Tom's Two Cents

2010 Connexions Conference in Houston, Texas

I’ve just attended another interesting Connexions conference, and now it’s time to dump a few ideas out here so I can get to sleep.

Conference summary

After a nice welcome and introduction, the first panel shared major content projects, demonstrating the supreme importance the Connexions team places on the content. Mark Horner shared the four projects he is leading with the support of the Shuttleworth Foundation. Jan-Bart de Vreede presented the Wikiwijs project. Kien Pham (Vietnam Foundation), Gary Martin (National Council of Professors of Educational Administration),
Judy Baker (Community College Consortium for Open Education Resources), and Fred Moody (Rice University Press) all shared very interesting projects.

During the breakout sessions, Connexions Project Manager Kathi Fletcher and Alan Runyan of Enfold Systems shared details about the newly-released Enterprise Rhaptos, an open source, stand-alone version of Connexions’ software. This is big news, and I’ll go into more detail later.

During the afternoon authors’ panel, Chuck Severance shared a great story of reuse, and how he ended up authoring 3 books in one year. Jan Odegard, Ken Busbee, and Andrew Barron also contributed to an interesting panel. I also enjoyed hearing from a long list of for profit partners: enTourage (makers of eDGe), SoftChalk, UniqU (providing services and training around Connexions), inetoo, ereadia, Soomo Publishing & WebAssign. Connexions is clearly living up to their name and gaining momentum.

Technical stuff

I’m pleased to see Enterprise Rhaptos rolling out as an open source project. This could meet the needs of many organizations who want their own Connexions site. It will be interesting to see how Enterprise Rhaptos competes with eduCommons in the institutional OCW space, and I would love to see content flow easily between the two systems so users can experience the “frictionless remix” mentioned during several sessions.

Here are some new features Kathi Fletcher announced for Enterprise Rhaptos and for the main Connexions repository:

1. Quick install instructions (for Enterprise Rhaptos) You can be up and running in 20 min. — I’m intrigued with Amazon EPS virtualization, but I don’t see any docs on setting that up. Anyone have a link?
2. Web-based MathML editor that can be used outside of CNX as well
3. CollXML (CNX aggregation format) will soon support output to IMS CC
4. Support for Google Analytics allowing individual members to track their own stats.
5. Kathi announced several more features that the Shuttleworth foundation agreed to sponsor the day before. Since the slides aren’t up yet, here is a photo of Kathi’s feature slide. A bounty system of community development was also announced at the same time, allowing outside developers to be paid for working on features the community is willing to fund.

Future directions and friendly feedback

The new Connexions features and the introduction of Enterprise Rhaptos brings with it new questions. Here are some things to think about:

1. How will Enterprise Rhaptos instances connect to the Connexions Mother Ship (CMS)? It seems reasonable to expect a search from cnx.org to list results from Enterprise Rhaptos sites. Wouldn’t it also make sense to allow Enterprise Rhaptos to upload content to the main cnx.org site as well? Perhaps via RSync?
2. With multiple Enterprise Rhaptos, how will we standardize UIDs for duplicate copies of content? Could we establish a domain-level ID as well as a UID for content. I am in favor of the LOCKSS model (Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe), but I don’t necessarily want Google to have the last word on which copy I find. It makes sense to decide on a consistent URL structure in place up front so Enterprise Rhaptos instances can play nice with the Connexions Mother Ship.
3. Why not have a basic, through-the-web, WYSIWYG editor option for Connexions? Perhaps this should have been my first question. Let me explain this further in the next paragraph.

As someone who is still relatively new to Connexions, I offer the perspective of a new user. I can see how the strangeness of the Connexions Extensible Markup Language (CNXML) could be intimidating to an instructor with average computer skills who wants to add their content to Connexions. Even the Microsoft Word plugin doesn’t entirely get around this issue, and users still end up staring at XML code. Frankly, no one should be surprise that Computer Science instructors are among the main advocates for Connexions. They are not intimidated by a raw markup language. What about everyone else? Could a “beginner mode” be added as an more simple option for authoring?

