The Connexions Project

1
The Connexions Project Sharing Knowledge,
Building Communities
Geneva Henry Rice University UNESCO Second Global
Forum on International Quality Assurance,
Accreditation and the Recognition of
Qualifications in Higher Education Widening
access to quality Open Educational Resources
(OER) 28 - 29 June 2004 Paris, France
2
Connexions Goal

• Provide and maintain a commons where
  individuals and communities worldwide can create
  and freely share knowledge

3
Background of Connexions

• Need to make updated, quality materials available
  to students that shows how concepts relate to
  each other
• Remove barriers to publication so information is
  more readily exchanged and updated
• Make information reusable so it can be used and
  modified to meet the needs of its users
• Turn traditional peer review into peer
  collaboration in creating the quality materials
• Let anyone participate

4
Connexions Objectives

• Provide a content commons of free,
  interconnected educational materials
• Facilitate access to the commons and foster its
  growth
• Facilitate content reuse
• Foster community participation in the commons
• Ensure sustainability of this resource into the
  future

5
Connexions Approach

• Modularity
• Interconnectedness
• Open licensing
• Collaboration
• Open participation

6
Connexions
7
Conceptual Model Components
8
Content Types

• Module
• Single topic building block
• Standalone, but cross-linked
• Course
• Sequence of modules
• Customizations

9
Editing Environment

• Workspaces (private and group)
• Collaboration
• Create and manage content

10
Repository

• Storage
• Version Control
• Access
• Search

11
Viewing

• Single modules
• Multiple formats
• Courses
• Persistent navigation
• Module customization

12
Key Technologies

• All software is Open Source
• Work with existing OS software (e.g. Zope, Plone,
  PostgreSQL, Annotea)
• Connexions software to be released in Summer 2004
• XML markup of content to preserve semantics
• Commons modules available to popular search
  engines to improve visibility of content
• Tools to support course assembly, annotations,
  and navigation of courses without getting lost
• Open licenses using Creative Commons attribution
  license

13
Open Content Licensing

• Current IP policies discourage sharing
• Creative Commons licenses provide common legal
  vocabulary for sharing content
• Sharing and (re)use requires that IP be
  integrated into content
• Publisher collaborators
• Kinkos, Cambridge University Press

14
Connexions Ethos

• There are still many things licenses do not
  govern. They are different for every group of
  academics.
• Our philosophy
• Licenses should enable not restrict
• Everything else should be guided by existing
  norms
• Tools should remain maximally flexible but
  legally watertight

15
Commons and Usage Growth

• To date
• 1800 modules
• 38 courses
• Worldwide authorship
• ECE, CS, bioinformatics, math, nanotech,
  physics, statistics, botany, music,

Hits Q4 2002 6,0008,000 a day Q1 2004
150,000250,000 a day
16
Prototype Communities

• International Community in Digital Signal
  Processing (DSP)
• Rice, Illinois, Ohio State, Georgia Tech,
  Michigan, Polytechnic, Cambridge, École
  Polytechnique, ENST, ENS Lyon, INRIA (France),
  EPFL (Switzerland)
• National Instruments and Texas Instruments Japan
• Spontaneous contributions from NTNU (Norway),
  Univ. Verona (Italy)
• Electrical and Computer Engineering (Rice core
  curriculum)
• goal 15 interlinked courses with prerequisites
  is gt1/3 complete
• Bioinformatics (Rice, Baylor, MD Anderson,
  University of Houston)
• genetics, statistics, computer science,
  bioengineering,
• Botany/Biodiversity (BRIT, AMNH)
• Music appreciation and theory (college and K12)
• UC Merced

17

• Content Commons
• 1800 new modules
• 38 courses

• User Community
• 450,000 users
• 96 outside Rice University
• 1395 author accounts

18
Views by User Address
9.2 million views over six months
In 2 years, views have increased from less than
1,000 up to 20,000 per day.
19
Views from Colleges Universities
domestic (.edu) and international
32 of total
Top 20 educational institutions (excluding Rice
149,000 views)
Institutions teaching courses through Connexions
20
Views from Homes and Businesses
.com and .net addresses, domestic and
international
Page views for top 15 commercial sites
26 of total
21
Worldwide Access
from 157 out of 243 assigned country codes
25 of total

• Next most
• prevalent
• countries
• Finland
• Denmark
• Sweden
• Japan
• United States
• Israel
• Belgium
• Switzerland
• Greece
• Pakistan
• Spain
• Mexico
• Argentina
• etc.

22
http//cnx.rice.edu

• ghenry_at_rice.edu

23
(No Transcript)
24
(No Transcript)
25
(No Transcript)
26
(No Transcript)
27
(No Transcript)
28
(No Transcript)
29
(No Transcript)