U.S. should require “open by default” for federal government software code

Timothy Vollmer, April 28th, 2016

Photo by Tirza van Dijk, CC0.

A few weeks ago we submitted comments to the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) draft federal source code policy. The purpose of the policy is to improve access to custom software code developed for the federal government, and would require that:

(1) New custom code whose development is paid for by the Federal Government be made available for re-use across Federal agencies; and

(2) a portion of that new custom code be released to the public as Open Source Software.

We provided feedback on a few different areas of the proposed policy.

First, we suggested that software developed by U.S. government employees should be clearly marked as being in the public domain not only in the United States, but worldwide, and as a matter of both copyright and patent rights. Under U.S. copyright law, works created by employees of the federal government are not subject to copyright protection in the United States. But what about foreign copyrights? Clearly, this custom code produced by government employees—thus in the public domain in the U.S.—could be equally as useful to developers outside of the U.S. There is no indication that the U.S. government has wishes to enforce its copyright abroad, but rather allows and even encourages the worldwide public to reuse its works freely, including software.

We said that software created by federal government employees should be released under the CC0 Public Domain Dedication, which waives any copyright that might apply, accompanied by a standard non-assertion pledge (“nonassert”) that indicates that the U.S. government will not to seek to enforce patent rights it may have against reusers of the software.

Second, we proposed that software funded by the federal government but developed by third party vendors should be released under free/open source software licenses that permit the greatest levels of freedom for reuse with the least number of restrictions. This will ensure that the public is granted rights to freely use, share, and build upon custom software code developed using public funds.

Third, we urged the federal government to consider setting a policy of “open by default” for custom software developed by third parties. Right now, the draft policy requires each covered agency to release at least 20% of its newly-developed custom code each year as open source software.

Finally, we urged the U.S. government to extending its open source licensing policy to the outputs of Federal grants and cooperative agreements. We discussed a precedent that support the adoption of a default open licensing policy for software—even for grants and cooperative agreements. In 2011, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) adopted an open licensing policy for the outputs of its $2 billion Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grants Program. As a condition of the receipt of a grant under this program, grantees are required to license to the public all digital content created with the support of the grant under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY) license. In addition to content such as digital education and training resources, DOL requires that all computer software source code developed or created with grant funds must be released under an open license acceptable to either the Free Software Foundation and/or the Open Source Initiative. DOL adopted this open licensing policy “to ensure that the Federal investment of these funds has as broad an impact as possible and to encourage innovation in the development of new learning materials.” As of December 2015, the Department of Labor has adopted a department-wide open licensing policy, which covers all intellectual property developed under a competitive Federal award process.

The public comment period is now closed. The U.S. government will analyze the feedback and revise the policy as necessary. You can view all of the comments submitted here.

The long arm of copyright: Millions blocked from reading original versions of The Diary of Anne Frank

Timothy Vollmer, April 26th, 2016

The original writings of The Diary of Anne Frank should have entered the public domain on January 1, 2016. They should have become freely accessible to everyone who wants to read and experience this important cultural work. Instead, the texts remain clogged in the pipes of EU copyright law. In some countries like Poland, the texts are in the public domain. In others, such as the Netherlands, the original writings are protected under copyright until 2037. As a result, millions of people are unable to access and read the online versions of the original works. (The situation is even worse in the U.S., where those writings will remain under copyright until 2042.)

Centrum Cyfrowe, Kennisland, and COMMUNIA are highlighting the strange legal situation around The Diary of Anne Frank with the campaign #ReadAnneDiary.

Today, the Polish digital education organization Centrum Cyfrowe published the original, Dutch-language version of The Diary of Anne Frank online at annefrank.centrumcyfrowe.pl. This is the first time internet users will able to read the original writings of Anne Frank online. But unless you’re in Poland, you won’t be able to access it. Why? Because as of today, the primary texts are still protected by copyright in most member states of the European Union.

