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Open Access, Open Data, and Open Educational Resources

Category Archives: Open Educational Resources

OpenCon 2016 Reports from Virginia Tech Graduate Students

As part of Open Access Week, the University Libraries and the Graduate School offered two travel scholarships to OpenCon 2016, a conference for early career researchers on open access, open data, and open educational resources. This is the third year we have jointly supported graduate student travel to the conference. From a pool of many strong essay applications, we chose Mayra Artiles, a Ph.D. candidate in Engineering Education, and Daniel Chen, a Ph.D. candidate in Genetics, Bioinformatics, and Computational Biology. In addition, Mohammed Seyam, a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science, attended. All were in Washington, D.C. for the conference November 12-14, and sent the reports below. Be sure to check out the OpenCon 2016 highlights.

Mohammed Seyam, Mayra Artiles, and Daniel Chen at Sen. Warner's office

Mohammed Seyam, Mayra Artiles, and Daniel Chen at Sen. Warner’s office

Mayra Artiles writes:

Being as open as possible – OpenCon 2016

This year I had the opportunity to attend OpenCon 2016 in Washington, DC. When I initially applied for the scholarship, I had a vague idea of how the Open agenda tied into my research and why was it important to me. However, I was not prepared for what the conference would spark. While in the US Open is mainly focused on open access to journals, the global idea of open is as diverse as are our problems. Interacting with people from different parts of the globe, who were amazingly passionate about Open in general, I learned that open access to journal articles is relatively a first world problem. While some countries fight for journal access, many more fight for textbooks and others fight for reliable internet. The more people I met, the more I learned how all of these unique issues are all nested under the large umbrella of making knowledge accessible on a global scale. One of the things that came out of these conversations was my involvement in a collaboration to create OpenCon Latin America – a conference similar to the one we had all just attended but held entirely in Spanish, empowering people and spreading the Open ideal in a language spoken mainly by over 425 million people.

This made me think about the following question: How can we, as Hokies, be as open as possible with our research? While fighting the academic tenure process and breaking the paradigms of open access journals is an endeavor of huge proportions, we can take small steps on being more open every day. We need to be as open as possible and as closed as necessary. It is for this reason I have made a list of steps on how we can be open today. The best part is that all these resources are open:

  1. Take stock of all your publications and make a list of the journals you’ve published or plan to publish in.
  2. Visit Sherpa Romeo and look up these journals. This page will provide information on which parts of your work are shareable and whether or not there is an embargo on your work. If you’re lucky, you can share a copy of your pre-print.
  3. Share as much as possible on repositories such as VTechWorks and other sites such as ResearchGate.
  4. Create your impact story at ImpactStory – all you need is an ORCID profile. Our work should mean more than amount of times we get cited. This website shows just that: it will give you a score for how ‘open’ is your work, show how many people saved, shared, tweeted, and cited your work and across how many channels, among other great things. As researchers, we are more than our H-index.
  5. Have a conversation with your research peers and advisors on the value of open research. While we can’t convince everybody to suddenly publish in open access, we can begin the conversation and break the paradigms. A great resource to learn more about the value of open research is Why Open Research?

OpenCon 2016 logo

Daniel Chen writes:

What is “open”? Merriam-Webster tells us that it is “having no enclosing or confining barrier: accessible on all or nearly all sides”. For OpenCon, access (to academic publications), education, and data lay at the center of its mission.

The conference brings together a select group of like-minded individuals who are all passionate towards openness. Since the conference was single-tracked, it allowed everyone to focus on the various projects, hurdles, and conversations people have about Open around the world. We had plenty of time and space to roam around American University to continue conversations. I was lucky and privileged enough to be one of the select attendees and represent Virginia Tech.

My road to Open revolves mainly though open education and open data. I teach for Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry and support NumFOCUS. It is logical then, that my definition of Open mainly focuses around open source scientific computing. It’s a very specific subset of Open, and OpenCon helped me remember what role I play in the the larger Open movement.

For me Open Education is teaching the Creative Commons-licensed Software Carpentry material the past 3 years. Over the years, my idea of open education revolved around higher education: textbooks for university students, scientific computing materials for graduate students, resources for open source. I was reminded that open education was not just for the graduate students trying to improve the quality of their research, textbooks and educational materials were not just for university students. Open education is used to teach students from all ages, lesson materials and books for elementary school, textbooks for middle school, high school, and university. It allows students and educators to invest resources in other ways to help foster better learning. Here at Virginia Tech, you may notice OpenStax books in the library, but the Rebus Community is another resource and place to get involved with open education materials.

