12 Open Resources

Ankuran Dutta

 

Learning Scenario and Introduction:

 

Professor Anirban Mahanta was just about to pass the sliding doors of the entrance to the University, when a group of final year students almost stormed into him asking about his lecture on issues of Media Management. Prof. Mahanta almost forgot his due lecture, which he promised to the students few days back. Assuring the students that he would certainly give the lecture after two days, Professor made his way towards the lift which would take him to his office in the fifth floor of the University building. Inserting the keycard in the lock of his office-door, he brood over the list of works and lectures for the day and made up his mind to prepare a presentation on ‘media management’ for the final year students. He switched on the desktop PC and drew back the curtains as the office-bearer Jenny placed a cup of steaming coffee on his table.

 

Professor surfed through various websites to gather ideas for the lecture, as he sipped coffee. He scanned the books of his small office-library and brought some to his desk. The sound of an incoming mail in his PC broke his concentration. Prof. Mahanta opened his mail-box to find a request for content-writing for self-instructional materials of one of the best open universities in the country, and, much to his surprise, on the topic of ‘media management’. Prof. Mahanta almost smiled on the coincidence, and he immediately sent mails to his students of final year informing them to expect the due lecture after a week.

 

Professor knew that while writing the study material for the Open University, he would be able to gather much information on the topic and his lecture would be much beneficial for his students. He assembled all the twelve books from his library and took print-outs of the pages from the internet, and sat down to prepare the study material. Immediately the most obvious problem of copyright crossed his mind as he wanted to quotes from the books. After pondering for few minutes, Prof. Mahanta sent mails to all the authors of the 12 books, asking for their permission to quote from their books. After patiently waiting for 8 hours, he received a reply from Dr. Samuel Lively, the author of one of the books. The author expressed his deep regret on not being able to help due to the complicated and time-consuming process of seeking permission from the publisher as well as the author.

 

Prof. Mahanta sighed after reading the mail, as the very fact dawned on him that he would not be able to make good use of the books as he would want to. In the next three days he received similar mails from the authors Richard Simmons, Benedict Hendricks and David Garner. Four days already passed and Professor was feeling tensed as he was not being able to do justice to his piece of work.

 

Cradling a cup of coffee in his hands, he logged on to Skype to chat with his childhood friend and renowned faculty of information technology, Prof. Sameer Baruah. As his friend’s face emerged on the computer screen, Prof. Mahanta smiled and felt much relaxed and his tensions of the past few days seemed to have faded. He greeted his friend and enquired about his and his family’s health. The two friends chatted for 15 minutes talking about their families, work, upcoming trips, and so on.

 

In the course of the conversation, Prof. Mahanta told his friend about his recent dilemma regarding the copyright protected materials. On hearing the whole story, Prof. Baruah chuckled and asked, “Dear friend, why are you worrying when you can easily use open resources for your purpose?” Prof. Mahanta was shocked to hear that and enquired what open resource or OER stands for. His friend came to his rescue at the right moment by informing him that OER stands for Open Educational Resources, which are freely accessible, openly licensed documents. Prof. Baruah also informed that all the documents under OER are different in nature. In answering the question of Prof. Mahanta regarding the concept of open resources and selection of the open resource materials, Prof. Baruah suggested him to go through this module.

 

1.4 Concept of Open Resources:

 

As explained in the learning scenario, open resources are freely available resources having copy left policy or flexible copyright policy. There are about nine million websites use open licensing for their documents and other materials.

 

1.4.1 Licensing and copyright:

 

Before going to discuss on the open resources, let us enumerate about the copyright issues. We may broadly catagorise the copyright issues into three areas- copyright, flexible copyright and copy-left.

 

1.4.1.1 Copyright:

 

It is the exclusive and assignable legal right, given to the originator for a fixed number of years, to print, publish, perform, or record literary, artistic, or musical material.Copyright is a legal right created by the law of a country that grants the creator of an original work exclusive rights to its use and distribution, usually for a limited time period. Copyright is a form of intellectual property, applicable to any expressed representation of a creative work. India has an act, i.e. Copyright Act 1957, which allows 60 years from the death of the author in case of any literary or artistic work. In case of any cinematograph film, sound recordings, photographs, posthumous publications, anonymous and pseudonymous works or the works of government and non-government organisatons, the period of 60 years is counted from the date of publication.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1.4.1.3 Copy-left:

