The Open Education program at Creative Commons works to support CC’s mission through education, advocacy, and outreach on using open licenses and open licensing policies to maximize the benefits of open education (content, practices and policy). We work closely with governments, educational institutions and organizations to open up knowledge for everyone. As we explore new solutions for sharing in 2025 and the years to come, we want to take a moment to reflect back on some of our work in 2024.

• We completed working with Carnegie Math Pathways at WestEd to openly license their Quantway and Statway courses.
• Attended the Hewlett Education Grantee Conference in Atlanta; and delivered keynotes at:
  • the California OER Conference on shifting to community owned and operated open knowledge
  • the Ukrainian State University of Science and Technologies Library and the Ukrainian Library Association, series “Open Knowledge in Ukrainian Universities: Open Educational Resources”
  • the Arizona Regional OER Conference, titled “In Cyborg Luddite Solidarity.” 
• We were interviewed for the Open Education Global Open Education Voices Podcast. 
• We hosted multiple webinars, workshops and panels for open education including: “Wikidata, OER, and Curriculum Alignment in Ghana, Uruguay and Italy (Recordings English and Español), as well as two workshops entitled “Open Education Platform: Cease and Desist Letters.” 
• CC officially joined the Digital Public Goods Alliance in March of this year, and now the CC legal tools are formally recognized as part of the Digital Public Goods Registry. This is critical for underscoring the public interest benefit of the legal infrastructure of open sharing. In November, CC attended the DPGA Annual Members Meeting in Singapore (program). We led three sessions at the meeting including: Fully Open Public Interest AI with Open Data, DPGs are a Prerequisite to Solve Climate Change (slides), and National Open Licensing Policies for DPGs. The DPGA CEO particularly liked our “open procurement” phrase: “buy what you need, own what you buy, share what you own.” 
• We also participated in the 3rd UNESCO World OER Congress (program / concept note) in Dubai in November.
  • Our CEO Anna Tumadóttir discussed the “Role of Open Licensing in the Future of Education” (slides); Cable Green talked about the importance of open licensing and open policy in the “Global Digital Commons: The UNESCO / UNSDSN OER Overlay Repository;” and Jennryn Wetzler and Cable were rapporteurs for two sessions: “Privacy and Data Protection of Openly Licensed Content” and “Policies Mapping Open Solution Ecosystems” respectively. Lastly, we participated in the UNESCO Dynamic OER Coalition meeting to make final recommendations on the Dubai Declaration on OER – the outcome document of the Congress.

Notably, the CC Open Education Community had several accomplishments across various projects (more on this soon). We invite you to join us there!

In 2025, CC will be working with the DPGA as they explore: open source first (in government decisions), financing for DPGs to enable digital public infrastructure (DPI), DPGs for open data at scale, and high quality earth observation DPGs for climate change. We will also be conducting open education AI consultations to understand the concerns of educators whose work is being used to train AI and how educators are using AI. Additionally, we will work with the UNESCO OER Dynamic Coalition and the Network of NGOs to help national governments implement the UNESCO Recommendation on OER. 

If you’d like to connect with us about Open Education, please reach out to info@creativecommons.org.

The post CC Open Education: 2024 Year in Review appeared first on Creative Commons.

In this interview, we were delighted to speak with Hanae Lrhoul, a graduate of the CC Certificate for Educators. 

Hanae works as a professor at the Information Sciences school in Rabat, Morocco. Her main research topics are related to open access, scientometrics, and data visualization. She is also an associate editor of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the CC Morocco chapter lead, and Vice President of the International Association of Francophone Libraries (AIFBD).

Q: What inspired you to take the CC Certificate for Educators?

Q: You’re a professor in the school of information science. How has what you learned in the CC Certificate course informed your work?

Q: I understand that you’re an integral part of the CC Morocco team and helped establish that chapter back in 2020/2021. Can you tell us more about the state of open access and CC licenses in Morocco?

Q: I also know you’ve done some interesting work with the government – for example, you recently told me that the Ministry of Higher Education launched the first open science project as part of the Minister’s ESRI pact.

Q: What advice do you have for folks who are new to open science or open education initiatives and are looking to get more involved?