As a data scientist, I am constantly combining disparate datasets from a myriad of sources to answer a research question. I rely heavily on open data sets. Many cities in the United States now have open data portals (e.g., NYC Open Data), and government agencies, such as the Department of Commerce house a plethora of open datasets. These datasets are great for an analyst such as myself, but open data sources such as OpenStreetMap and ClinicalTrials.gov help with urban planning in cities and provide drug trial data and results to people all over the world.

One of my favorite parts of the conference happened on the second day when we shifted from a single-track conference to an un-conference style meeting. Attendees from the conference pitched various discussion topics, and the attendees of the conference dispersed across the American University Law School. I attended a discussion about openness in academia where we talked how we incorporate it in our academic lives. For some of us (including myself), we are lucky that our advisors understand openness. Most, if not all, of my research code has a MIT Open Source License. Others found the challenge of pushing and fighting for ‘openness’ a way of disrupting the traditional ivory tower philosophy. One attendee was an undergraduate freshman who was trying to understand what openness was and how he can incorporate it as he begins his academic career. This was a great metaphor for what OpenCon stands for, empowering and pushing openness to the next generation.

I also attended the breakout discussion about global health, where we talked about how openness plays a role in improving global health. I met many people who work in the health space, and use open data and open access sources to improve health. For example, Daniel Mietchen from the NIH is part of a global infectious disease response team to build the tools and protocols necessary to respond to the next epidemic. The 2014 Ebola and 2015 Zika outbreaks are recent reminders of how much we can improve our global response to infectious disease outbreaks. In this unconference, we also talked about drug results reporting in at ClinicalTrials.gov. The problem is that even though clinical trials are listed there, not all of the results from the trials are reported after the initial trial listing. This takes away the ability for people looking to educate themselves about various treatment options for a disease, and more pressure is needed to make sure this information is adequately distributed in a timely manner.

Our final day at the conference had everyone in the conference work in groups to talk to various funding agencies and senators about openness. Essentially, we became lobbyists for Open. I was lucky enough to be in two groups. My first group talked with Rachael Florence, PhD, the Program Director of the Research Infrastructure program at the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). We talked about how PCORI’s goal is to make study results and data more widely available, brought up the concerns about disseminating clinical trials results, and generally discussed faster reporting, lowering publication bias, reproducible research, and data sharing. We also talked about what OpenCon was, and intrigued Dr. Florence to attend next year.

My next stop was the office of Virginia Senator Mark Warner. We did not get to talk to him directly, but instead talked to his senior Policy Advisor, Kenneth Johnson, Jr. It was during this discussion that I wished we had more training on being an effective lobbyist. We only make 2 passes around the circle during our meeting. The first was introducing ourselves, and the second was how Open played a role in our lives. There was a small conversation about open data, open access, and open education for the state of Virginia, but I wished we were able to have a longer conversation. Senator Warner is already familiar with many aspects of Open, so not too much convincing was needed, but I worried about how other groups fared.

In the end, I felt OpenCon was a great experience. I made new connections with other people from all over the world, and gained new experiences on how to talk about Open. It has also given me some ideas for a side project about using ClinicalTrials.gov data to reporting rates for various clinical trials. I hope I am lucky enough next year to attend as well, and urge everyone at Virginia Tech to learn about Open, and get involved!

Fundamentals of Business : Virginia Tech’s New Open Textbook

Virginia Tech Libraries and the Pamplin College of Business are pleased to announce publication of Fundamentals of Business, a full color, 440+ page free online textbook for Virginia Tech’s Foundations of Business course. This Virginia Tech course averages 14 sections with over 700 students in Fall semesters. The textbook is an open educational resource, and may be customized and redistributed non-commercially with attribution.

Cover of Fundamentals of Business

(See cover credits below)

The book is the work of Prof. Stephen Skripak and his team of faculty colleagues from the Pamplin College of Business, Anastasia Cortes and Richard Parsons, open education librarian Anita Walz, graphic designers Brian Craig and Trevor Finney, and student peer reviewers Jonathan De Pena, Nina Lindsay, and Sachi Soni. Assistive Technologies consulted on the accessibility of the textbook.

The first openly licensed book of its kind created at Virginia Tech, the book is in direct response to two problems faced by Pamplin’s team of professors: a used edition of the previous textbook was priced as high as $215, and students were not engaged by the previous text.