COMMUNIA explains the copyright confusion surrounding the diary:

First, the Anne Frank Foundation announced their plans to list Otto (Anne Frank’s father) as a co-author, which would extend the protection period of the published diary until 2050. Next, due to a transitional rule in Dutch law it became clear that Anne Frank’s original writings would not enter the public domain in 2016 in the Netherlands (and many other EU countries with similar rules). Finally, in early February the Wikimedia Foundation (the organization that hosts Wikipedia and related projects) decided to remove the Dutch-language text of the diary from Wikisource.

It’s a mess. But it doesn’t have to be this way. COMMUNIA underscores the need for a modern, progressive copyright framework in Europe:

Currently, the rules for establishing the duration of the term of protection are so complex that we need the support of legal experts from different European countries just to determine whether an individual work is still protected by copyright or neighboring rights. In particular, the lack of effective harmonisation of the duration of copyright across the EU hampers efforts of organisations and entrepreneurs, who want to offer online products and services. Only an intervention at the European level can be remedy this situation. As we have repeatedly argued, the term of copyright protection should be reduced and fully harmonized and unified throughout the EU. If we want to fully unlock the potential of our rich cultural heritage we need clear rules that allow anyone to determine whether a work is still protected by copyright. This also includes making it clear that digitization of public domain works does not create new rights.

The #ReadAnneDiary campaign corresponds with this year’s World Intellectual Property Day. Copyright and other intellectual property rights can be used to promote creativity, sharing, and innovation. Creative Commons licensing allows authors to publish their creative works on more flexible terms than the default all rights reserved regime. Creators of all types are leveraging open copyright licensing and the public domain to collaborate and share a wealth of content—including digital educational resources, scientific research findings, and rich cultural and artistic works.

At the same time, it’s crucial that the public has the right to access important historical works like original versions of The Diary of Anne Frank. It should be available online—in the public domain—for anyone to access, read, and appreciate.

Vice President Biden: Taxpayer-funded cancer research shouldn’t sit behind walls

Timothy Vollmer, April 22nd, 2016

On Wednesday in New Orleans, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden spoke at the convening of the American Association for Cancer Research on the need to speed up scientific research, development, and collaboration that can lead to better cancer treatments.

Vice President Biden is leading the National Cancer Moonshot Initiative, which aims to accelerate cancer research and “make more therapies available to more patients, while also improving our ability to prevent cancer and detect it at an early stage.”

VP Joe Biden asks about CC’s Ryan Merkley’s op-ed in Wired from Matt Lee on Vimeo.

In his remarks to the American Association for Cancer Research, Biden discussed a broad global support for the Cancer Moonshot Initiative. He talked about the importance of collaboration among cancer researchers, academic institutions, patient groups, the private sector, and government.

He made a commitment to cancer researchers to help break down barriers that get in the way of their work. One of the barriers is not having broad open access to cancer research and data. The Vice President asked about the types of innovative insights and discoveries that could be made possible with next generation supercomputers and openly accessible, machine readable text and data.

Biden spoke about realigning the incentives around sharing cancer data so that research and development can lead to better treatments, faster. He said, “taxpayers fund $5 billion a year in cancer research every year, but once it’s published, nearly all of that taxpayer-funded research sits behind walls. Tell me how this is moving the process along more rapidly.” Biden quoted Creative Commons CEO Ryan Merkley, who this week published an op-ed in WIRED on the urgent imperative for open access to publicly funded cancer research:

 Imagine if instead we said we will no longer conceal cancer’s secrets in a paywall journal — pay-walled journals with restricted databases, and instead make all that we know open to everyone so that the world can join the global campaign to end cancer in our lifetimes? It’s a pretty good question. There may be reasons why it shouldn’t be answered like I think it should — and I’m going to hear from you, I hope, because I’ve not made these recommendations yet. But it seems to me this matters. This question matters.

In the op-ed, Merkley pushed for a fundamental change in the model for sharing and collaboration around scientific information, including cancer research: “An alternative system, where all publicly-funded research is required to be shared under a permissive license, would allow authors to unlock their content and data for re-use with a global audience, and co-operate in new discoveries and analysis.”

