MSIS Winter13 Forum OM Roundtable

Outline of Open.Michigan Roundtable at MSIS Winter Forum: Local creation, global relevance and impact
February 28, 2013

Presenters: Dave Malicke, Kathleen Ludewig Omollo

Summary

Open.Michigan is University of Michigan’s initiative for open educational resources (OER), open source, open learning, and open practices. The MSIS Office of Enabling Technologies is a co-founder of Open.Michigan. The main theme of Kathleen and Dave's discussion was: the things (workshops, guides, software, educational resources) that we create are relevant to people outside of MSIS &amp; UMMS. With copyright law, by default, the things that a person creates are automatically copyrighted at the time of creation and others who want to copy, adapt, or build on the work need permission of the copyright owner for each use. That's true even for content that is publicly available on the Internet. For those who want to encourage others to use and build on their work, open licenses are one method to increase the impact and reach of your work by letting others know, in simple language, how they can use it. Content that is open has three properties: publicly available to anyone worldwide, free to access, and licensed to allow anyone to copy, adapt, translate, or distribute. Open content produced by MSIS and UMMS has been used around the world. For example, a collection of 12 clinical microbiology videos from a UMMS faculty member has over 500,000 views on YouTube, has been copied to multiple websites, shared with over 550 people on DVD for offline access by collaborators in African institutions, and have captions that have been translated into French, Danish, Russian, Spanish, and Swahili. Those uses and adaptions were made possible by open licenses. Open.Michigan provides tools, services, and training that enable you to create, find, adapt, and promote open content legally and with confidence. The presenters concluded by encouraging others to add an open license to their departmental website and to promote and openly license their presentation slides on the UMMS slideshare account. For an outline of their talk, see http://openmi.ch/msis-wf13-om. If you'd like to learn more, contact open.michigan@umich.edu. As part of Enriching Scholarship, Dave and Kathleen will be doing a workshop titled "U-M's Open Remix Culture - Creating and Sharing Legally Using Open Licenses" on May 8 at 10:00 - 11:30 am where they will walk participants through the process of how to review materials for copyright, privacy, and product endorsement before making them publicly available.

Accompanying Handouts:


 * Open.Michigan Primer for MSIS: http://open.umich.edu/node/6752/ (PDF and DOC versions)
 * Creative Commons License Primer: http://open.umich.edu/node/3672/ (PDF and Adobe InDesign versions)

Main takeaway:

The things that you create are relevant to people outside of MSIS &amp; UMMS. In his vision and updates for MSIS, our CIO has promoted open licenses as a method to increase the impact and visibility of our work.

Who we are:

Open.Michigan is a University of Michigan initiative launched in 2008 for open educational resources (OER), open source, open learning, and open practices. The MSIS Office of Enabling Technologies is a co-founder of Open.Michigan.

Open.Michigan has two primary goals:


 * to sustain a thriving culture of sharing knowledge at U-M;
 * and to provide comprehensive public access to all of U-M’s scholarly output.

What do we mean by open?

Open content has three qualities:


 * publicly available to anyone worldwide
 * free to access
 * licensed to allow anyone to copy, adapt, translate, or distribute

Example 1: Openly licensed learning materials from internal medicine

A professor of internal medicine at University of Michigan Medical School created a clinical microbiology module that contained a series of 12 clinical microbiology videos while on sabbatical a universty in Ghana. He wanted other universities to be able to use them as well, so in the module he included the conditions or terms of use explaining how people could use and build on his work. Since they were licensed as open content, out office was able to copy the videos to YouTube. Over 2 years, that collection of videos has received over 500,000 views on YouTube, with viewers in most countries around the world. Since those videos have been some popular, over the past month we've recruited volunteers to translate them. Now we have captions for some of those videos in English, French, Swahili, Russian Danish, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Example 2: Open source software to manage content for websites

MSIS is currently moving towards the use of Drupal. One reason for adopting Drupal is because it is free to use and the code is shared so we can customize it ourselves for the different needs of each project. This means we can use it and develop for it without having to purchase additional licenses as each new project or unit uses the system. There’s a large user community that produces modules or plug-ins we can use and adapt. For example, within Enabling Technologies, we customized Drupal for the the Open.Michigan into an adaptation that we call OERbit. We’ve shared our adaptation publicly on Github. Github provides a central place for our department and collaborators to have access, but it’s also available to others who may find it relevant. Other universities have used OERbit for their own Open Educational Resources websites.

