Licensees must also indicate modifications, reproduce copyright notices and disclaimers

Major Licensing Challenge

• Incomplete and inconsistent source information

  “Puzzle” by Kelcey Hurst under CC BY 3.0 US; cropped from the Noun Project

  • E.g., OER Global logo

    “OER Global Logo” by Jonathasmello under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported; from Wikimedia Commons

    • No title but author information at Wikimedia Commons
      • Jonathasmello
    • Conflicting title and author information in logo manual

      • First page, Global OER Logo

        2012, Jonathas Mello
        www.jonathasmello.com
        

      • Last page, OER Global Logo

        Jonathas Mello
        

• Apparently, manual copying of license information by licensees not feasible
  • Textual specification by licensors neither
• Identifying provenance and attribution is among the most time-consuming factors for OER projects [FLGB16]

OER: Why?

UNESCO’s Perspective

• SDG4, world peace

  • “Open Educational Resources (OER) support quality education that is equitable, inclusive, open and participatory.” [Une17]

Local Perspective

Broader Context

• General movement for freedom and transparency

  “Transparency” by Wichai Wi under CC BY 3.0 US; cropped from the Noun Project

  • Open Access, Open Data, Open Education, Open Science, (Free/Libre and) Open Source Software (FLOSS)
  • Promise of sharing, e.g., Wiki culture, maker spaces

OER: How?

1. Create/revise/remix work
2. Attach license
3. Publish

Really?

• Yes, but …
• [Lec19]: Adopt principles of
  • OER (ALMS framework)
  • Software engineering (version control, separation of layout and contents, platform independence, offline use, FLOSS)
  • Technical writing (single sourcing)

ALMS Framework

Criteria for OER and software proposed in [HWSJ10]

More Requirements

• Extension of ALMS framework [Lec19]
  • Requirements for “A”: Free/libre and open source software (FLOSS)
    • FLOSS for learners and teachers, OER users and creators
      • (FLOSS: 4 freedoms, similar to 5 Rs above, but going back to 1980s [Sta86])
    • Platform independent
    • Also mobile and offline
  • Requirements for “M” and “S”: Single sourcing [Roc01]
    • Single, collaboratively maintained source, no copy&paste
    • Separation of contents and layout

    • Source files with lightweight markup for collaboration with comparison and integration with version control systems such as Git

      “Git Logo” by Jason Long under CC BY 3.0; from git-scm.com

Emacs-Reveal

• Free/libre and open source software (FLOSS) to create OER presentations [Lec19b]

  • HTML slideshows with audio explanations

    “Online Resources” by LUTFI GANI AL ACHMAD under CC BY 3.0 US; cropped from the Noun Project

    • To be viewed with standard Web browsers (platform independent), either on- or offline
    • Features include
      • Animations and slide transitions; speaker’s view with preview, notes, and timer; embedding of images, audio, video, mathematical formulas; table of contents; bibliography; keyword index; hyperlinks within and between presentations; themes for different styling; responsive design with touch support; quizzes for retrieval practice; code highlighting and evaluation for programming languages
  • Contents separated from layout with lightweight markup language Org mode
  • Satisfies above requirements

OER Presentations with Emacs-Reveal

• Emacs-reveal is software to generate HTML presentations

  “lecture” by LUTFI GANI AL ACHMAD under CC BY 3.0 US; cropped from the Noun Project

  • With proper license attribution for images [Lec19c]

    “licensing” by Ralf Schmitzer under CC BY 3.0 US; cropped from the Noun Project

    • Human-readable, e.g., images on this slide
    • Machine-readable with RDFa (in HTML source code)
      • (Example)
  • Based on
    • (Editor) GNU Emacs with Org mode
    • JavaScript presentation framework reveal.js

Sample Quiz

Sample Markup

• Org mode source code for earlier slide:

  ** OER: UNESCO Definition
      - *Open Educational Resources* (OER)
        #+ATTR_REVEAL: :frag (appear)
        - OER are
          “[[https://en.unesco.org/oer/paris-declaration][teaching, learning and research materials in any medium, digital or otherwise, that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.]]” cite:Une12
          {{{reveallicense("./figures/logos/Global_OER_Logo.svg.meta","30vh")}}}
        - Usually, [[https://creativecommons.org/licenses][Creative Commons licensing]]
          - Legal “standards” for *international/global* use
          - Permit *5 Rs* of openness cite:Wil14,HWSJ10:
            /retain/, /reuse/, /revise/, /remix/, /redistribute/
        - Briefly, such licenses offer *freedoms* that are restricted by
          standard copyright law
  

  • Note
    • Simple markup, e.g.:
      • ** for 2nd-level heading; - with indentation for nested lists; * and / for bold and italics
      • Citations to BibTeX bibliography with cite, animation of list items with :frag (appear)
    • OER logo embedded with reveallicense
      • License metadata handled automatically

Sample Live HTML Code

<style>
h1.demo-headline { color: blue; }
.green { color: green; }
#demo-id { color: red; }
</style>
<h1 class="demo-headline">Hello World!</h1>
<p class="green">This is a <i>paragraph</i> of text with class “green”.</p>
<p id="demo-id">This is another paragraph with id “demo-id”.</p>

Sample Live Python Code

def factorial(n):
    if n < 2:
        return 1
    else:
        return n * factorial(n - 1)

print(factorial(10))

OER Infrastructure on GitLab

• GitLab is a FLOSS DevOps platform

  “GitLab Logo” by GitLab under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0; from gitlab.com

  • Hosting emacs-reveal and my OER as GitLab Pages
  • You could run your own instance if you preferred

• OER are (re-) generated upon source changes

  • GitLab CI/CD pipelines with Docker images

    “Docker logo” under Docker Brand Guidelines; from Docker

Conclusions

Spread the wOERd: What and Why?

