For many of us, another semester is right around the corner. For those of us who adhere to an Open CourseWare (OCW) philosophy, it’s a good time to evaluate (or re-evaluate) our personal OCW strategy. For those who are thinking about getting onboard with OCW, now is a perfect time to think about how best to go about getting in on the game. In the spirit of this, I would like to present a few items that should be on anyone’s start of the semester OCW checklist—things that are best decided at the beginning of developing (or revamping) an open course. As is customary, this list is hardly exhaustive or comprehensive. It is simply the things that I think are important to think about. For a more comprehensive look at developing a personal OCW strategy (as opposed to a brief pre-semester checklist) have a look at my Developing a Personal Open Courseware Strategy post. That having been said, let’s get to the checklist!
What to Put Up?
Different courses have different types of course materials (obviously). Some of the content you use in your course might not be appropriate for an open course. So, you need to make some decisions about what you are going to put up on the open course and what to leave out. There are practical considerations in play. If you want to include lecture audio on your open course, you need to make sure you have the ability (and equipment) to record and edit. You also need to make sure you record every lecture (as opposed to just recording two or three). If you want to include lecture slides, you need to make sure that they are standardized (in terms of format) and the series is complete. The bottom line is that when it comes to an open course, just make a logical (and practical) plan as to what you want to put up.
Beyond the practical considerations, there are also copyright issues in play. Many classes rely on copyrighted materials. Should you include these materials in your open course? For instance, many of my classes have videos or video clips. It’s always been a challenge for me to decide whether I should digitize these and put them online. My logic is that because many of the videos are vital to the class , leaving them out of the open course website makes the class seem somewhat incomplete (and therefore less useful as an actual open course). Despite new DMCA Exemptions, putting an entire digitized video online definitely falls into the “this sure as heck isn’t fair use” and “wow, I’m probably going to get in trouble for this” categories. Many (including myself) have thought that putting videos behind password protection (setting one passwords for the class or hooking in to your university’s authentication system) is a perfectly logical solution to treading in the unhappy land of copyright violation. Makes sense, right? By password protecting materials, you limit their access to just your students (as opposed to broadcasting them to the world). Well, this might still not be enough. Recently, the Association for Information and Media Equipment (an educational media trade group) threatened to sue UCLA, arguing that the streaming video which was behind the university’s authentication still infringed on copyright. Despite the fact that UCLA asserted that they weren’t in the wrong, they suspended the practice and are seeking to settle the matter out of court. The result is that faculty who assume that putting copyrighted video material behind some sort of university authentication will protect them (and the university) from nasty takedown letters and maybe even lawsuits probably need to rethink their strategy.
Student Work, Public or Private?
One of the most challenging questions (especially if your course website is the primary platform for class assignments) is whether or not student work should be open and accessible as well. On one hand, having student work (blog posts, wiki assignments, etc.) open and accessible is a great way to add depth to the class. On the other hand, putting student material online without their express permission is a major violation of FERPA. So, what to do? My solution is to ask each student at the beginning of the class if they want their work accessible to the public. If they don’t object, cool. However, if they they have an issue, I simply agree to password protect their posts. I also tell students that if there are specific assignments that they want password protect, while leaving the rest of their material open and accessible, that’s cool as well. The funny thing is that after years of doing this, I’ve never had a student who had a problem with their written assignments (mainly blogs and wikis) being completely open and forward facing.
What is your Platform?
In all honesty, this is a bit of a no-brainer. You can’t create an open course without choosing the platform that you are going to use to serve the course. However, I think it’s worth saying that it is very much in your best interest to make an informed choice ahead of the game as to the platform that works best for your needs. It’s far better to do some research beforehand than to find yourself in the middle of the semester with a platform that doesn’t meet your open course needs. Granted, if you’ve already chosen what content you are going to publish on your open course (and planned ahead) switching platforms shouldn’t be too much work.
Don’t Forget the Creative Commons Language
One of the key aspects of an open course is that it is published with some sort of open source license—the most logical and popular being a Creative Commons license. This ensures that your content is used in the way you deem appropriate (by attribution, non-commercially, etc.). There are a bunch of ways you could do this: as a footer on every page, as a paragraph in the “About” section of the class site, or by using one of the handy-dandy Creative Commons license badges.