Skripak and his colleagues started with an openly licensed textbook created in 2011 (licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license) which legally allows modification and non-commercial redistribution with attribution. The team significantly updated, redesigned, and contributed new content to create a learning resource that fits course learning objectives and reduces student textbook costs for this course to zero. Through a grant from the University Libraries, three students were hired to peer review drafts of the text. The team worked together through details of updating data, designing new figures, and ensuring web and print-on-demand ready layout. The resulting work, Fundamentals of Business, is licensed with a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

CC-BY-NC-SA logo

In addition to faculty members’ ability to customize content and resolution of student affordability issues, the availability of an openly licensed text in common, editable file format bodes well for faculty at other institutions seeking to leverage academic freedom in support of student learning and affordability. The book is representative of a larger movement to empower faculty to freely adopt, adapt, and author a myriad of course types. We hope that many other institutions will take advantage of the opportunity to adopt, adapt or remix the book to fit their needs.

Fundamentals of Business is available in VTechWorks, Virginia Tech’s institutional repository, in PDF and editable Microsoft Word formats. Print-on-demand copies are available at the cost of manufacturing and shipping in color and black & white from Lulu Press. The book is also featured in the Open Textbook Library, OER Commons, and MERLOT II.

Credits for cover images:
Hong Kong Skyscrapers” by Estial, cropped and modified by Trevor Finney CC BY-SA 4.0; “Paris vue d’ensemble tour Eiffel” by Taxiarchos228, cropped and modified by Poke2001 and Trevor Finney CC BY 3.0; “London Bridge” by Skitterphoto, cropped and modified by Trevor Finney, Public Domain; “New York” by Mscamilaalmeida, cropped and modified by Trevor Finney, Public Domain.

Getting to Know Open: A Grad Student’s Experiences at OpenCon 2015 in Brussels

As part of Open Access Week, the University Libraries and the Graduate School offered a travel scholarship to OpenCon 2015, a conference for early career researchers on open access, open data, and open educational resources. From a pool of many strong essay applications, we chose Sreyoshi Bhaduri, a Ph.D. student in engineering education. Sreyoshi attended the conference in Brussels, Belgium on November 13-16, and sent the report below. Be sure to check out the OpenCon 2015 highlights.

Sreyoshi Bhaduri writes:

Towards the beginning of Fall 2015, the graduate listserv announced an opportunity for a graduate student to travel to Brussels for a conference on Open initiatives. As a doctoral student starting my second year at the department of Engineering Education, I had been involved with some open education related citizen science endeavors, but was very new to the world of Open. I had always been fascinated with the idea of Open Access and Open Data, which can be understood as “unrestricted access and unrestricted reuse” of data, however I had never really delved deep into understanding and appreciating Open initiatives. Recognizing this as a perfect opportunity to learn more, I applied, detailing my interest in Open Education and eagerness to learn about the same. Application submitted, I promptly forgot about the scholarship, as course-work and exams and deadlines engulfed and occupied all thoughts and activities. On a busy evening in September as I sat finishing an assignment, I received an email from the University Library informing me that I had been selected for the scholarship. I was to represent Virginia Tech at the OpenCon 2015 in Brussels, scheduled for November 2015. This was the start of my journey to getting to know the Open community, and I slowly become an advocate for all things Open.

The message from the University Libraries notifying me of the travel scholarship was followed by an email from the OpenCon organizers, who warmly welcomed me to join their community. I was directed to a pre-OpenCon webcast, which helped me understand the basics of Open Data, Open Access, and Open Education. I was also asked to join in on a community call, and introduce myself to other attendees. The first thing that I realized about the Open community was that it is comprised of a group of very passionate and dedicated professionals who are determined to build a case for Open initiatives. The next month passed by, as I prepped to attend OpenCon, learning more and more about the community, the cause, and the rationale behind Open. I slowly grew to appreciate and understand the Case for Open, and was eagerly looking forward to exchanging my ideas at the conference.

Roaming Brussels

So we networked and roamed about the streets of Brussels. This is posing with the Manekken Pis.

The day of the flight soon arrived, and after 17 hours of traveling from Roanoke to Charlotte and then to Philadelphia, I finally made it to Brussels. On the flight, I made a few friends who were also traveling to OpenCon. The great thing about OpenCon is that the organizers ensured that most attendees had half a day to themselves before the start of the conference, to familiarize with each other and network. I met a bunch of young professionals and grad students who were doing wonderful work in different disciplines, and learned how some of their work related to Open endeavors.

