The whole point is that OERs cannot cease to be OERs. And yes, you can
sell them to students. But there's little reason to do so, because the
openness remains and that student can turn around and give the same
information away without cost.
The Flat World Knowledge/Saylor Foundation issue highlights this pretty
well.
-=Steve=-
-------- Original Message --------
From: Stephen Downes <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wed 29 May 2013 05:28:05 PM EDT
To: Open Educational Resources - an online discussion forum
Cc: oer-advocacy-coalition, OER-DISCUSS, Educause Openness Constituent Group
Subject: Re: [OER] [OER-advocacy] Publishers Challenge Quality Of
OpenEducational Resources
To reiterate what Cable said, with /feeling/: it's not an open
educational resource if you charge students fees for access to it; the
minute such fees are applied, it ceases to become an OER.
-- Stephen
On 2013-05-29 2:26 PM, Cable Green wrote:
Hi Everyone:
Two quick comments in response to Jacky's note:
*(1) *For something to be an OER, one must have free (no-cost /
gratis) access to the OER *and* (not "or") legal permissions (libre)
to engage in the “4R” activities when using the OER, including:
* Reuse: use the original or your new version of the OER in a wide
range of contexts
* Revise: adapt and improve the OER so it better meets your needs
* Remix: combine or “mashup” the OER with other OER to produce new
materials
* Redistribute: make copies and share the original OER or your new
version with others
See Hewlett OER definition:
http://www.hewlett.org/programs/education-program/open-educational-resources
* OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in
the public domain or have been released under an intellectual
property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by
others. Open educational resources include full courses, course
materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software,
and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support
access to knowledge.
There are, of course, other good OER definitions... but they all
contain these two key elements - (1) no-cost access to the resource
and (2) the legal rights to re-purpose the resource. For example, see
the OER definition in UNESCO's Paris OER 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. Open licensing is built within the existing
framework of intellectual property rights as defined by relevant
international conventions and respects the authorship of the work."
It is important we hold the line on what is labeled OER... and not
allow for open washing (= entities calling something OER when the
resources are not either (a) in the public domain or (b) openly licensed).
*(2) *Re: Creative Commons licenses.
First, using a CC license is, of course, optional. People use CC
licenses when their intent is to share. When the copyright holder
does elect to put a CC license on their work, they *do* provide
no-cost / "royalty-free" access to the resource. Here is the next from
the CC licenses on this point:
/*3. License Grant.* Subject to the terms and conditions of this
License, Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide,*royalty-free*,
non-exclusive, perpetual (for the duration of the applicable
copyright) license to exercise the rights in the Work as stated below:/
//
1. /to Reproduce the Work, to incorporate the Work into one or more
Collections, and to Reproduce the Work as incorporated in the
Collections;/
2. /to create and Reproduce Adaptations provided that any such
Adaptation, including any translation in any medium, takes
reasonable steps to clearly label, demarcate or otherwise identify
that changes were made to the original Work. For example, a
translation could be marked "The original work was translated from
English to Spanish," or a modification could indicate "The
original work has been modified.";/
3. /to Distribute and Publicly Perform the Work including as
incorporated in Collections; and,/
4. /to Distribute and Publicly Perform Adaptations./
Note: I copied the above text from the BY NC license:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/legalcode
Of course, "royalty free" access to a resource is not the same as the
licensee having commercial rights to sell the resource.
Cheers,
Cable
Cable Green, PhD
Director of Global Learning
Creative Commons
@cgreen <http://twitter.com/cgreen>
http://creativecommons.org/education
/reuse, revise, remix & redistribute
|