The Bottom Line
As I said at the opening, this checklist is hardly comprehensive. The one theme (if you can have a theme with a four item checklist) is that planning ahead is a good thing. It’ll save you grief and extra work down the line, and will ultimately ensure that your open course is more valuable and useful to your audience.
Ok, now it’s time for you to share. What is on your pre-semester OCW checklist?
[Image by Flickr user koalazymonkey / Creative Commons licensed]
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10 Responses to Checklist for an Open CourseWare Semester
jamesjbrownjr - August 19, 2010 at 8:14 pm
Great advice all around. Something else to consider: incorporate that creative commons language into your “academic integrity” statement. Rather than scaring students out of plagiarizing, I try to encourage them to think carefully about how they want their work to be used. This could be tricky if you have a “class blog,” since the entire blog will probably fall under the same CC license. But in other cases, students can be in the driver’s seat when it comes to how their work is licensed.So, I have an “Intellectual Property” policy and not a “Plagiarism Policy.” The CC language begins from the assumption that students are producing a) work that is transformative in some way b) work that others might want to use.
joemurphy - August 20, 2010 at 9:57 am
It’s not exactly a “this semester” question, but regarding student work, have you thought about what happens when a student returns some years down the road and wants their material pulled from the web/made private? Do you need to set the expectation early that “if you change your mind, I’ll do what I can to help you, but remember, it’s very hard to un-publish something”?
drjeff - August 20, 2010 at 10:35 am
>> “completely open and forward facing”I presume you mean “available to anyone at all on the Internet.”FYI: “Forward facing” usually means something like “looking to the future.” “Outward facing” (in a computer network context) is used to mean “accessible from the Internet.”No demerits; I know you’re not a techo-geek (though you probably work with some, so I thought you’d like to know).
drjeff - August 20, 2010 at 10:37 am
Oh, I almost forgot: excellent post; unusually thoughful for one so brief. (i.e., Unusually high signal-to-noise ratio.)
oliver_l - August 20, 2010 at 12:10 pm
I’ve spoken with many professors in the last few months and if one is going to get onboard with OCW, I believe its best to get on board, grab the wheel and sail straight to the sea of openness. Some professors only want to reveal one curtain which doesn’t work well. The professors who have the philosophy of “everything is for everyone,” provide the biggest benefit for the student. I found it interesting, that this open content is now having an open community behind it: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-00-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-fall-2008/join-a-study-group/
scarsonocw - August 21, 2010 at 7:28 am
Re: comment 2 by joemurphy, at MIT OpenCourseWare we’ve actually had to confront exactly this issue in a couple of cases, and have decided that it’s best to publish student work anonymously by default, and only include the student name if the student feels strongly about the issue. – Steve Carson, External Relations Director, MIT OpenCourseWare (scarson at mit dot edu)
ethan_watrall - August 21, 2010 at 7:10 pm
Apologies for the late response:@jamesjbrownjr – what a great idea! Challenging students to think about how they want their work used, and putting that into practice with their own CC licence is brilliant. I’m definitely going to implement that idea.@joemurphy – in all honesty, that never occurred to me. Does FERPA apply when someone isn’t a student any more? Interesting question. I would probably remove the student’s work or make it password protected.@drjeff – actually, yup, I am a complete “techno geek.” Taught UCD & UXD for years…even written several popular press books on interactive & web design. Both terms are perfectly acceptable in the web dev world.
arrive2__net - August 23, 2010 at 3:28 am
This certainly raises some concerns that a prof might have overlooked in the excitement and enthusiasm of making an open course, including the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and the FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act)(http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html). scarsonocw’s idea of putting student posts under an pseudonym makes a lot of sense to me, but I wonder … does the student own a copyright to his or her posts, does the university “own” it, or would it be in public domain. Bernard SchusterArrive2.net
librarylvr - August 23, 2010 at 10:41 am
The student owns her work, regardless of whether it’s available//stored via a university server for a class. I like Steve’s idea of the anonymous or pseudonymous attribution unless the student opts to provide her name.
ethan_watrall - August 23, 2010 at 2:31 pm
@arrive2__net – students own the IP to their work. As for anonymizing a students work, thats definitely a good solution. My one concern is that I my course websites are partially designed to create a sense of community among students (they all post blogs, and respond to each other’s blogs). By anonymizing the students, does it kill that sense of community (because their is no link between the anonymous identity displayed and the actual student identity)?