We’re grateful to see Vice President Biden’s continued support in the fight against cancer, and we’re committed to assisting in the efforts to ensure unrestricted access to cancer research for the public good.

How should we attribute 3D printed objects?

Jane Park, April 19th, 2016

How should we attribute authors of CC-licensed 3D designs once that design has been used to print a 3D physical object?

3DSystems 3D Printed Bass / Maurizio Pesce / CC BY

The challenge of attribution, or “view source,” for 3D printed objects, is widespread in the 3D printing community, an active part of CC’s larger network. It is multi-layered and speaks to existing needs by both creators and users of 3D designs. Creators want to be credited for their designs because it feels good to be recognized; plus, as a creator you want to know if and how your work is being used. Users, who are often other creators, want to be able to view the source design behind a physical object so that they can use the design to reprint the object, modify the design, remix it with other designs, or make significant creative additions to the design.

Michael Weinberg from Shapeways first presented on the challenge of attribution in 3D printing at the CC Global Summit last October and wrote up this post summarizing the issue.

In CC’s view, the challenge is more than just compliance with the attribution condition of CC licenses. Actually, it is debatable whether attribution is legally required on the physical object of a CC-licensed 3D design in the first place. Notwithstanding the legal question of whether attribution is required, CC is interested in the challenge of attribution because it speaks to two of our three new strategic outcomes: discovery and collaboration. Standardizing attribution for 3D print objects and providing the information infrastructure behind it (such as a registry or database) would increase discovery of the CC-licensed designs behind the objects and increase connections and collaborations for users who wish to adapt CC-licensed designs to different contexts either on their own or in direct dialogue with the original creator.

Indicating the license on a design is simple; platforms like Thingiverse and Sketchfab have made it easy to upload and mark your 3D designs with a CC license, complete with machine-readable license metadata embedded within the webpage where you download the design file. But once someone sends that file off to a printer, the license information is gone, including the source of the creation — the author, or any way to contact her. The printed physical object doesn’t carry the license info, and though some platforms have provided workarounds, like Thingiverse’s “print thing tags,” these workarounds only make sense for some objects (eg. figurines) but not others (eg. earrings). So how do you view the source of a copyrighted 3D printed object so that you can give credit, print your own version, or iterate on the original design? How do you comply with the attribution requirement of the CC license, if it is in fact legally required?

Let’s figure out a standard way to attribute and view the source of 3D printed objects

Given the current momentum and interest in the 3D printing movement, we think it is much more likely that a standard will be adopted now — this year — rather than at a later date. We want to make sure that any norms that are set are discoverable (machine-readable), usable (user-friendly), and widely adopted (3D community-approved). We also want to make sure that the information behind each attribution is not lost, but indexed in a registry or database so that a user could potentially scan a 3D printed object and view not only its source and license info, but also its derivatives and any commercial models associated with it.

The hope is that any standard for 3D printing could also be adapted for different fields where there are physical objects linked to their digital attributions, eg. print books, but for now we want to focus on the needs of the 3D printing community.

Where do we begin?

To start, we’ve laid out the basic issues and legal questions we need to consider so that we can start researching them, below.

The TL;DR version: We will research and document the basics of 3D printing, including figuring out what types of content are actually copyrightable. We will learn more about how CC licenses are used in the 3D printing community: what and how are users licensing? how are they currently providing credit and source information? We will also explore the policy implications of encouraging attribution as a social norm even where it is not required because copyright does not apply.

Research questions in detail

Basics about how 3D printing works

• Breakdown of the most common 3D printing process(es) from idea conception to creation of physical object, including types of digital files involved (e.g. scans and CAD files), simple explanation of technical process that occurs in 3D printer, etc.
• How often are CC licenses applied in this domain? How often are they complied with?
• What are common techniques for giving credit and identifying source in 3D printing? Real world rules of thumb for ShareAlike?

