hey matt. want to start by echoing how awesome it is that you've come to this forum to look for input. rock on!
Rich Jones wrote: > Hello, Matt! > > Thanks for asking for our input on this, much appreciated. > > I've been poking around on the OYC sites for a while now, watching some > courses, and I have to say I'm very impressed! > > There are of course some obvious improvements which could be made: More > departments (No CS, I noticed!) and more courses.. but you know that. I'm wondering how people feel about the sort of policy behind this type of thing in general. For example, does it seem to be a good idea to record all classes, whether or not they are put online, as a general university policy? Are there important merits to approaching this with a heavy editorial hand and selecting courses before recording them? IMHO, a school just record everything and put it online, but only _highlight_ certain courses that they are particularly proud of. Maybe this would create healthy competition between professors, or at least justly reward the great ones. > > Here are some other things I'd like to see: > > - The OYC source code under an open license. It doesn't look like this > is running eduCommons, which is a bit clunky, but something custom on > Plone. If this source code was available, it would be easier for other > schools to start similar programs. > > - An OGG/Theora viewing option. This is something that will become more > important in the next year as more browsers support the HTML5 video > element. This also allows the media to be more portable, so they can > disseminate through out the internet and be viewed off-line. > > - Torrents. Try packing up all the videos and materials of a course and > seeding it as a torrent. Again, this is a great method for dissemination > and aids in portability. > > - Advertising for this service. We want more people to see the videos, > right? Spend a little money on advertising it! I'd say a good 15% of the > project's budget should go into advertising. > > - A CC-BY or CC-BY-SA license. Ditch the -NC. This will be the hardest > idea to push to your bosses, but I think it's one of the most important. > Non-commerciality essentialy neuters the financial support structure of > the open courseware movement. There would be no Free Software movement > if it weren't for the commercial open source software to sustain it. > It's nothing to be afraid of! CC protects the credit, and the > share-alike license will protect the openness of the materials, but it > will allow these materials to grow in a sustainable way. Alex Kozak will probably have more to say about this, but it seems to me that in the specific case of educational materials, it makes more sense to avoid the -SA (copyleft) clause, in order to maximize the compatibility of your work with other stuff. > > - A public discussion forum. Let the people who are viewing the > materials comment and discuss the materials with each other. Let a > community form around OYC. yes! i'd love to talk with people some more about this type of thing in general: how can we build on the traditional OCW method that in some ways acts as a simple "dump" of course materials? When Jonathan Zittrain came to speak at Dartmouth, I talked with him about OCW, and he said that it's kind of like taking the stale lucky charms from the back of the cabinet and handing it to starving children in africa. it's kinda nice, but the attitude is like "well, we don't need this anymore...here ya go." I love JZ anyway, certainly part of the answer to this is facilitating dialogue. is that all? do we want students/professors communicating with "the outside world," as well as "the outside world" communicating with itself? just some thoughts to throw around. i'm hoping to make a harder push for OCW at dartmouth this coming year. with our new president, i think we may have more of a chance. so i'm totally interested in continuing to talk about what the ideal OCW system looks like. oh, and one more thing... how do people feel about membership in the OCWC? as far as i can tell, yale isn't a member... > > Hopefully this will be of some use to you! Let me know what you think. > > Rich > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss -- D Parker Phinney madebyparker.com _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