Q: Final words?

CC Certificate Alumni Interview with Hanae Lrhoul by Shanna Hollich is licensed via CC BY 4.0.

Registering for the CC Certificate program is one way to start taking Hanae’s wonderful advice to “adopt and embrace open access.” To learn more about our upcoming courses, please visit the CC Certificate website. Or, read about how our alumni have used the Certificate course knowledge in a number of ways, including: developing a microcredential course about open educational resources, an Open Syllabus project, supporting the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science; an open access policy for a cultural heritage institution working with digitized art works; open licensed content for a bachelor of business program in Bangladesh and Masters courses in the US. You can also read alumni testimonials here.  

If you are a CC Certificate alum and would like to share your amazing work with our CC community, please reach out to us at certificates AT creativecommons DOT org.

The post CC Certificate Alumni Making a Global Impact appeared first on Creative Commons.

“Together We Can Move Mountains” by Steve McCarthy for Fine Acts x OBI is licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

CC lauds all of the open education community efforts, and we look forward to sharing additional highlights at the end of this year.  The CC Open Education Platform funded projects include:

V Simpósio de RPG, Larp e Educação. The project will organize a symposium about tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) and live action roleplaying (LARPs) on Human Rights Education, to be held remotely in Brazil in June 2024. The event will happen during 8 days with lectures, workshops and talks. Participants will be able to interact live with the speakers as the lectures are streamed, and all the recordings are going to be openly available after the event. The lecturers are also being invited to produce and send hands-on written digital materials detailing the instructions of the activity presented, and those are going to be compiled on an openly available digital book. Some of the lectures will approach how TTRPGs and LARPs can be used as tools to facilitate the inclusion and discussion of human rights in educational activities. After the event all of the produced material (videos and written content) will be openly available under CC-BY licenses. 
Country: Brazil
Project Lead: Marcos Vinícius Carneiro Vital

An Open Education Club and OER for Climate Education in High Schools. The project will create awareness of OER in 20 High schools, introduce High School Students to the wide array of opportunities in OER and then use it as a tool for climate and environmental education.  The project will organize special sessions on Open Education, form an Open Education club and then train club members on how to use OER for climate education and to build capacity for climate action (SDG 13). 
Country: Ghana
Project Lead: Otuo-Akyampong Boakye

Empowering Librarians: Enhancing OER Awareness in Ghana’s Tertiary Schools. This project will raise awareness and utilization of Open Educational Resources (OER) among librarians, faculty, and students. The project will offer training on open licensing, co-creating curated collections of OER materials, as well as building partnership and advocacy, in order to empower librarians to effectively integrate OER into their institutions. 
Country: Ghana
Project Lead: Stephen Dakyi

Open Education Initiative in Nepal. This project will establish an Open Education Initiative to enhance access to quality educational resources for all learners in Nepal, regardless of their location or socioeconomic background. The key components include using a centralized online platform, training educators on OER, promoting community outreach, investing in digital infrastructure, and advocating for policies promoting open education practices. The implementation plan includes a pilot phase, scaling up, and integration and sustainability. CC Nepal and the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (Government of Nepal) will collaborate together on this project. 
Country: Nepal
Project Lead: Roshan Kumar Karn

Open Educational Resources for Yoruba Culture. This project will create a set of OER centered on the rich and diverse culture of the Yoruba people — one of Africa’s major ethnic groups, predominantly found in Nigeria, Benin and Togo. Through a series of video episodes, learners will be able to explore elements of Yoruba culture such as the language, food, music, festivals and names, and more. 
Country: Nigeria
Project Lead: Isaac Oloruntimilehin

Supporting the UNESCO OER Recommendation 
In addition to the five winning projects, CC and community members will continue to work closely with UNESCO on refining media “explainers,” about open licenses and their importance for global open education.  Once video editing, graphics and translations are complete, we look forward to publishing them. 

If you would like to get involved in CC’s open education community and activities, join us! Contact jennryn [at] creativecommons.org for more details. 

The post The CC Open Education Platform Funds Five New Community Projects appeared first on Creative Commons.

If the embedded timeline above is not working, the highlights are also listed below.