Role of copyright in 3D printing

• Within the 3D printing process, which digital files and physical objects are likely eligible for copyright and why? Which ones are not?
  • What are limitations of copyrightability in each of these and how could they or have they been applied? (e.g., useful article rule, merger doctrine)
  • Outline relevant case law. (U.S. and major international cases)
• When is copyright in each of those objects potentially implicated in the 3D printing process?
  • Even where copying or adaptation occurs, what exceptions or limitations might apply? (e.g., fair use, severability test)
  • Outline relevant case law. (U.S. and major international cases)

Policy implications to think about following initial research of copyright in 3D printing

• Even if attribution is not legally required, would promoting a standard of attribution result in expansion of copyright (or publicly perceived expansion of copyright)?
• If copyright is not applicable, what is, or should be, CC’s role in this space?

Michael Weinberg and Public Knowledge have already provided some great baseline research for these questions. We welcome links to other existing research. There may be academic research we don’t have access to (ironically), so any pointers would be helpful.

We want your input

At the same time that we are scoping and carrying out legal research, we will be helping to organize an initial meeting of 3D experts in law, design, and technology, including platforms that enable hosting and distribution of CC-licensed 3D designs. We’ll share our initial thinking and blueprints for prototypes from this meeting, gather community feedback, and then iterate to develop these prototypes for testing in a few platforms. The goal is not for us to develop something that is technically perfect, but for something that has community buy-in for wide and easy adoption.

We’d like to hear from you regarding any of the above. What are we missing in terms of the legal and policy questions? What are some technical solutions that platforms are already using that we should be considering? Who should be involved that we’re not already talking to? And last, but not least, what are your current practices and ideas as a user? Please contact us directly or on the cc-community list. We’re only just getting started.

Developing Open Policy for Higher Education

Timothy Vollmer, April 15th, 2016

In March we hosted the second Institute for Open Leadership, and in our summary of the event we mentioned that the Institute fellows would be taking turns to write about their open policy projects. First up is Amanda Coolidge, Senior Manager of Open Education at BCcampus.

I have been in the field of open education for 10 years, starting in 2006, when I was based in Nairobi, Kenya working on the TESSA Project through the Open University UK.  I joined BCcampus’s Open Education Team in 2014 and have had the opportunity to work on a variety of open education projects provincially, nationally, and internationally. BCcampus supports the work of the British Columbia (Canada) post-secondary system in the areas of teaching, learning, and educational technology. My role is to lead the Open Education team, and in particular to advocate for open education practices across the province of B.C. BCcampus’s Open Education team is best known for the work we have done on the B.C. Open Textbook Project.

“IOL2 Working” (CC BY 2.0) by amanda.coolidge

The Institute for Open Leadership was the most profound and inspirational professional development activity I have taken part in. I had the chance to meet a group of passionate open advocates from around the world who are changing open policy in museums, non-profit organizations, research, and higher education. From the week in Cape Town, I came away with two small open policy projects, and one large project.

BCcampus Open Education contracts with grantees

One of the smaller open policy projects I have taken on is to change and clarify the wording of our contracts with our B.C. grantees. When we work on projects—either creating or adapting open educational resources—each grantee must adhere to the contract that is outlined between BCcampus and the grantee. The language in these contracts needed to be stronger to ensure that openness was not an afterthought, but that it was deeply embedded into the work we were asking the grantee to accomplish. Changes to the wording of our contracts include:

• Technical formats for revision and remixing: Completed OER materials must include the original, editable files for re-distribution.

• Accessibility standards: OER in the form of multimedia, such as videos or audio, must be compliant with accessibility standards and include a transcript and preferably closed captioning.