 

Copy-left describes that the material has no legal right and anybody can use. Copy-left is the practice of offering people the right to freely distribute copies and modified versions of a work with the stipulation that the same rights be preserved in derivative works down the line. Copy-left is a form of licensing and copyright law, and can be used to maintain copyright conditions for works ranging from computer software, to literary works, to art. In general, copyright law is used by an author to prohibit recipients from reproducing, adapting, or distributing copies of their work. In the contrary, under copy-left, an author may give every person who receives a copy of the work permission to reproduce, reuse, adapt, adopt, distribute or redistribute it, with the accompanying requirement that any resulting copies or adaptations are also bound by the same licensing agreement.For example, the materials having a reverse ‘C’ symbol or public domain symbol.

 

1.4.2 Open Resources

 

Hope, by these explanations above you are now able to understand the basic concept of copyright and copy-left. Now let us discuss about the concept of open resources. Open resource can be defined any material, literature, software, which are under the copy left or flexible copyright policy. Based on the nature, we may classify open resources into three areas- open source software/ programme, open access material and open educational resources.

 

1.4.2.1 Open Source Software/ Programme

 

Vangie Beal, the Managing Editor of Webopedia.com defines open sources as it refers to a programme in which the source code is available to the general public for use and/or modification from its original design free of charge, i.e. opens. Open source code is typically created as a collaborative effort in which programmers improve upon the code and share the changes within the community. Secondly, it is a certification standard issued that indicates that the source code of a computer program is made available free of charge to the general users.

 

Bruce Perens, a renowned software programmer, published the Debian Free Software Guidelinesin 1997, which were subsequently adopted as the core principles behind open source software by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). OSI is the organization that promotes the term ‘open source software’. Though the guidelines were similar to those that governed the term ‘free software’, they further emphasized the philosophical differences between the two terms.

 

The Debian Free Software Guidelines referred to the “Cathedral vs Bazaar”, a much talked about article written by Eric Raymond in the same year, which differentiated between two models of knowledge building by comparing them to contrasting architectural styles. The way a cathedral is built is very centralized: very few people or architects have a complete vision of the building, and everyone else is a cog in the wheel, executing a sub-task within the larger purpose of cathedral building. The roles are very well defined and the whole idea is based on hierarchical relationships and superior/inferior roles.

 

There is hundreds of open source software available for the media professionals, many of which are well-known. For example, the following are a few examples of open source audio/sound software-

 

Audacity: Audacity is one of the most commonly used audio recording and editing software used in the radio stations the world over. It is a non-linear, multi-track and feature-rich editing system that works on the platforms like Windows, Mac or Linux.

 

Ardour:It is a complete digital audio workstation, useful for live recordings, concert recordings, and composition.Ardour belongs to the JACK Audio Connection Kit environment. It is one of the most efficient and professional audio editing and recording software available to the open source community.

 

JAMin: JAMin is the Jack Audio Connection Kit Audio Mastering interface. JAMin is an open source application designed to perform professional audio mastering of stereo input streams.

 

1.4.2.2 Open Access Materials

 

Open access publications are freely and permanently available online to anyone. Unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium are permitted, provided the author/editor is properly attributed.The idea and practise of providing free online access to journal articles began in the beginning of this century with the term “open access”, which was formally coined. The initial concept of open access refers to an unrestricted online access to scholarly research primarily intended for scholarly journal articles. The term “open access” itself was first formulated in three public statements in the 2000s: the Budapest Open Access Initiative in February 2002, the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing in June 2003, and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities in October 2003.

The Budapest statement defined open access as follows:

 

There are many degrees and kinds of wider and easier access to this literature. By ‘open access’ to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

 

The Bethesda and Berlin statements add that for a work to be open access, users must be able to copy, use, reuse, distribute, redistribute transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship.