Days One and Two of the conference comprised various sessions. We had live tweeting (#OpenCon2015) and broadcast of the sessions, so that the larger Open community which wasn’t able to join in physically, was able to contribute in the discussions. Day One had also been the day we had woken up to the news of the France terror attacks. A poignant remark by one of the attendees, who was from Paris, on the importance of Open Education, was that Open resources fights the barriers of access and divide, which in turn seeks to eradicate disillusionment and hence fights terror. This remark truly spoke to me, and I was inspired by the commitment and grit shown by the attendees, especially those from France.

OpenCon, Hotel Thon

Sneak peek at the sessions at Hotel Thon conference center

On Day Two we had the Unconference sessions. I was totally new to the idea of Un-conferencing, but found it a very useful brainstorming and networking session. I recommend organizers of seminars and educational events to have similar sessions at all conferences. During this session, we grouped with people with similar interests and discussed ideas for implementation in “real-world” scenarios. For instance, in the group I un-conferenced with, we discussed the role of Open in academia. We discussed how difficult it is to convince faculty who are probably tenure track, at R-1 institutions, to publish in Open journals, since a large part of their tenure process depends on publication impact. Our conversations then drifted to the subject of impact factors, and how a single number could not truly capture the essence of a research publication. The second evening ended early, with a reception dinner, and more networking.

Day Three was the most anticipated day. This was Advocacy Day. Basically, we formed teams of 8 individuals and we met with Members of the European Union, and discussed Open initiatives. This was by far the best experience I had at the conference. It was very interesting to meet with and learn from members of the EU, and discuss the challenges of implementing Open policies.

EU open advocacy

All dressed up for Advocacy Day

Following the meeting with the MPs, we attended the last event for OpenCon, the final reception dinner, in which we had the opportunity to interact with the founder of Wikipedia: Jimmy Wales. Wales talked to the gathering about the importance of Open Education, and of inspiring early career professionals to take up causes pertaining to Open initiatives after the conference.

The conference was only three days, short but packed with information and activities. I had read up about the conference, before attending it, and had anticipated meeting talented and passionate individuals; but the clockwork precision of the management, the energy of the attendees, and the warmth of the community; truly inspired me to learn more and contribute more to the cause. I would definitely recommend learning about, participating in, and potentially even attending Open community events, for all students and early professionals. I would further urge readers to contribute to your immediate academic communities in Open endeavors. The University Libraries at Virginia Tech, for instance, does a fantastic job of making available resources for graduate students, researchers, and faculty to learn about and publish in Open channels. Over time, I have come to view Open as a part of my identity as a graduate student. I believe each one of us should commit to making our research publications easily accessible by everyone. I believe I was truly lucky to have been selected for OpenCon 2015, I learnt so many new things, met some wonderful spirited individuals, am associated with some great work, and hope to continue to advocate for Open in the future.

OpenCon t-shirt

OpenCon 2015 Memories

Grad Students: Travel to Brussels to Learn About Openness!

Graduate students at Virginia Tech are encouraged to apply for a travel scholarship to OpenCon 2015, the student and early career researcher conference on Open Access, Open Education, and Open Data to be held on November 14-16, 2015 in Brussels, Belgium.

OpenCon 2015

One scholarship will be awarded to a Virginia Tech graduate student, which will cover travel expenses, lodging, and some meals. Applicants must use the following URL to apply by Monday, September 21:

http://opencon2015.org/virginia_tech

To find out more about the conference, see the Participant FAQ and the conference program. This international conference offers an unparalleled opportunity to learn about the growing culture of openness in academia and how to become a participant in it. The travel scholarship is sponsored by the Graduate School and the University Libraries. For questions, please contact Philip Young, pyoung1@vt.edu (please note that the general application process for the conference closed earlier this summer, and related details in the participant FAQ will not apply).

Last year two graduate students received scholarships to the conference (which was in Washington, D.C.), and you can read about their experiences.

This year’s winner will be selected by the Graduate School and the University Libraries based on answers to the application questions, and announced on September 24. Please share this opportunity with all VT graduate students, and best of luck to the applicants!

Book Review: MOOCs

MOOCs

Jonathan Haber, MOOCS. The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series. Cambridge, Mass. : The MIT Press, 2014.

I read Jonathan Haber’s book MOOCs a few months ago, and am glad to finally offer some thoughts. Despite a remarkable cooling of interest in MOOCs, there are still plenty of reasons to consider what role they might play in higher education. Haber, perhaps best known for his year-long MOOC experiment to obtain the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree, here offers a readable and balanced account of the MOOC environment.