• Clarification of the CC license requirements for newly created works and the use of existing resources in the development of materials:
  • New Creation – copyright with author(s)
    • The materials covered by this contract will be a newly created work, for which the copyright will be held by the author or in the case of a new book that is collaboratively produced by more than one author the copyright will be jointly owned by all contributing authors. In both cases, the resulting content will be licensed for reuse with the most current version of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.
  • Use of Existing Content
    • Any existing content used in the development of the materials must have a Creative Commons License. The use of the materials must comply with the original Creative Commons License attributed to the existing content.

Open policy for the Ministry of Advanced Education

The second smaller—yet potentially more impactful—policy project is developing an open policy statement for our B.C. Ministry of Advanced Education. The open policy is directed to granting funds, in that the Ministry would state that all grantees who receive public funds from the Ministry of Advanced Education must use CC licensed material in the development of their said project. While this is still in draft form and has not been formally presented to the Ministry, a part of the statement reads:

Grantees are encouraged to search existing resources and OER repositories for openly licensed learning objects and, where appropriate, reuse these learning objects instead of duplicating existing objects as components of their proposed programs. If existing OER are reused as part of the grant funded project, the grantee shall comply with the terms of the applicable open license, including proper attribution.

Open educational resources policy guide

The third, and largest, open policy project is the creation of an Open Educational Resources Policy Guide for Colleges and Universities in both the United States and Canada. I have the distinct pleasure of working on this project with another IOL Fellow, Daniel Demarte. Daniel is Vice President for Academic Affairs & Chief Academic Officer at Tidewater Community College. Daniel and I are very passionate about ensuring that the development and implementation of OER is successful in higher education. We believe that in order to mainstream OER development and adoption, an open policy should be implemented. The purpose of the guide is to promote the utilization of OER and scale efforts to full OER programs. It is written primarily for governance officials at public two-year colleges in the United States and Colleges and Universities in Canada. The contents of the policy guide are not intended to be prescriptive; contents are intended to be adapted for use according to a college’s culture. The OER policy guide is organized in three sections including:

• OER Policy Principles
• Components of an OER Policy
• OER Policy Resources

The components of OER Policy section includes the following topics that we think decision-makers should consider when developing an institutional OER Policy, or when integrating these components into an existing institutional policy:

• OER Purpose
• OER Policy Statement
• Intellectual Property and Licensing OER Content
• OER Procedures and Responsibilities
• OER Training and Professional Development
• OER Course Design
• OER Content Development
• Sharing OER Content
• OER Technical Format
• OER Sustainability (college-wide capacity, funding model, tenure)
• OER Quality Assurance

For each component, we provide an explanation of why the component is needed, sample policy statements, sample resources, and a recommended action checklist. Stay tuned for continued updates on the status of the Open Educational Resources policy guide.

I would like to give my sincere thanks to Creative Commons, mentors, fellows, and the Open Policy Network for including me in the Institute for Open Leadership.

“View from Table Mountain” (CC BY 2.0) by  amanda.coolidge 

At Japanese Beatmaking Event, Producers Create CC Remixes in Just Four Hours

Eric Steuer, April 14th, 2016

Earlier this month, the fine folks of Creative Commons Japan hosted a beatmaking event at Bigakko, an innovative art education center in Tokyo. A quartet of up and coming Japanese electronic music producers—Madegg, Metome, Foodman (best name ever), and Canooooopy—were issued a challenge: Create brand new remixes of CC-licensed tracks found online. The musicians had exactly four hours to complete the challenge, from finding the CC-licensed source material to exporting their finished remixes.

The results turned out to be pretty fantastic, and are now available through the Creative Commons SoundCloud account. Most of the remixes and almost all of the source tracks that were used are licensed under CC BY and CC BY-SA, so there’s a lot here that you can not only listen to but also use for your own projects and remixes. Check ’em out:

Madegg, “Banana Man”

Metome, “Impro 2016l4l2”

食品まつりa.k.a Foodman, “Hey”

Canooooopy, “雲間に閃く集合知 [clouded souls of crowds]”

Active OER: Beyond open licensing policies

Timothy Vollmer, April 14th, 2016

“eBook” (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) by  Jonas Tana 

This is a guest blog post written by Alek Tarkowski, Director of Centrum Cyfrowe and co-founder of Creative Commons Poland. On April 14, 2016, 60 experts from 30 countries are meeting in Kraków, Poland for the first OER Policy Forum. The goal of the event is to build on the foundations for OER strategy development and define collective paths towards greater, active OER adoption.