Why use open licenses?

Before you share something publicly, you have to consider some things. Especially if you’re using the University of Michigan branding, things have to be done legally. This includes reviewing materials for copyright, privacy, and product endorsement before you make it available to others online.

Press: Today the New England Journal of Medicine published an issue with 4 perspectives pieces about open access. One of the articles, "Creative Commons and the Openness of Open Access," highlights the open educational resources collection from U-M Medical School http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1300040. The article's great publicity for the medical school learning resources, and also does a good job of explaining copyright basics and the difference that open licenses make.

There are two practical reasons for using open licenses.

'''1. Signal intent. '''Did you know that by default, the things you create are automatically copyrighted at the time of creation and others who want to copy, adapt, or build on your work need your permission, each time? If you want people to use and build on your work, open licenses are a way to let others know, in simple language, how they can use it. For example, the M1 Anatomy Course has a comprehensive website, much it is free to access, but All Rights Reserved. We’ve received requests from several partner institutions who want to build on it, including multiple medical schools and the ministry of the health in Ethiopia. Since it’s All Rights Reserved, we need to negotiate a copy for each new institution. We’re in the process of adding a license now, which will remove the need to ask for permission each time while still acknowledging the authors and using it how in a way that they approve.

'''2. Enable others to make marginal improvements or enhancements. '''Going back to the first example, because the microbiology videos had an open license, others were able to build on the work by adding captions in other languages. The open licenses also enabled us to repackage and distribute the materials on iTunesU, Internet Archive, other websites, and offline on removable media for our partners in Africa with limited Internet connectivity.

Some of you have probably been thinking, “That’s not always how it works. People don’t always ask for permission before they use others’ work.” It’s a question of what’s legal versus risk. With the U-M brand, we need to be creating and remixing others’ content legally. Visibility of copyright infringement can be higher now. For example YouTube has improved autodetection of copyright-restricted music used as background tracks for videos.

How do open licenses work?

When using an open license, you retain the copyright to your original work but give permission to others to copy and distribute your materials, provided they give you credit — and only on the conditions you specify. There are multiple open licenses that you can choose.

When you use another’s work that is openly licensed, remember to attribute, using TASL: Title, Author, Source, and License.

Who can license a work?

Review the MSIS Organizational Guidelines for using CC Licenses.

How can Open.Michigan help?

Open.Michigan provides tools, services, and training that enable you to create, find, adapt, and promote open content with confidence.


 * Website: http://open.umich.edu
 * MSIS guidelines for Creative Commons licenses: http://openmi.ch/msis-cclicense
 * How-to guides: http://openmi.ch/om-share
 * Request a review: http://openmi.ch/submit-review
 * Source code: http://openmi.ch/-github
 * Spread the word: http://openmi.ch/-infokit

What can you do?

Remember, the things that you create have relevance outside of MSIS &amp; UMMS. Incorporate openly licensed or public domain content into your work. Add licenses to your own creations so that others can build on it.

You can start by:


 * adding a Creative Commons license to your MSIS unit website
 * promoting and licensing your presentation slides on the UMMS slideshare account

Learn more at our Enriching Scholarship presentation:

Title: U-M's Open Remix Culture - Creating and Sharing Legally Using Open Licenses

May 8, 2013, 10:00 - 11:30 am

Sign up coming soon: http://openmi.ch/-enrichsch

We create, use, and share each other's knowledge every day. This highly interactive workshop will equip attendees with the expertise and skills to develop, share, and find information for widespread use, re-mixing, and re-distribution. Members of the Open.Michigan initiative will provide an overview of the culture and practice of remixes in education, with a focus on resources created by members of the University of Michigan community. Workshop attendees will also engage in a hands-on activity to understand the practical process of how to create and remix legally for publicly available content. The activity will address the basics of copyright law and the Creative Commons licensing scheme and walk through the process of how to review materials for copyright, privacy, and product endorsement before making them publicly available.