The Student-engineered Open Textbook: Chemical Process Dynamics and Controls

Jane Park, December 4th, 2008

It is commonly known that students learn by doing—by practicing, rather than simply soaking in, the information that is taught them in the classroom. But it is also commonly known that anyone can obtain information; the internet is chock-full of the stuff; all one has to do is type in a few key words and hit search. The reality is that formal education, aka the classroom, can no longer be, and no longer is, just one side of this perceived divorce in education: the acquisition of knowledge versus the practice of it. 

Open education acknowledges that information is abundant, and that it takes someone to organize, interpret, and make it meaningful. This is one value that formal and higher education still offers the net generation, those bred on Google and Wikipedia. The culling of data becomes the responsibility of professionals, their peers, and their students—the results of which are high quality educational resources available to the rest of the world. 

The Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Michigan has taken this idea of synthesis and run with it. They have integrated the practice of knowledge into class curriculum, by requiring students to contribute to an open textbook in wiki format—Chemical Process Dynamics and Controls. Since 2006, senior chemical engineering students have been developing this resource, building off of the preceding year’s work. The result is a comprehensive and dynamic textbook, available for free on the web, that is both high quality and openly licensed under CC BY. Though you must be a member of the class to directly edit the wiki text, nothing prevents the rest of the world from copying and deriving it for their own uses—even republishing it and distributing it at a low cost in concrete form is possible.

Originally conceptualized by Peter Woolf (Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering) with help from Leeann Fu, the system of textbook creation is anything but haphazard. Each week, a team of students is selected to become “experts” on a particular topic. The students research and present on the topic, adding the relevant text and diagrams to the wiki. The wiki’s content is further vetted by “the faculty and Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs)” who “act as managing editors, selecting broad threads for the text and suggesting references.” They also check for copyright issues, and the students are encouraged to re-use public domain materials.

“In contrast to other courses, the students take an active role in their education by selecting which material in their assigned section is most useful and decide on the presentation approach. Furthermore, students create example problems that they present in poster sessions during class to help the other students master the material.”

In addition, full class lectures in video format and powerpoint presentations are available on the wiki, also under CC BY. CC BY is the most appropriate license for educational materials, since all one has to do is attribute the original authors. The freedoms to copy, adapt, remix, and redistribute are crucial to advancing progress in education.

A Byte Of Vim: Free/Open E-Book on the Vim 7 Editor

Cameron Parkins, December 4th, 2008

A Byte Of Vim is a newly released e-book by Swaroop C H that guides users, new and old, through the Vim 7 text editor. Released under a CC BY-SA license, the e-book is not only legally ripe for reuse but also approved for free cultural works.

Of particular note is A Byte of Vim’s distribution model - primarily released online in wiki format, communal edits are easy and open, taking advantage of the freedoms inherent to BY-SA licensed works. You can download the e-book in PDF format as well.

CC board member Michael Carroll asks for your support

Mike Linksvayer, December 4th, 2008

One of the best things about Creative Commons, the organization, is the passionate commitment of our entire board. In addition to volunteering thousands of hours over CC’s history, they’re responsible for the major donor fundraising that bootstrapped and sustains CC, but all of that goes on behind the scenes.

For the past few years we’ve added a public fundraising component, which has and will continue to be an increasing portion of CC’s overall support. CC board member Michael Carroll has posted his public appeal for CC support on his blog:

Creative Commons is asking for your support this year to enable us to continue the work we’ve been doing in promoting openness in the cultural, educational, and scientific fields. http://support.creativecommons.org/

If you support the vision, please help to staff the vision. Why? You might ask. How hard is it to host a web site?

Indeed. Please go read why, then click over to join Michael Carroll in supporting CC.

You can also check out Carroll and other CC board members on screen in Jesse Dylan’s A Shared Culture.

For even more Carroll and CC, read his paper on Creative Commons as Conversational Copyright. Here’s an excerpt for everyone, link and emphasis added:

As should now be clear, Creative Commons copyright licenses embody a vision of conversational copyright. Within this vision, creators or copyright owners seek to facilitate use of their expression for purposes such as dialog and education. A personal anecdote may bring the point home. I had been invited to participate in a panel discussion at an annual meeting of scholarly publishers. My fellow panelists were copyright lawyers, publishers, and others with a professional commitment to respect copyright law. The topic for discussion was the future of copyright law, and the panel agreed that it would be useful to show a topical eight-minute flash movie, available on the Internet and created by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson, with music by Aaron McLeran.

Within the eyes of U.S. copyright law, showing the entire video at a professional conference would be considered a public performance that requires a license. One might argue that the authors had granted such a license impliedly by placing the movie on the Internet. But the matter was not entirely clear. Indeed, in a preparatory conference call, one panelist asked about clearing the rights to show the video. Another panelist quickly rejoined, “Not a problem. It’s released under a Creative Commons license.” No further action was required to comply with the law. In this way, Creative Commons licenses enable creators to reach a wide audience and save busy audience members the time and effort of seeking permission to share the creators’ work. And, as it turned out, showing the video helped stimulate a very active and engaged dialog among the panelists and between the panel and the audience.

Yes, it is “Not a problem”, and CC does host a website, among other things. It costs money to make complex problems tractable. Please join Michael Carroll and the rest of our board in supporting Creative Commons.

Bulgarian President Chooses CC BY ND

Michelle Thorne, December 4th, 2008

The official website of the Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov is now available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 Bulgarian license. Bulgaria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been releasing its material under the same license since 2006, but ordinarily, these websites would be under full copyright, explains CC Bulgaria Project Lead Veni Markovski.

“Bulgaria has taken a step in the right direction to complete its image as a country where the politicians are aware of the most advanced technologies and use them for the good of the society,” Veni adds.

Government leaders in other countries are also choosing similar paths. The Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan licenses his official website under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported license, and governments in Australia and Mexico (pdf) use and recommend CC. Another licensing decision already bearing fruit is Change.gov, the website of US president-elect Barack Obama’s transition team, which is published under the most permissive of Creative Commons copyright licenses - CC Attribution 3.0 Unported.

For a listing of more governmental uses of CC, please visit our wiki page: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Government_use_of_CC_licenses.

Commons Crossroads: CC Asia-Pacific Conference 2009

Michelle Thorne, December 4th, 2008

Regional collaborations are strengthening CC projects worldwide. Regular conferences and outreach, coordinated on a regional level by CC Project Leads, are bringing visibility to local initiatives and promoting the ideals of sharing and free culture worldwide. Previous meetings have yielded clearer strategies and collaborations, as demonstrated by the recent Latam Commons, the growing COMMUNIA network, and last year’s successful ACIA workshop in Taipel.

CC Asia and Pacific community will be pleased to learn that another conference is in the works. From CC Philippines:

AN INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE

You are cordially invited to attend and participate in the regional conference of Creative Commons in Asia and the Pacific in the Philippines on 5-6 February 2009 to be hosted by the Arellano University School of Law, Lead Public Institution of Creative Commons – Philippines. The principal venue for the event will be at the Coral Ballroom of the Manila Pavillon Hotel situated at the heart of the City of Manila.

The conference aims (a) to showcase the various initiatives of Creative Commons in Asia and the Pacific and (b) for the stakeholders to get together in a forum to define the roadmap of Creative Commons in the region following the 2008 iCommons Summit in Sapporo, Japan.

We hope you will join us!

Image: “CC Asia” by Lairaja, available under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Philippines license.