What’s next

In the coming months, we  look forward to co-developing a public folder of CC training materials with CC communities around the world. Stay tuned for more information and how to get involved. 

Meanwhile: would you like a CC training at your institution or community of practice? Learn more on our website and email learning [at] creativecommons.org for more information. We’d be delighted to help you continue to grow your knowledge of Creative Commons licensing and the open movement.

Timeline text

• 9 January: CC provided a short overview of OER and CC licenses as tools to support education and science in Ukraine. This was presented for Ukrainian conference “Open Knowledge in Ukrainian Universities: Open Educational Resources.” Recording available on YouTube.
• 20 January: At the 2024 ALA LibLearnX conference in January, CC presented: “3D Scanning for Cultural Heritage Institutions: Practical Skills and Considerations for Library Preservation.” In this hands-on workshop, participants learned the basics of how 3D scanning works and the importance of this technology for preserving cultural heritage and library collections. After a quick demonstration, we were able to dive into a deeper discussion about the copyright and open licensing considerations of this particular type of digital preservation.
• 26 February: CC provided a general CC licensing training for CC network colleagues in Rwanda. We thoroughly enjoy supporting CC network colleagues and are happy to provide one-hour trainings like this upon request.
• 29 February: In a keynote, titled “In Cyborg Luddite Solidarity,” we explored the challenges and promises generative AI poses for creators and open educators. From concerns around privacy, consent, bias, economic and environmental impacts, access to and control over technology further entrenching inequities, copyright, misinformation and more, generative AI remains a contentious advancement. Simultaneously, the benefits and promises witnessed in 2023 alone were awe-inspiring. AI advanced life-saving medical knowledge, enhanced educational curriculum alignment across national borders, and made creative expression more accessible to untrained creators. Using generative AI, international projects strengthened linguistic diversity online — work vital to addressing one of the major inequities of the internet. While our new landscape continues to evolve, we drew from the Luddite Movement and Cyborg Manifesto to highlight ethics from our collective pasts that may apply today.
• Between 4 and 8 March, we celebrated Open Education Week with a range of learning offerings.
• 4 March: In Affordable Learning Kentucky’s virtual OE week symposium, CC delivered a talk titled “OER and Social Justice: Are We Keeping Our Promises?” We were grateful to engage with a new audience about the OER and its potential for even greater accessibility and social justice to empower learners from all facets of society. 
• 4 March: This Licensing Q&A webinar was part of the Creative Commons Certificate courses, and was available to the public. Meredith Jacob is the CC US Public Lead and Director of the Project on Copyright and Open Licensing at the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at American University Washington College of Law.
• 5 March: CC hosted a webinar focused on Wikidata, OER, and curriculum alignment in Ghana, Uruguay, and Italy, with special guests Nat Hernández Clavijo and Sailesh Patnaik. Clavijo and Patnaik shared the transformative potential of Wikidata in curriculum alignment through a review of Wikidata for Education, a project born in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana, in collaboration with UNESCO’s Global Education Coalition. The project aligned Wikipedia articles with school curricula, revolutionizing the way students access relevant information, and has since expanded to Uruguay and Italy. Recording link (English); Recording link (Español)
• 6 March: CC provided a training day in prep for Missouri’s A&OER Conference. Training days are great opportunities to ensure large groups have a baseline understanding of CC licenses, open practices, and open advocacy efforts. 
• 7 March: In celebration of Open Education Week, OE Global’s Alan Levine interviewed CC Director of Learning and Training, Jennryn Wetzler. The podcast will be available on the OEGlobal Voices podcast page.
• 8 March: This Q&A webinar included an overview of CC’s recently released Recommended Best Practices for Better Sharing of Climate Data and the CC licenses and tools that support best practices. Our recommendations are a result of collaboration between Creative Commons, government agencies, and intergovernmental organizations including ECMWF, NASA, NOAA, and the World Resources Institute. They mark a significant milestone in our ongoing effort to enhance the accessibility, sharing, and reuse of open climate data to address the climate crisis. Our goal is to share strategies that align with existing data sharing principles and pave the way for a more interconnected and accessible future for climate data. These recommendations also align with the strategies and outcomes of the Open Climate Campaign, a partnership between Creative Commons, SPARC, and EIFL.
• 12 March: This Licensing Q&A webinar with CC General Counsel Kat Walsh was part of the Creative Commons Certificate courses, and was available to the public. 
• 12 March – 2 April: CC piloted a series of webinars with ALA’s Core division about copyright, Creative Commons licensing, and the potential impact of emerging technologies on copyright and open access. Recording links are forthcoming.
• 21 March: This informational webinar was part of the Creative Commons Certificate courses, and was available to the public. Nancy Olson, Director of Distance Education and Instructional Technology at Barstow College provided practical guidance on Accessible OER.
• 5 April: CC co-presented a session at the Northeast OER Summit titled “Beyond Affordability: Collaboration, Reuse, Translation and Localization of OER in Ukraine.” Through storytelling of a recent event in 2023, Ukrainian colleagues and CC demonstrate the power of OER as a tool for cross country collaboration, connection and as support for learning communities in Ukraine. Presenters invited participants to join their collective story, exploring ways to support Ukrainian colleagues translating and localizing needed skills training amidst war.
• 17 April: Creative Commons announced the launch of “Introduction to Open Educational Resources,” our first professional development microcredential course and partnership with the University of Nebraska at Omaha, commencing on 31 May.

