Open Content How-to

How to Create Open Content

Introduction
This webpage is for faculty, staff, and students interested using openly licensed content in the process of creating educational content. We outline steps you can take to ensure that the educational material you create is not only something that your students and colleagues can use, but also something that you can share with educators, colleagues, and self-learners worldwide.

The first section below, "Standard practice for creating presentation slides for closed, classroom use", describes how most faculty, staff, and students create educational content. We don't need to go too in depth here because you know the routine of making a presentation: you gather your ideas for the talk and write an outline. Then for the icebreaker, you decide to include that Charles Addams New Yorker cartoon. Then you throw in a few images from a few Google searches, plop in a couple of diagrams from that textbook add some text...and there you go. done. A practice of fine for traditional classroom use, because as an educator, staff, or student the doctrine of fair use most likely protects you from any claim of an infringement on the exclusive rights of those who hold the copyright to those images and diagrams you used. But once your audience says, "wow, that was great!" and wants you to share it on your personal website or post it to sites like Facebook, SlideShare, Scribd, or YouTube...a different set of rules may apply. In other words, fair use may only go so far in protecting your uses beyond the the brick and mortar of the traditional classroom.

So why not ensure that your material can actually be shared with people from the start?

That's why in the second section, "Recommended practices for creating presentation slides for open, global use," we lay out a series of simple steps that you can follow to not only create more informative presentations but also ensure that others know how they can use your work as well as the images, diagrams, charts, etc inside the content.

In May 2009, we presented on this topic of how to create open content. Please see our presentation entitled "Beyond Open Educational Resources: Creating Open Educational Resources - or how to create really cool and useful educational material using openly licensed content" ([[Media:ES_Fons.key.zip|Keynote]], [[Media:ES_Fons.ppt|PPT]])

Recommended practices for creating presentation slides for open, global use
The steps in bold are the new steps that are necessary when designing for open use, that is, use by online users (faculty, students, professionals, self-learners, etc.) as well as in the classroom. Some of the steps below instruct you to cite the content (e.g. images, video, quotes) from outside sources. Please see this [[Media:How_to_Cite_Open_Content.ppt | presentation on How to Cite Open Content]] for how to do proper citations.

1. Select a license for your work
 * Identify any contributing authors

2. Add text
 * Your own text
 * Third-party
 * Colleagues - Ask for permission; Cite
 * Student work - Ask for permission; Cite
 * Other (e.g. excerpts from readings) - Limit amount; Cite

3. Add images
 * Consider privacy and endorsement regulations
 * Create (photos, graphs, charts, etc.) - same
 * Third-party
 * Colleagues - Ask for permission; Cite
 * Student work - Ask for permission; Cite
 * Other
 * Online - Use public domain images (which are by definition not copyrighted) or publicly licensed images (which are copyrighted but indicate certain permitted uses, e.g. Creative Commons)
 * CC (Creative Commons) Search: http://search.creativecommons.org/
 * Select the "Search for works I can modify, adapt, or build upon" checkbox
 * This searches several websites with CC works, including the 100 million CC-licensed photos on Flickr.
 * Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
 * See our page on Open Content Search for more search engine suggestions
 * Textbook
 * Copyright Analysis
 * Remove & Annotate

4. Add context for images

5. Add media (sound, movies, etc)
 * Consider privacy and endorsement regulations
 * Your own media
 * Third-party
 * Colleagues - Ask for permission; Cite
 * Student work - Ask for permission; Cite
 * Other (e.g. YouTube, popular movie or song clip)
 * Remove & Annotate

6. Add context for media

7. Confirm formatting
 * Is there a license slide?
 * Are you using a standard slide template (such as one included with Microsoft PowerPoint)?
 * Are there slide numbers on each slide?

8. Final content review by dScribe or Open.Michigan staff