• OER “support quality education that is equitable, inclusive, open and participatory.” [Une17]
  • Appropriate licensing is key
  • Technical choices limit or open (re-) use

A jOERney Ahead: How?

• My approach: Emacs-reveal as tool to create OER presentations

  Figure under CC0 1.0

  • With simplified licensing attribution
  • Necessary metadata added in pragmatic ways
    • Further standardization?
    • Aesthetics vs legal requirements?
  • Your suggestions?

• Are you interested in learning analytics for reveal.js?
• OER@WWU: Brown Bag meeting at ZHLdigital on 2020-02-06, noon
  • Please talk to me or the ZHL team if you want to join
  • Funding program Oercontent.nrw 2019 likely to be repeated

Backup

License Metadata

• License information should be machine-readable

  “licensing” by Ralf Schmitzer under CC BY 3.0 US; cropped from the Noun Project

  • Overcome above challenges
  • Improve tool support in general
• Creative Commons Rights Expression Language (CC REL) [AAL+12]

  • RDF vocabulary to express (some) licensing aspects

    “jigsaw puzzle” by Magicon under CC BY 3.0 US; cropped from the Noun Project

    • (See revisited)
• RDF: Resource description framework, semantic web approach [Hor08]
  • Specify knowledge in triples: subject, predicate, object
    • E.g., Jens is author of a specific document
  • RDFa: Embedding of RDF into HTML

CC Attribution Requirements

• CC REL is a standard for machine-readable licensing information [AAL+12]
  • As TASL and TULLU, CC REL is incomplete
• Emacs-reveal extends CC REL in pragmatic ways

Metadata for OER logo

• Sample metadata with license information
  • Stored in text file Global_OER_Logo.svg.meta
    • As part of my OER figure collection

 1: ; Semicolon starts comment until end of line (Emacs Lisp).
 2: ; Lines 13-16 occur in comments; they illustrate available options.
 3: 
 4: ((filename . "./figures/logos/Global_OER_Logo.svg.png")
 5:  (licenseurl . "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/")
 6:  (licensetext . "Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported")
 7:  (cc:attributionName . "Jonathasmello")
 8:  (cc:attributionURL . "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jonathasmello")
 9:  (dc:source . "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Open_Educational_Resources_Logo.svg")
10:  (sourcetext . "Wikimedia Commons")
11:  (dc:title . "OER Global Logo")
12:  (texwidth . 0.2)
13: ; (imgalt . "If the title is not suitable as alt text.")
14: ; (imgadapted . "Indicate modifications/provenance.")
15: ; (permit . "Indicate special permissions/disclaimers.")
16: ; (copyright . "Reproduce copyright notice of source.")
17: )

Sample RDFa for OER logo (simplified)

1: <div about="Global_OER_Logo.svg.png" class="figure">
2:   <img src="Global_OER_Logo.svg.png" alt="OER Global Logo" />
3:   <span property="dc:title">OER Global Logo</span>
4:   by <a rel="cc:attributionURL dc:creator" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jonathasmello" property="cc:attributionName">Jonathasmello</a>
5:   under <a rel="license" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported</a>;
6:   from <a rel="dc:source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Open_Educational_Resources_Logo.svg">Wikimedia Commons</a>
7: </div>

(Hint: Inspect RDFa with browser extension OpenLink Structured Data Sniffer)

Bibliography

• [AAL+12] Abelson, Adida, Linksvayer & Yergler, CC REL: The Creative Commons Rights Expression Language, in: The digital public domain: foundations for an open culture, Open Book Publishers, 2012.
• [FLGB16] Falconer, Littlejohn, McGill & Beetham, Motives and tensions in the release of open educational resources: The UKOER program, Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 32(4), (2016).
• [Hor08] Horrocks, Ontologies and the Semantic Web, Commun. ACM 51(12), 58-67 (2008).
• [HWSJ10] Hilton, Wiley, Stein & Johnson, The four ‘R’s of openness and ALMS analysis: frameworks for open educational resources, Open Learning 25(1), 37-44 (2010).
• [Lec19] Lechtenbörger, Erstellung und Weiterentwicklung von Open Educational Ressources im Selbstversuch, MedienPädagogik 34, 101-117 (2019). https://doi.org/10.21240/mpaed/34/2019.03.02.X
• [Lec19b] Lechtenbörger, Emacs-reveal: A software bundle to create OER presentations, Journal of Open Source Education (JOSE) 2(18), (2019). https://doi.org/10.21105/jose.00050
• [Lec19c] Lechtenbörger, Simplifying license attribution for OER with emacs-reveal, in: 17. Fachtagung Bildungstechnologien (DELFI 2019), 2019. https://dl.gi.de/handle/20.500.12116/24399
• [Roc01] Rockley, The Impact of Single Sourcing and Technology, Technical Communication 48(2), 189-193 (2001).
• [Sta86] Stallman, What is the Free Software Foundation?, GNU's Bulletin 1(1), (1986). https://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull1.html
• [Une12] UNESCO, 2012 Paris OER Declaration, 2012. https://en.unesco.org/oer/paris-declaration
• [Une17] UNESCO, Ljubljana OER Action Plan 2017, 2017. https://en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/ljubljana_oer_action_plan_2017.pdf
• [Wil14] Wiley, The Access Compromise and the 5th R, 2014. https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/3221

License Information

Source files for this presentation are available in this project on GitLab.

Except where otherwise noted, this work, “Open Educational Resources”, is © 2019 by Jens Lechtenbörger, published under the Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 4.0.

No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use.

In particular, trademark rights are not licensed under this license. Thus, rights concerning third party logos (e.g., on the title slide) and other (trade-) marks (e.g., “Creative Commons” itself) remain with their respective holders.