 

Open access has gained tremendous support from both authors, who appreciate the increased visibility of their work, as well as science institutions and funders, who value the societal impact of freely available research results. There are hundreads of journals now available as open access journals. For example, the following journals of communication studies are available as open access journals (hyper linked)-

 

· Brazilian Journalism Research

· Case Studies in Strategic Communication

· Ejournalist : a Refereed Media Journal

· Global Media Journal : African Edition

· Global Media Journal : Australian Edition

· Global Media Journal : Canadian Edition

· Innovation Journalism

· International Journal of Communication

· International Journal of Digital Multimedia Broadcasting

· International Journal of Multimedia and Ubiquitous Engineering

· JCOM : Journal of Science Communication

· Journal for Communication and Culture

· Journal of Communications

·Journal of e-Media Studies

· Journal of Information Policy

· Journal of Media Studies

 

1.4.2.3 Open Educational Resources

 

The concept of ‘Open Educational Resources (OER)’ has gained momentum among the academia. We can easily comprehend the basic objectives of OER. Defining OER perhaps is not a complex concern. These are simply educational resources or materials available for public with a flexible copyright protection or may be with the provisions of copy-left. Creative Commons defines Open Educational Resources (OER) as the teaching, learning, and research materials inany medium that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. Atkins, Brown, & Hammond (2007) state that Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others.Downes (2011) says that Open Educational Resources (OER) are materials used to support education that may be freely accessed, reused, modified and shared by anyone. Professor Asha Kanwar stated in a blog that there has been a great deal of discussion regarding the potential for open educational resources (OER) in higher education to increase access, reduce costs and enhance educational quality in the entire Globe.

 

The term “open educational resources” was first adopted at UNESCO’s 2002 Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in developing countries. The Paris OER Declaration 2002 defines the OER as “teaching, learning and research materials in any medium, digital or otherwise, that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions. Open licensing is built within the existing framework of intellectual property rights as defined by relevant international conventions and respects the authorship of the work.”

 

In all these definitions it can be prominently noted that the right of access, adaptation, and republication of educational materials are the characteristics of OER. Everywhere it is clear that such resources as OER are used for educational purpose, research and development, teaching-learning process. OERs can be reused, redistributed, re-purposed and retained for educational, research and developmental purposes.

 

1.4.3 Types of Open Resources

 

By this time, you must comprehend the basic concepts of copyright, copy-left, open source, open access and open educational resources. As we mentioned earlier that open resources may be of any form- print literature, a software, video, music, painting etc. To make you more aware about the different genre of open resources, let us discuss on the various types of open resources here.

 

1.4.3.1 Based on Media –

 

a) Text/Print: These are printable books, materials available online. The text materials can be accessed openly by anyone in digitalized format over the internet (both online and via offline formats). The texts can also be procured in printed version. Eg. Saide, RUFORUM etc.

 

b) Visual/ Photograph: Some open educational resources are available in visuals or photographic format. These can be made openly available and freely accessible to anyone. The visuals or photographs can be posted on a website or provided in print form, CD, DVD etc. Eg. Flickr, Pixabay, Wikimedia Commons, Open Clip Art Library, Fotopedia etc. Pixabay and Open Clip Art Library images are public domain images which can be used freely for personal and commercial use without giving attribution to the original author.

 

c) Audio: Some OER are available in the audio format. It allows the general people to discover works of thousands of artists, of all genres, who have chosen to distribute their music independently outside the traditional system of collecting societies. Eg. Jamendo,ccMixter,Internet Archive, Free Music Archive, SoundCloud etc.

 

d) Video/ Audio-Visual: Videos, audio-visual programmes or video lectures are uploaded in websites by some organizations. These organizations record on-campus lectures and publish them as OER, licensed with Creative Commons. Short video tutorials on a particular  subject  are  also  available.  Eg.  Open.Michigan,  Al  Jazeera,  YouTube, Vimeo,Internet Archive, Open Yale Courses, MIT, UC Berkeley, Khan Academy etc. Open Yale Courses, MIT and UC Berkeley provide selected video lectures, notes, class lectures, syllabi, etc. online which are available as downloadable videos along with audio-only versions. The Khan Academy has a large library of videos, consisting of 10-minute long tutorials featuring an instructor covering various subjects including humanities, finance and history.

 

e) Animation: There are some types of OER available in simulation and animation format. These types of OER are entertaining and interactive where the students attain knowledge through exploration. Eg. PhET. Such animations are available in JAVA and FLASH and are available in the PhET website.

 

1.4.3.2 Basedon Quality –

 

a) Self-published (through blogs, social networking etc.): Some individuals or groups publish open resources in blogs, social networking sites etc. These resources may not include qualitative contents since published by different individuals. Eg. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin are the most popular social networking sites. One can use these social networking sites to contribute materials. One can also contribute materials in their personal blogs which can be viewed by the general people. Eg. HuffingtonPost, TMZ etc. are the leading blogs with estimated monthly visitors about 54,000,000 and 19,000,000 respectively.