In 2015, the Polish government launched an online repository of open, Creative Commons Attribution-licensed e-textbooks, covering the core curriculum for primary and lower secondary education. After five years, open education activists finally saw their advocacy work bear fruit. In parallel, the government changed the textbook funding model, which translated into massive cost savings for parents and students.

With this goal achieved, we ask ourselves: is our work done? Or is this just the first step in fully achieving the potential for Open Educational Resources (OER) in education? Do we just need textbooks that parents and students don’t have to pay for, or do we need educators and learners actively engaging with resources, and trying out new pedagogies?

The issue surfaces from time to time in discussions on OER policies, but not often enough. We need to move beyond strategies that ensure open availability of content, and supplement them with active policies that support engagement of educators and learners with open resources. Scale of usage, and not just the number of available resources, should be our key metric of success.

Just free, or also open?

In February, at the annual meeting of the OER community, organised by the Hewlett Foundation, David Wiley and John Hilton III organised a discussion on “free vs. open”. The terminology itself was a bit confusing, because by “free” they meant “freely available”, and by “open” they meant allowing the “5 Rs” of active reuse of content. Such use of terms would cause a violent outburst from any orthodox Free Software advocate, since that community has clear definitions of “libre” and “gratis”. But the strange choice of key terms made sense in a way—it drew our attention from the typical way we have been naming things to the problem at heart of OER developments.

We’ve spent too much time arguing about the virtues of “libre” vs. “gratis”, which usually are rooted in moral arguments centered around the value of freedom. Not enough effort has been made to relate the value of OER to real-life educational challenges and the  everyday practices of educators and learners. The OER movement, like much of the open movement, has not paid enough attention to the actual value that openly-licensed resources provide to their users—in such as way that is defined in more precise terms than a potential for greater personal freedom. (This issue has been raised by John Wilbanks in his keynote at the OpenEd conference in 2014).

Wiley and Hilton rightly asked participants of the discussion: what do we gain from policies that lead to the provision of freely available resources? And how do we support open use of resources? The conversation is timely: OER policies are gaining important footholds in the United States. On the one hand, the federal government is committing to making openly available the educational content funded with public tax dollars. Also, at the state level—in particular colleges—educational systems are switching from proprietary to open resources, with the “Z degree” (zero resource cost college degree) leading the way. Using the terms of the debate, these are “gratis”, but not necessarily “libre” policies.

Strong and weak forms of open policies

The same challenge became clear to me over the last five years, as the Polish government has been implementing its open textbooks program. In 2011, Poland adopted a strong open model, which ensures legal openness (through open licensing), technical openness (for example use of open formats and dealing with accessibility issues) and which makes content available with no costs for end users. Polish open textbooks are available for free, in open formats, and under an open license. This is different from a weak open model, in which open licensing is not used.

This weak open model has been for almost two decades at the heart of the Open Access model of scientific publishing, in which academic research articles published in scholarly journals are made available to freely access and read (without carrying a specific open license), typically after an embargo period. Yet in recent years we see a shift toward strong openness in Open Access publishing. This has been explicitly expressed through the re-formulation of principles at the 10th Anniversary of the Budapest Open Access Initiative.

Open licensing ensures strong openness by ensuring, through legal means, rights defined in the educational sphere by Wiley’s “5 Rs”. Recommendations to do so are based on a very well developed argument that goes back to Richard Stallman’s thinking on user freedoms, and Lawrence Lessig’s idea of remix as core activity for free culture. But while reuse of code is a common practice in computer programming, reuse of educational content remains an elusive phenomenon. Open licensing advocates usually argue on the basis of future gains: we need to provide a reuse potential by removing legal barriers so that one day we can see novel types of reuse happen. The challenge our community faces is whether the positive changes advocates say will be realized by adopting strong open policies (i.e. policies that deliberately contain an open licensing mandate) can be observed quickly enough in order to validate their development and implementation. Without solid data on why strong open models are needed, they might be evaluated as overly challenging or ineffective.