The post Learn More with Creative Commons: Recent Training Highlights appeared first on Creative Commons.

Creative Commons is proud to announce the launch of “Introduction to Open Educational Resources,” our first professional development microcredential course and partnership with the University of Nebraska at Omaha, commencing on 31 May.

This microcredential pilot started with one CC Certificate alumnus’s enthusiasm for open education. Craig Finlay, OER and STEM Librarian at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) Libraries, took the CC Certificate course for Academic Librarians in September, 2021. Since then, he’s advocated for open education in a variety of capacities: managing UNO’s biannual campus Affordable Content Grants, which largely fund converting courses from using all traditional textbooks to using at least one open educational resource; hosting regular CC workshops for faculty on campus; and co-authoring a white paper exploring OER’s positive impact on student success. Co-creating the microcredential course offered the next step in applying his CC Certificate expertise and passion for open education. Craig was intent on bringing CC licensing expertise to more learners, seeking professional development, and UNO granted a pathway for this.

Over the course of the last several months, CC and UNO have developed the “Introduction to Open Educational Resources.” The course remixes Certificate lessons in open licensing, copyright, open education, fair use and the public domain.  Content targets the ecosystem of scholarly and academic publishing and explores growing and managing open education efforts in these domains. Learners enrolling in this 9-week course will engage asynchronously, but should expect to work five hours per week to complete course work; successful completion will result in a microcredential for non-credit and professional education. 

Beyond the course announcement, we wanted to share a few crucial elements that made this partnership successful: 

• A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which outlined the goal, key roles, responsibilities and timeline for our work. 
• A mutually viable financial model, which ensures this work can be sustainable for both institutions. 
• Adaptability. Because this project involved multiple stakeholders, we needed to remain flexible to meet differing needs. 
• Trust. Working together has been easy because of our basis in trust.

We share these key ingredients to this microcredential pilot because we expect the partnership can be replicated for a number of new communities. If you work at an institution and are interested in partnering with CC on a microcredential course related to CC Certificate course content, please contact certificates [at] creativecommons.org.

Note: The CC Certificate program was created as an investment in our open advocates around the world. CC built the training to strengthen the global communities’ work engaging in open movements in education, access and more recently, cultural heritage. 

CC Certificate courses develop peoples’ practical expertise in open licensing, copyright, and ways to engage in open knowledge and culture movements. The program has certified over 1700 people in 65 countries with open licensing expertise. Through open licensing course content, CC supports communities making derivatives of the course, from Masters level courses, faculty workshops, an audio recording, to nine language translations, and more. 

The post Creative Commons and University of Nebraska at Omaha Partner on a Microcredential Course appeared first on Creative Commons.

The CC Open Education community had a busy 2023!  Five project teams, spanning nine countries, worked on open education projects ranging from developing STEAM, interactive, and climate change-related OER, to international curriculum alignment and translation work. Community members also worked on multimedia resources supporting the UNESCO Recommendation on OER, and presented in CC’s biannual Open Education Lightning Talks. Community members reflect on their accomplishments, lessons learned and what is next below. CC staff lightly edited text for clarity.

