Tom's Two Cents

It’s been 9 months since the release of the first 42 OCL courses and the positive, often serendipitous outcomes to continue to appear. Shortly after our October 31, 2011 launch, the Saylor Foundation adapted 11 Open Course Library courses for use by self-learners. In the process they made the courses easier to access. You see, our first batch of courses were released as Common Cartridge .zip files which ended up being a barrier for those who don’t have access to a LMS. Saylor put our courses directly online and made them look pretty. They even caught a couple typos for us! (Note: We have since shifted to developing our course materials in Google Docs, and we will move the first 42 courses to Google Docs before our final release in Spring 2013).

Recently the Saylor Foundation began uploading some of their open courses to iTunes U, including several from the Open Course Library. Everyone benefits all over again, simply because a group of educators was willing to share their less-than-perfect course materials freely with the world. Open Course Library materials are now being used in 8 states through Project Kaleidoscope, an NGLC grant whose research is now informing our open sharing efforts in Washington State.

Last week I received a Google alert signaling that the North Carolina Community College System has added the Open Course Library courses to their NCLOR learning object repository. I look forward to reporting more good news as other educators decide to build on the OCL and Saylor materials and share back their improvements. While it’s impossible to control or even keep track all the outcomes of sharing one’s work openly on the web, I have only seen positive results for all involved. I’m sure there are a few exceptions, but in most cases nothing is lost by giving it away. As more talented instructors are recognized for their OER efforts I hope more educators will be willing to share their lessons openly.

I’ll end with a great 2-min spotlight on Pierce College Precalculus Open Textbook co-author Melonie Rasmussen:

Thank you to Melonie and to all the instructors who have been willing to take a chance by sharing their course materials openly through the Open Course Library. Truly this is a gift that keeps on giving.

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I am pleased to announce that Elizabeth Hanson and Jenae Kirby,  instructors at Shoreline Community College, have co-authored an open textbook that faculty and students can use for free. On-Ramp to Nursing Assistant Certified is designed for students who speak English as a second language who are beginning their healthcare career training. Previously, Elizabeth authored a Human Anatomy textbook for a major publisher. This time she and Jenae Kirby were funded through an SBCTC grant, and because of the SBCTC Open Policy their NAC textbook is available free to the world.

Yesterday I helped Elizabeth post her NAC open textbook on Lulu.com, a website for digital and print-on-demand publications. We started with the 180-page word document, added a Creative Commons CC BY license to the title page, and the NAC open textbook was published on Lulu.com in about 30 minutes. It’s great that Lulu lets authors select a Creative Commons open license!

A couple caveats with Lulu:
1. Students have to create a free account with Lulu to “order” even the free books (no biggie).
2. There is a 30-60 min. delay to access even free, digital textbooks. I’m not sure why the ordering process isn’t instantaneous, but the user gets an email when the file is ready for download.

Another comparable print-on-demand service is Amazon’s Create Space. I like it because print copies tend to be cheaper and students can download open textbooks more quickly. Both services give you a free ISBN and allow you to add new editions later. Like Lulu, Create Space can convert Word files to make them available via iPad and eReaders like the Amazon Kindle. We were not able to do this yesterday because the NAC textbook contained some text boxes. Once these minor issues are ironed out the NAC open textbook can be made available in a variety of eReader formats. It is currently available as a PDF.

One caveat with Create Space: Setting up a  account requires the author to give it a bank routing number or other financial information (presumably for authors to collect royalties). It would be nice to be able to skip over this part for open textbook authors. I need to experiment a bit more before deciding which service I like best for publishing open textbooks. I’ll post an update soon.

With the NAC open textbook printing in color was important. If your students need a printed color copy of your textbook, Create Space is significantly less expensive than Lulu. For a color 180 page softcover book Create Space charges $13 per book compared to Lulu’s $56 cost. If you have found other good print-on-demand solutions for publishing open textbooks please post them in the comments.

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It’s been exactly one month since the band Walk Off the Earth uploaded their cover of Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” to YouTube. More than 48 million views later, they are on fire and courting multiple record labels.

Think of it this way, if 1 in 20 viewers bought this song for $1 , this group would have made $1 Million in a month (assuming there were 20 million unique viewers). Along with the iTunes link and the direct download link, they also sell T-shirts. That’s the power of viral web sharing. The world’s greatest marketing tool is free.

Enjoy the song…

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California Bill Pushes for Free Online College Books (via KQED MindShift)

Here’s a quick summary of the bills (there are actually 2):

• The first CA bill would create 50 open textbooks for high-enrollment college courses that would be free online and available in print for ~$20.  Book contracts would be awarded through competitive grant process open to publishers, faculty and organizations, and must use a Creative Commons Attribution license.

• The second bill would create the “California Digital Open Source Library” to serve as a platform for accessing and customizing the 50 open textbooks, and will include incentives for faculty to adopt these and other open textbooks.  It also requires that publishers provide free library reserve copies of textbooks adopted in high-enrollment courses at California’s public colleges.

• No cost is indicated in the bill summaries, but an article on KQED’s website quotes $25 million.  This is a lot of money given the state’s budget issues, but the return would undoubtedly be huge — the state has close to 3 million college students, at least half of which are at the community colleges where books on average cost more than tuition (as of ’08).

How this compares to the Open Course Library:

• WA is covering more courses (81) with less money (about $2 million).  However, CA would create a full open textbook for each course, while the Open Course Library can include non-open materials as long as the cost is under $30.

• Both programs use the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) open license for all new materials, which allows the public to freely use, distribute and adapt the material.  It also would allow publishers to improve and re-sell proprietary versions.

• Both aim to address high-enrollment courses, but WA’s focuses specifically on community college level.  It appears that CA will focus on all three public systems: the UCs, CSUs and CCCs.

Thanks to Nicole Allen and Brandon Muramatsu for this information!

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Pearson’s new OpenClass LMS hit the Google Apps Marketplace today. While this has already been covered in several places, I’ve had many discussions about the wide array of learning management systems out there, and the one question that comes up repeatedly is “how do we know they won’t just get bought by someone else?” It’s a trust issue.

Pearson’s sustainability model for OpenClass it isn’t clear at this point, and that makes building a relationship of trust difficult. In contrast, the for-profit company Instructure is gobbling up market share with their LMS, Canvas. Instructure has made two smart moves Pearson could learn from: (1) Their code is open source — not so much to invite outside development, but more as a defense against the LMS IP being sold to the highest bidder. (2) Instructure has made their sustainability model clear. They provide enterprise-level services for Canvas, which allows them to continue to invest the Canvas platform.

It’s ironic that openness has emerged as a way to protect IP from corporate takeover, but in a very real way this is what Instructure has done with Canvas. And institutions who have had their LMS bought out from under them will think twice before exposing themselves to that risk again.

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