What elements would be included in a simplified authoring mode? It would be interesting to analyze all the content on the Connexions site to determine which specific tags are being used most. Could a basic, WYSIWYG web editor be created to satisfy the needs of most content creators? While I understand the wonderful advantages of using XML, it could be made all but invisible in “beginner mode,” and I think this would attract even more content creators than ever before.

To conclude, the Connexions 2010 conference was exciting, encouraging, and though-provoking. I’m thrilled to see such a vibrant community forming to meet the needs of so many different users using Connexions. And, as always, it’s always nice to see old friends and make some new ones.

Related Posts:

• Consortia as far as the eye can see! But why pay the fee?
• Free Samples – USU OpenCourseWare is a Virtual Visitor’s Center: Part 2
• USU OpenCourseWare is a Virtual Visitor’s Center
• UNESCO Conference on Open Social Learning
• OpenEd Tech 2009: Are we almost there?

Conferences cnx2010, conference, connexions, consortium, OCW

It seems every time I turn around a new consortium has popped up somewhere on the Open Education landscape. While I see the value of like-minded folks coming together to compare notes, discuss interoperability, etc, I have to wonder if many of them couldn’t operate just as well as chapters or SIGs of an existing consortium. This would offer many of the same advantages, including 501c3 US non-profit status, without all overhead of being a completely separate entity. If one of the reasons for forming a consortium is advocacy won’t fewer, larger consortia tend to wield a greater influence on legislators and policy makers? It might also allow for lower membership fees, if fees are necessary.

The question of membership fees is a tricky one. The Connexions Consortium and the OCW Consortium are still working on how to add value for members. Some newer members have suggested that discounts on consulting services would make membership fees worthwhile, and some even indicated being willing to pay 10x the current fee in this case.

Since non-members can attend the same conferences as members, what motivates newcomers to pay for joining a consortium? Voting rights? Bragging rights? It was different when it was free, but now there has to be something more. If we can’t think of a better way to attract paid consortium memberships, perhaps the membership fees should be required to attend conferences. This is standard practice for many academic conferences, but no one wants to alienate anyone in the Open Education space — a space defined by its openness, after all.

Related Posts:

• Reflexions on the 2nd Connexions Conference
• Free Samples – USU OpenCourseWare is a Virtual Visitor’s Center: Part 2
• USU OpenCourseWare is a Virtual Visitor’s Center

Openness connexions, consortium, cxn2010, OCW

David Wiley left a comment on my last post about USU OpenCourseWare sustainability that sparked a new post.

David’s comment:

I think the problem of the moment is that every person on campus is asking, with regard to their specific program, “how do you justify NOT paying for it?” And yet things are being cut left and right. In a climate where serious conversations are being had about laying off faculty, I worry that you can’t argue for a program on any merits other than “in addition to be useful, it brings in additional dollars.” But I’d love to be wrong.

My reply:

… I don’t want to stray too far from the context of my letter, which was directed at a marketing and PR committee. My point is that we have not made a strong enough case to these people. Marketing a university costs money, and the return on this investment is measured in eyeballs, visitors, or hits — not dollars. An established OpenCourseWare like USU OCW should be a marketing line item because it provides more marketing bang for every buck. Smart organizations like Talis have figured this out and are now using their marketing budgets to fund interesting projects that will enhance their reputation (http://blogs.talis.com/education/incubator/). I realize this is all stuff you know, but I’m just putting it out there for others.

Value

I think saying that OpenCourseWare needs to “bring in additional dollars” is looking at the problem too narrowly. Yes, every OCW needs to generate value, and that value must be recognized by the institutions decision-makers. I am not against OCWs earning money linking to paid courses, but I think USU OCW has something else to offer.