We need to remember that strong openness is much more controversial than its weak form. In Poland, the willingness of the government to support a strong open policy led to a conflict with a strong lobby of educational publishers. The controversy focused solely on legal issues around ownership of content – and would have been easily solved by adopting a weak policy model (which the Polish government refused to do, fortunately).

Free or Open? Wrong question?

Making the distinction between “libre” and “gratis” (or “free” and “open”, to use terminology proposed by Wiley and Hilton) is a first, important step. Only then we become aware that there is more to OER policies than just open licensing requirements. It becomes possible to define a spectrum of policies through which educational change happens thanks to openly shared and reused resources.

Yet this does not mean that we need to choose between one strategy or the other. Lowering textbook and materials costs for parents and students has been an important aspect of the education policy introduced in Poland. Similarly, open licensing is an important standard for public funding of educational resources and  should remain core to any impactful OER policy. These are important policies, with the potential of introducing greater equality into the educational system.

But we need to be aware that such a policy, on its own, is a “passive” one if we consider broader goals defined by the open education movement. It’s one that creates only potential action for further change. We need to ask the question, what is happening to content that we have openly provided? And build policies that later support not just passive provision of OER, but their active reuse.

Mapping paths toward open education

Reuse is not something that can only happen “in the wild” once the adequate conditions are created. In fact, such organic reuse is quite rare. Although we lack empirical data, I would assume that less than 5% of users is willing to modify content, remix it, create own versions and mash-ups.

If we agree that empowerment and engagement of educators and learners is an important goal, we need to implement active policies that build on and support the potential ensured by passive ones. These could include incentives for teachers to create, reuse and share OER, investing in repositories and other types of infrastructure for discovery and analytics of content, or paying attention to digital literacy of teachers and formulation of new pedagogies. Developing, testing and implementing such active policies in educational systems around the world has to compliment efforts to open resources.

Almost five years after the signing of the Paris OER Declaration and ten years after the foundational meeting in Cape Town, it is time to define new strategies. For the last few years, I have been advocating for the definition of such “paths to open education”. In response, I’ve often heard that education is too varied for such standard scenarios to be defined. But if we want policies that support active reuse of OERs, then we need to define such standard paths. It is clear to me that these would be useful for policymakers asking the same questions. And the answers to some of these questions might even be easier than focusing most of our efforts and outreach on open licensing.

New Open Education Search App by OpenEd.com and Microsoft

Jane Park, April 13th, 2016

A new Open Education Search App is available as part of the U.S. Department of Education’s #GoOpen campaign, a commitment by 14 states and 40 districts to transition to the use of high-quality, openly-licensed educational resources in their schools. The search app pulls in data from the Learning Registry and works within any Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) compliant Learning Management System. The Open Education Search App enables educators and other users within these districts to search for and assign OER directly within an LMS. Current search filters include subject, grade, topic, and individual standard (eg. Common Core, NGSS, Texas TEKS). Information about the CC license status of the resource is also displayed. The app is available now on the EduAppCenter; you can also check out a screenshot of how it looks below.

In addition to the Open Education Search App, Creative Commons license integration and search is available on Microsoft’s Docs.com. Both OpenEd.com and Microsoft are #GoOpen platform partners working to create the environment where educators and students can access the tools, content and expertise necessary to thrive in a connected world. Creative Commons will continue to work closely with both to integrate CC license choice and content discovery across platforms.

Learn more about Creative Commons work with platforms: https://creativecommons.org/platform/.

