Flexknowlogy

Today I am presenting at the SFo MoodleMoot on how Moodle can be used to deliver Open Educational Resources, especially through our modification of Moodle, the Open Meta Mod.

Presentation slides are now available and you are welcome to participate in the backchannel through the chat window provided below.

Presentation Slides

openmod.ppt

Web Sites Referenced

• OpenCourseWare Consortium
• Open Educational Resources Commons
• David Wiley’s OpenContent Wiki
• David Wiley’s OpenContent blog
• Utah Open High School
• Creative Commons licenses
• MIT’s “Making the Case for OCW”
• Why a Reputation Economy?
• UK’s Open University LearningSpace
• OpenContentDIY
• Leigh Blackall’s slide on Another Way

P.S. After my presentation was over, I came back to my hotel to find this bus in the parking lot. It’s nothing less than a sign for a questioning open education convert.

After a year-long developer famine, we now have a new Web developer who is assisting us on revivifying the Moodle Open MetaMod project as part of his duties.

In a nutshell: the primary goal of the mod is to allow individual resources OR activities within a Moodle course to be “open” to either non-authenticated visitors or a custom role called “Open User”. There are a number of secondary goals related to intellectual property metadata (e.g. Creative Commons). Much of the information posted here is based on the “official” Open MetaMod page at our Meta Web site.

Project Status

• We have recently corrected errors in the 1.8x version for use in Moodle 1.84.
• The current version of the mod works only on mySQL, though Mr. Sergio Sama Villanueva at Universidad de Oviedo in Spain has added PostgreSQL support, and so adding that to our install package and testing is a high priority.
• Mr. Villanueva has added other features as well, which we plan to test and evaluate.
• We also have a short list of usability alterations and feature enhancements to implement.
• We are working on an update for 1.9 this spring. We hope to present that broadly for feedback from the Moodle community, starting at the June Moodle Moot in San Francisco.
• We plan to host a Moodle 1.9 public instance with several UVU opencourses, and providing pre-made user accounts for teachers, students, and “open users” to test the mod.

Download the Open MetaMod for Moodle 1.8x

Users interested in testing the latest released beta version of the Open MetaMod may download the following ZIP file:

Open MetaMod for Moodle 1.8x

Note that this version of the mod works only on Moodle 1.8x installations on mySQL. A PostgreSQL version is forthcoming. Additionally, unlike previous versions, this version of the mod does not have an installer, and files must be modified manually. In short: use at your own risk!

Detailed Overview of the Open MetaMod

Open MetaMod is a modification for the Moodle learning management system that provides instructors and designers with the ability to mark individual Resources or Activities within a Moodle course as “private” (only visible for registered students) or “shared” (allowing anonymous guest viewing).

A new third option for Moodle Activities, “open”, allows registered non-student users to interact with the class in Moodle activities. This is different from “shared”, as it allows authenticated users on the Moodle system who are not officially registered for the course to interact with students and instructors on the discussion board, take quizzes, complete activities, contribute to wikis, etc.

Instructors and designers can mark resources or activities as “Copyright cleared/Creative Commons” and as “shared” either individually through the normal course module/block interface, or en masse through the Open Settings in the Administration block. All Creative Commons license types are supported in the latest version of the Open MetaMod

Tagging Individual Resources/Activities’ Copyright Status

Note: The default tag of all resources and activities is copyrighted. This is done intentionally to inhibit the accidental sharing of copyrighted course materials.

1. To tag individual resources or activities with a copyright status, first enter your Moodle course and click Turn editing on.
2. Next to each resource or activity you will note either a red “C” indicating Copyrighted or a green “CC” indicating Copyright Cleared/Creative Commons:

   

   • Clicking the red “C” or the green “CC” will toggle the copyright status of this resource/activity.
   • Only resources/activities tagged as “CC” are eligible to be “shared”.

Marking Individual Resources/Activities as “Shared” or “Private”

Note: Changing the copyright status of a resource marked as “shared” from “CC” to “C” will automatically disable the shared status.

• After a resource/activity has been tagged as “CC”, the grayed-out door icon will become clickable.
• “CC” resources/activities default to “private”, indicated by a brown closed door icon.
• Clicking the door icon will toggle the private/shared status of this resource/activity.
• “Shared” resources are indicated by a glass door icon.
• An open door icon, which indicates a fully “Open” status.

Making Copyright Status and Shared Status Changes En Masse

Tagging and marking individual resources seems pretty onerous, right? Well, this is purposefully the case so that instructors/designers are forced to consider the copyright status of each and every resources or activity.

However, we’ve also accomodated the need to tag and mark multiple resources and activities simultaneously with the OCW Settings link, found in the Administration block.

• To tag a subset of resources/activities as Copyright cleared/Creative Commons, simply click the checkbox next to the resource/activity group.
• At the top or bottom of the page, click Save Changes.
• Clicking Save Changes on the Copyright Status page takes you into the Private/Shared Status page.
• Only resources/activities marked as “CC” will be eligible for “shared” or “open” status.
• To toggle a subset of resources/activities as either “private” or “shared”, simply click the appropriate radio button next to the resource/activity group.

Terminology

C

Copyright This indicates that a resources or activity is protected by copyright law, and should not be made available to the general public. For one’s own protection, one might best assume that all resources or activities are de facto copyrighted<./dd>

CC

Copyright Cleared or Creative Commons license. This refers generally to the idea that a particular resources is legally eligible to be made available to the general public. Ensuring the Copyright Cleared or Creative Commons license status of a resource and activity is solely the responsibility of the instructor or course designer.

private

Indicates that a resource or activity should only be available to registered Moodle users who are also enrolled in the course.

shared

Indicates that a resource or activity should be viewable to both registered Moodle users who are also enrolled in the course as well as anonymous Moodle guests.

open

Indicates that an activity should be fully accessible to registered Moodle users regardless of whether or not they are officially enrolled in the course. If a course allows “Guest access”, anonymous Moodle guests may view but not interact with “open” activities. Note: This feature is not available in the current version of the Open MetaMod for Moodle.

(Originally posted on our Distance Ed unit’s IDS ‘blog.)

Today I met with the UVSC IP Office to go over our proposed process to allow for the open licensing of UVSC-owned, faculty authored materials. This is necessary because UVSC has ownership over most faculty-authored materials as provided in UVSC Policy 136: Intellectual Property.

So the process I proposed sets up an “open licensing request form” that a faculty or department submits to IP, IP passes to a review committee, and the review committee makes a recommendation to IP. Signatures happen, and the materials are released under a Creative Commons license.

The IP Office seemed very receptive and supportive of opencourseware, and we concurred that opencourseware is a suitable activity for a university. Now we just have to wait for legal counsel to weigh in, and we hope for a complete implementation by March 2008!