Connexions Project - An Open Content Licensing Case Study
Authors: Ross Reedstrom* (presenting) and Christopher Kelty+
* Research Scientist, Connexions Project, Rice University
+ Assistant Professor, Anthropology, Rice University
The goal of the Concept Connexions Project is to provide a cohesive body of free, high-quality educational content to anyone in the world. The project involves two, mutually dependent, components: (1) a Content Commons of collaboratively developed, freely-available material that can be modified for any purpose, and (2) open-source software tools to help students, instructors and authors manage the information in the Content Commons. Connexions makes use of the recently released Creative Commons Licenses to license *all* of the content in its repository (currently over 1000 modules).
This talk will address several of the issues Connexions has or is currently addressing regarding the use of Creative Commons licenses for educational content. We will first briefly explain what the Creative Commons licenses are and what our motivations are for using them for educational content in particular. We then address the technical and practical issues we have faced and demonstrate some of the solutions we've found:
- A License chooser which guides content authors through the process of licensing content, taking advantage of the machine-readable nature of the CC licenses.
- Fine grained version management of modules based on authorship and ownership metadata. Distinction between authors, owners, and maintainers.
- Storing license versions and controlling modifiability of content based on license terms, including an option to fork modules marked "modifiable".
- Creation of search-based "filters" and "lenses" that allow for organization and identification of content based on license terms, such as commercial vs. non-commercial use of content.
Ross Reedstrom, Ph.D.
reedstrm@rice.edu
Research Scientist
The Connexions Project
Rice University MS-39
Houston, TX 77005