Help Us Build Creative Commons Certificates – Open Community Call

Paul Stacey, April 5th, 2016

With Creative Commons now being used by people all over the world to openly license over a billion pieces of content, a good working knowledge of what Creative Commons is and how it works is critical.

Creative Commons is developing a series of certificates to provide organizations and individuals with a range of options for increasing knowledge and use of Creative Commons.

The Creative Commons Master Certificate will define the full body of knowledge and skills needed to master CC. This master certificate will be of interest to those who need a broad and deep understanding of all things Creative Commons.

In addition, custom certificates are being designed for specific types of individuals and organizations. Initially Creative Commons is focusing on creating a specific CC Certificate for 1. educators, 2. government, and 3. librarians. The CC Certificate for each of these will include a subset of learning outcomes from the overall CC Master Certificate along with new learning outcomes specific to each role.

All certificates will include both a modular set of learning materials that can be used independently for informal learning, and a formal, structured and facilitated certificate the can be taken for official certification.

CC is grateful for initial support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Institute for Museum and Library Services who have provided funding for the development of the CC Master Certificate and specialized versions for educators, government, and librarians.

Creative Commons is seeking to engage the entire open community in the development of these certificates.

Sandcastles by Neil Turner CC BY-SA 

We plan to design and develop the certificates openly on the web in a way that allows for public input and contribution. We currently are experimenting with making all the certificate designs available for review and edit through GitHub and other tools.

In addition we are looking to tap into as much subject matter expertise as possible through the formation of  certificate working groups. A working group of Creative Commons staff has been formed to provide subject matter expertise on the CC Master Certificate. We’re also reaching out through our networks to form working groups with librarians, educators and government to ensure the specialized certificates are relevant and appropriately targeted to each group.

A Creative Commons Certificate librarian working group is being formed through coordinated outreach in consultation with organizations like the American Library Association, Digital Public Library of America, and SPARC.

The government and educator versions of the certificate are being created to satisfy needs that emerged out of the US Department of Labor Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College Career Training (TAACCCT) grant and the 700+ community colleges who are grantees. Creative Commons is reaching out to these and others for expertise on the government and educator versions of the certificate.

A working group of participants from across Creative Commons global affiliate network has also been formed to help ensure initial work takes into consideration internationalization and localization.

If you’d like to be actively involved in any of these working groups let us know.

Certificates will be created as Creative Commons licensed Open Educational Resources reusing and remixing as many existing openly licensed resources as possible. We’re looking to aggregate, adopt, and adapt existing materials as much as possible and only develop new content for areas where nothing already exists. We’ll be inviting you to identify all materials you’re aware of and map them to certificate learning outcomes.

Rather than focusing our initial efforts on content development we’ll instead focus on defining learning outcomes along with associated activities and assessments that effectively test those outcomes. Our aim is to have assessments be 100% performance-based, testing people on their ability to use Creative Commons in applied and practical ways. One form of activity and assessment will include having certificate participants create actual certificate content as OER. Co-creation with participants will build up a pool of community created Creative Commons Certificate content, targeted to learning outcomes, in many different languages, localized to different parts of the world, and curated by Creative Commons.

If you have thoughts, resources, or interest in helping out please let us know.

We currently have a submission in to the Knight Foundation’s “How might libraries serve 21st century information needs?” challenge brief. If successful, we plan to engage working groups of librarians in multi-day sprint workshops to do everything from co-defining learning outcomes, to identifying existing CC related openly licensed curricula, beta testing curricula, and defining optimal modes of delivery and duration. If you think that is a good idea or want to be part of those sprints we invite you to express interest by sharing your comments here Creative Commons (CC) Certificate for Librarians.

In future development, Creative Commons is planning for a train-the-trainer certification which will authorize others to deliver Creative Commons certificates on its behalf in different parts of the world. We welcome expressions of interest from other organizations wanting to work with us on this.

As CC embarks on its strategy to “foster a vibrant, usable, and collaborative global commons”, Creative Commons certificates will play a critical role in ensuring participation scales in informed and skilled ways.