As I studied in the Utah State University library today I noticed several groups of students being taken on a tour of the campus, 8 students at a time. Several of the students appeared to be foreign students. How did these students decide to attend Utah State University? More importantly, how will students find and choose a university in the future (assuming universities are not irrelevant at that point)?

I am not saying Utah State University should replace its guided campus tours with OpenCourseWare; I am only suggesting that USU OpenCourseWare has incredible value as a sort of Virtual Visitor’s Center. USU OCW is essentially a “student magnet” — a site that attracts learners from near and far and showcases some of the great courses USU has to offer. It’s like the free samples at Sam’s Club.

Free samples

I believe USU OCW is more useful than a traditional advertisement because it draws the right target group: learners! USU OCW allows them a sample of some great course content available at Utah State University. And just like the free samples they give away at your local membership warehouse, it gets people interested. Of course when it comes to course content in an OpenCourseWare, you can give away all the samples you want and you haven’t lost anything. Students will still have to pay for the degree.

This is valuable stuff. How valuable? To put things into perspective I will compare it to something much less useful: a Google Ad. Google Ads for popular university keywords range from 76 cents to $1.80. At a conservative 76 cents per click, an ad campaign for a university would cost $380,000 for 500,000 clicks. At its peak, USU OCW had an annual operating cost of $120,000 and had over 550,000 visits last year. That’s 1.5 million clicks from people interested in learning something. If you are a marketing committee, that’s worth something.

A well-developed OpenCourseWare site is valuable in so many ways. Please understand that by focusing on the marketing potential of OCW I do not mean to reduce it to merely a marketing tool. My point is that something doesn’t have to turn a profit to be sustainable. It can “earn its keep” in other ways — like marketing.

So what is your school doing with its marketing dollars? Why not create a virtual visitor’s center with OpenCourseWare? Why not give out “free samples” to thousands of prospective students? They will still come to you for the credentials. And there will be more of them.

Related Posts:

• USU OpenCourseWare is a Virtual Visitor’s Center

OpenCourseWare marketing, OCW, sustainability, USU OCW

Dear USU Board of Trustees Marketing and Public Relations Committee,

If you could build a university visitor’s center that would attract over a million different visitors in the first four years of operation — a center your could run maintain with just one or two employees that would draw thousands of learners from all over the world — If you could create such a place, how much would that be worth to you? Guess what? You already have it. It’s called USU OpenCourseWare, and it’s already paid for. So how much would you be willing to pay to keep this virtual visitor’s center working for you? Would it be worth $10,000 per month to attract 43,000 monthly visitors (not just random visitors, but people actively seeking educational content) to a USU website, ready to learn? That’s what it would cost to continue to develop USU’s OpenCourseWare site, adding new courses to the showcase each semester. Of course this site is more than a marketing effort. There is value for existing students and faculty to be able to access this course content as well — especially during Blackboard outages. OpenCourseWare courses are available without a password for anyone to use. And they are definitely being noticed. In fact, USU has an international reputation as one of the best OCWs in the world, especially for its agriculture course materials. USU OpenCourseWare is listed alongside MIT, Notre Dame, and Yale OCWs. So how do we justify paying $120,000 each year for an OpenCourseWare program? I would ask how we justify NOT paying for it.

In the past USU has advertised to random travelers in an airline magazine. Surely it must be worth more to attract an audience of learners to a USU website filled with high quality courses for them to examine. Which do you think will attract more prospective students and faculty, a site filled with course materials or an airline ad? So, now that the outside funding is gone, what is a site like USU OpenCourseWare worth in terms of marketing and PR? Is a USU site that consistently attracts 250,000 unique visitors each year worth keeping? Will USU spend its marketing budget on airline ads instead? Please support USU OpenCourseWare so it can continue to showcase content from scores of great USU courses to tens of thousands of interested visitors every month. Many of those virtual visitors will be seeking a degree sooner than you think.

Related Posts:

• Free Samples – USU OpenCourseWare is a Virtual Visitor’s Center: Part 2

OpenCourseWare marketing, OCW, sustainability, value