 

b) Reviewed: The resources need to be reviewed before being published in printed version or uploaded in certain websites. These OER are reviewed by different members of a community or some senior professionals to make certain whether the words or views used are pertinent to be published or not. Eg. MIT. The resources published in MIT website are reviewed before publication.

 

c) Peer-reviewed: These are open educational resources reviewed by members of peer groups. Texts contributed by individuals or groups are peer-reviewed by educators to ensure that they are readable, accurate, and meet the scope and sequence requirements of courses. Eg. Merlot, Open Stax College, College Open Textbooks. MERLOT is a free and open online community of resources which provides collection of peer reviewed online learning materials, catalogued by registered members and a set of faculty development support services. Most of the resources in Merlot are licensed under Creative Commons. College Open Textbooks provide peer reviews of open textbooks.

 

d) Option of Post-review: There are some open educational resources which are published in various websites and one can post their reviews whenever they go through the resources. The resources are post reviewed after they get published online. Eg. Sparknotes.

 

1.4.3.3 Basedon Authorship –

 

a) Individual: Some educational resources are freely available and accessible under the licensing of Creative Commons. Some of these resources are contributed by individuals. So, the resources come under individual authorship. Eg. Abstracts or articles contributed in ignca.nic.in, Stanford.edu etc.

 

b) Open authoring: Some open educational resources are open for authors. It means anyone can edit, change or modify the resources published in the particular websites. Eg. Wikipedia.

 

c) Collaborative work: Some resource persons work in groups and publish a collaborative work. They contribute the resources under collaborative authoring. Eg. A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement: Achievements, Challenges, and New Opportunities uploaded at www. hewlett.org. is a collaborative work of Daniel E. Atkins, John Seely Brown and Allen L. Hammond .

 

1.4.3.4 Basedon Presentation–

 

a) Slide sharing: Individuals or resource persons can share their slides, used in certain presentations, for the benefit of common learners. Slides used in seminar, workshops etc. can be uploaded online for public viewing which can be used and attributed according to the license under Creative Commons. Eg. slideshare.net

 

b) Class presentation: Class lectures on various subjects can be uploaded online. The presentations can include notes, syllabi, suggested readings, problem sets, probable questions, tutorials etc. Eg. Open Yale Courses, MIT etc. These organizations upload selected class presentations in the websites which can be viewed and downloaded easily.

 

c)  E-content presentation for OER: Similar to class lectures, different individuals and organizations upload presentations on E-content. These presentations serve as useful tools of information for general learners. The E-content presentations can act as relevant open educational resources. Eg. Presentation on ‘e-learning Papers’ at slideshare.net.

 

d)     Formal public presentations: These types of OER are formal public presentations presented by some dignitaries, public officials etc. for the benefit of the public. It can be a presentation by the Prime Minister or Union Finance Minister for the general people. Eg. Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam’s presentation on ‘Save Water’ in YouTube, slideshare.net etc.

 

1.4.3.5 Basedon Licensing–

 

a) Copyright protected: These are open educational resources available for the learners to only read and acquire knowledge about a particular topic. These materials are however copyright protected and cannot be reproduced or copied from the original source. Eg. Books, journals, research papers etc.

 

b) Creative Commons: Creative Commons is a non-profit organization which provides different kinds of licenses for a variety of works. One has to select a license preferred for his/her creative work and accordingly one can view, copy, share, modify or edit the resources as allowed under

 

c) The license. These resources are free and easy to use. Eg. OER Commons,Attribution Share Alike (CC BY-SA), Attribution No Derivatives (CC BY-ND) etc.

 

d) Public Domain: These OER are made publicly available. The learning materials provided under this category do not possess any reserved rights and can be used by anyone without seeking permission from the authors or publishers. Eg. Pixabay, Open Clip Art Library etc.

