Quest 1- Some Background on OpenCourseWare

For centuries, universities have been the center, the repositories, and in many cases, the laboratories for human knowledge, understanding, and advancement. However, a university education has long been reserved for the privileged few who could afford to attend. While higher education has certainly become more accessible over the past few centuries, the opportunity to attend a university is still beyond the reach of many in the developed world and most in the developing world.


In October of 2002 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), one of the most prestigious universities in the world, effectively tore down the walls that have kept the masses from enjoying the knowledge and learning available to its students by launching the MIT OpenCourseware Initiative.


OpenCourseware (OCW) is based on the idea that human knowledge is the shared property of all members of society. Those who contribute to OpenCourseware projects, like MIT, grant free access to their course materials, to anyone, for any non-commercial purpose. OCW users enjoy the benefits of the “four Rs” of OpenCourseware as they are granted license to Reuse, Revise, Remix, and Redistribute OCW content. Since MIT’s launch of the OCW project in 2002, it has made 1,800 of its undergraduate and graduate-level courses available at ocw.mit.edu. The OCW movement has reach far beyond MIT as over 200 higher-education institutions from around the world have joined together to form the OCW Consortium, openly publishing over 6,000 courses in a number of languages. These institutions share a common commitment to increasing access to education, improving the quality of education, and empowering people, both in well-served and underserved groups, through the power of learning (OpenCourseWare Consortium, n.d.).

Process - CTL Walk-In Center

The Walk-In center at CTL completes approximately 40-50 projects for BYU faculty each month. Many of those projects would be valuable to both the on-campus and off-campus OER user communities.

Most of the steps necessary for a program of open publishing of CTL content are already in place. Faculty requesting new projects or services from the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) work with CTL personnel to design projects before resources are assigned and production work begins. During the design phase, serveral issues related to open publishing are addressed. For example:

• The scope, vision, and design of the content are defined
• Any copyrighted materials to be used in the project are identified
• Potential commercial viability is considered
• Contextualizing information about how the content will be used is defined

Faculty notification and permissions could be addressed by simply adding a step to the design process wherein faculty requesting new projects or services from the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) will be asked to sign the BYU OER Participation form. This form will:

• Describe the BYU OER project and the mission of CTL
• Acknowledge BYU ownership of IP produced by or in conjunction with CTL
• Explain the copyright license to be assigned by CTL
• Describe possible OER usage
• Provide for future OER publishing of CTL projects associated with faculty member
• Allow faculty to opt ou of attribution on the BYU OER web site

Faculty will be given the opportunity to opt out of the open publishing program. However such refusal will not alter BYU's ownership of CTL-produced IP.

When the CTL Walk-In Center completes a project, they conduct a final review process to ensure it meets the original design specifications. During the final review process, CTL personnel will review the project content to determine if it would be appropriate to openly publish. Content will be deemed openly publishable if:

1. It does not include copyrighted material
2. It has not been designated as commercial viability
3. The faculty member has signed BYU OER notice
   

OER content will be published by CTL personel using a central repository and will include both finish digital files, as well as source files where applicable.