Haber begins by outlining the history of MOOCs (massive open online courses), pointing out that “open” was an earlier driver than “massive” with MIT’s OpenCourseWare initiative for class materials (begun in 2002), though many of those courses lack video lectures. The first real MOOC came along in 2008, “Connectivism and Connective Knowledge,” taught by Stephen Downes and George Siemens. In the connectivist model, class size became an asset, not a liability (p. 39):

For the bigger the connectivist “class,” the greater the potential for the quantity and variety of nodal connections that define success for networked learning.

However, as MOOCs evolved, most were not designed around a specific pedagogical method, and Haber notes how different the learning experience is between connectivist and non-connectivist MOOCs. A tool for student connection common to both models is the discussion board, though they can be overwhelming to students, resulting in low participation rates. Scheduled vs. on-demand MOOCs have different types of discussion, with the latter focusing more on test and assignment support rather than on general course topics. Haber provides an interesting analysis of other ways that scheduled and on-demand MOOCs differ (p. 78-79).

In his chapter Issues and Controversies (p. 89-131), Haber first focuses on the low completion rates of MOOCs (a problem shared by a MOOC I wrote about last year). He argues that MOOC sign-ups are due mostly to curiosity rather than commitment. Still, though completion rates may be low, the raw completion numbers are still very large, and Haber quotes a professor who remarks that the number of students completing his MOOC is equal to all of the students he has taught in his career up to that point. Problems such as course demand level, cheating, plagiarism, and student identity are being addressed in a variety of ways, such as Coursera’s signature track identity verification.

On the positive side, there’s evidence that the shorter lectures used in most MOOCs are more effective, and that the ability to change speed, pause, and repeat lectures has a pedagogical impact. The interaction of older and younger learners common in MOOCs is rare in traditional education. The modularity of MOOCs is increasingly being utilized, and MOOCs have been successful in blended learning, rather than as a substitute for the classroom. Indeed, edX material is used at MIT to flip courses, and there’s extensive discussion about how MOOCs can fit into the flipped classroom model (p. 156-161). On the whole, MOOCs have raised the bar for online education in terms of production value, creativity, and risk-taking.

In these days of corporate open-washing, anything claiming to be open bears further examination. Haber notes that “open” tends to be interpreted by the public as “free,” despite the need in some MOOCs to purchase materials in order for the student to benefit the most from the course. Haber offers solid discussions of intellectual property (beginning on p. 118) and openness (beginning p. 122). A central problem has been that academic libraries license content for their campuses which cannot legally be shared with large numbers of unaffiliated students. Additionally, educational use is not automatically fair use (a common misunderstanding). Options for using external material include a full fair use analysis, obtaining permission (often at a cost), linking to content, and/or using openly licensed resources. And of course, most MOOCs are not openly licensed themselves. However, edX seems to be upholding open values and thriving, according to a recent article.

Haber also covers the difficulties involved in getting credit for MOOC courses from institutions of higher learning through programs like high school Advanced Placement (AP), the College Board’s College Level Examination Program (CLEP), and the American Council of Education’s (ACE) CREDIT program, which accredits courses for college-level equivalency. Publicity and incentives for the one-off alternative credit are not sufficient, which may explain why there were no sign-ups for either an ACE transcript for a MOOC or a Udacity-Colorado State course in computer programming (p. 106). Yet the future of MOOCs for younger learners, Haber says, may be alongside these existing programs.

This book introduced me to Straighterline and the SPOC (small private online course- for example, CopyrightX, which I hope to take), but the MOOC environment is apparently so fast-moving that some interesting initiatives are now defunct, such as MOOCs Forum, MOOC Campus and mooc.org. Haber perhaps overstates the altruistic purposes of MOOCs (p. 187), and his statements about the cost challenge of MOOCs to residential education may be premature.

MOOCs is part of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, which notably includes Peter Suber’s Open Access and John Palfrey’s Intellectual Property Strategy (which I reviewed previously). In addition to an index and notes, it includes a glossary, additional resources, and a list of MOOC providers. It’s an enjoyable and informative read, though not one inspiring certainty, perhaps best communicated by one last heavily-qualified quote (p. 194):

But if MOOCs continue to embrace-or even expand on- the culture of experimentation and innovation that has already set them apart from nearly all other adventures in technology-based learning, if they continue to offer high-quality free teaching to the world while also serving as the laboratory where educational innovation thrives, then whatever MOOCs are today or whatever they evolve into, they are likely to leave an important mark on whatever ends up being called higher education in the future.

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