 

1.4.3.6 Basedon Nature/ Format –

 

a)     Reading materials

  • Text/Units: Some organizations provide texts, reading materials or units over internet in order to facilitate learning methods to the learners. The learners can learn or achieve additional information about a particular unit or text. Eg. College Open Textbooks, Open Stax College, Siyavula, CK-12, Boundless etc.
  • Modular Course: Modular courses of some organizations are available in digitalized format. The courses help the learners of distance education to acquire knowledge about their concerned subjects. Eg. Connexions, Wikiversity, WikiEducator, Jorum, Merlot,Currikietc. All these are community projects or services devoted to provide learning resources of all levels and types in small modules.
  • Complete Courses: Some institutes or organizations provide their complete courses over internet. It helps not only the learners of the institutes but also the general masses. It facilitates dissemination of education to a great extent. Several universities publish their textbooks, syllabi, course activities, readings, and assessments online. Eg. Carnegie Mellon University Open Learning Initiative, Open Course Library, MIT OpenCourseWare, OpenCourseWare Consortium Search, UK Open University Learning Space, Saylor, NIOS etc. NIOS is an example of such OER which provide their complete courses on internet for the learners of India.

 

b) References: Some OER also operate as reference studies for various studies. Such references are useful for learners to understand a particular subject. They consist analyzed and elaborative materials for better understanding of the learners. Eg. Various links to relevant references are mentioned in Wikipedia at the end of a particular article or abstract.

 

c)  In-depth research: Different researchers and scholars undergo in-depth researches and publish it in websites. Such in-depth researches are useful source of open educational resources for aspiring scholars who want to do research in similar fields as well as for a general learner. Eg. Thesis uploaded at www.scribd.com.

1.5 Conclusion

 

Dear learners, in this module, we have discussed on various issues related to open resources. At the very outset we have elucidated the concept of copyright and its related issues of flexibility in copyright and copy-left that builds the foundation of the discussion on open resources. We have also explained the key terms like open source, open access, open educational resources etc. At the end of the module, we have enumerated various types of open resources based on different criteria.

 

Prof. Mahanta could learn about the open resources and he found lots of materials available online under the Creative Commons or copy-left license. He copied the important materials from the online sources and gave proper attribution of the originators. He prepared an interesting piece on “Media Management” utilizing the open resources and took a very exciting session for the students of mass communication of his university on Media Management. He also explained the students about the open sources and advised to use the photographs, visuals, sounds and literatures for their creative activities using the open resource materials available online for free to use. Prof. Mahanta also instructed his students to carefully read the license declaration and use, reuse, redistribute important materials among the peers and others.

 

1.6 References

 

  • “2012 Paris OER Declaration.”UNESCO | Building Peace in the Minds of Men and Women.Last modified June 22, 2012. http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/Events/English_P aris_OER_Declaration.pdf.
  • Atkins, Daniel E., John S. Brown, and Allen L. Hammond. “A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement: Achievements, Challenges, and New Opportunities.” Hewlett Foundation. Last modified February 2007. http://www.hewlett.org/uploads/files/ReviewoftheOERMovement.pdf.
  • Beal, Vangie. “What is Open Source? A Webopedia Definition.”Webopedia: Online Tech Dictionary for IT Professionals. Accessed May 15, 2015. http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/O/open_source.html.
  • “CEMCA :: Certificate in Community Radio Technology (CCRT).” Welcome To Commonwealth Educational Media Centre For Asia. Accessed May 17, 2015. http://cemca.org.in/resources/certificate-community-radio-technology-ccrt-0#.VVhW15MwAZA.
  • CEMCA: OER Based E-learning. Accessed May 17, 2015. http://cemca.org.in/ckfinder/userfiles/files/OER%20-%20Modules_Low.pdf.
  • Dutta, Ankuran. “CEMCA :: OER or OMR or OIR or OCR ?” Commonwealth Educational Media Centre For Asia. Accessed May 17, 2015. http://cemca.org.in/blog/OER-or-OMR-or-OIR-or-OCR#.VVhXYZMwAZA.
  • Foerster, Stephen H. “Open Educational Resources: A Definition.” Half an Hour.Last modified July 14, 2011. http://halfanhour.blogspot.in/2011/07/open-educational-resources-definition.html.
  • Kanwar, Asha S. “OER: From Commitment to Action (Asha Kanwar).” Commonwealth of Learning.Last modified February 18, 2013. http://www.col.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=168.
  • “Media and Communication.” Open Access Journals Search Engine (OAJSE). Accessed May 17, 2015. http://www.oajse.com/subjects/media_and_communication.html.
  • “State of the Commons — Creative Commons.”State of the Commons.Accessed May 16, 2015. https://stateof.creativecommons.org/?utm_campaign=2014fund&utm_source=carousel &utm_medium=web.