Building a K-12 Interactive Open Textbook

Update from Werner Westermann: This project developed a K-12 Open Textbook in the subject of Civics and Citizenship subject for 11th and 12th Grade, aligned to the official K-12 curriculum of Chile. With the CC funding, we made 60% progress on one Open Textbook for 11th grade, surpassing our initial goal. We worked with teachers, creators of the interactive resources and a graphic designer on all four learning units of the 11th grade Open Textbook, as defined by Chile’s official curriculum for Civics and Citizenship. To help others’ open education projects, we share some lessons we encountered:

• This type of community engagement requires specific and explicit guidelines and benchmarks for quality. Like any book development, this Open Textbook required a general editor to orchestrate community contributions, manage expectations, and enforce quality guidelines and benchmarks. 
• Standardized workflows are necessary.  It was most efficient to load content, then follow up with graphic and interactive resources, rather than focus on those specifics first. We tested an AI Smart Import tool that creates H5P interactive resources in seconds, in order to save up to 50% development time.  
• Community adoption of a tech tool (the H5P editor in our case) requires flexibility to adapt to the tool for mastery. We had a lot of discussions about what H5P could and could not achieve. For better results, postpone specific expectations and work on what is editor enabled.

What’s next? The next step is to complete the 11th grade Open Textbook development and publish it, pending funding.  We also await an AI tool for Spanish support to speed up production.

Popularization of OER in Ukraine: Small steps to a big goal

Update from Tetiana Kolesnykova: Polytechnic University of Milan and the Ukrainian State University of Science and Technologies (USUST) partnered to translate and localize a MOOC on OER: “Using Open Educational Resources in Teaching.” This OER provides equitable and inclusive access to education amidst full-scale war in Ukraine. Despite the war, the project achieved its aim: there is now a version of the MOOC for Ukrainian learners. Our lessons from this work included: listening to each other, negotiating where needed, and compromise. We were not looking for perfection but for a good result to be achieved within all limitations. With teamwork and strong motivation, we solved the challenges of the project together; and the end result exceeded our expectations. As a result: All MOOC subtitles for each video, the course description and all tests were made available in Ukrainian, ensuring participants gain a better understanding and support with the final assessment. We also created eight additional instructions and illustrations in Ukrainian. We developed a mock-up of the Certificate of Completion of the course “Using Open Educational Resources in Teaching” adapted into Ukrainian. Several faculty and librarians tested the MOOC in Ukrainian.

We started promoting the Ukrainian localisation of the MOOC “Using Open Educational Resources in Teaching” in October. Politecnico di Milano (METID) and the Scientific Library of the Ukrainian State University of Science and Technologies (USUST) presented our collaborative project at international conferences, national webinars, publications, and on the website of the USUST Scientific Library.

While it is too early to measure the success of the Ukrainian MOOC “Using Open Educational Resources in Teaching,” we know it is already raising awareness of OER opportunities among the wider Ukrainian academic community. 

What’s next?  We will continue our teamwork, and ignite new OER adaptations in a sustainable way.

STEAM Ahead with OER in South Africa project

Update from Dan McGuire: This collaborative project between Ghana, South Africa and the US created, curated, and sourced OER content aligned to Ghanaian and South African education standards.  

Our colleague, Peter Amoabil observed that using the MoodleBox and OER materials provided learning opportunities for students without the need to rely on the internet, which is very useful in Ghana where over 95% of schools don’t have internet access. Students were able to use the digital content for all subjects and especially for reading in their mother tongue, Dagbani. Reading materials in Dagbani have previously been very hard to acquire.

In South Africa, we were able to translate both reading materials and math assessments from English into isiXhosa for students in grades Pre-K through 1st grade. Students were excited to learn using WIFI devices.

What’s next? Translating educational materials into the students’ mother tongue is especially valuable and innovative. We plan to expand the professional development for use of digital OER materials aligned to national standards to more teachers in both Ghana and South Africa. This project helped us establish a process to create and deliver learning materials to Pre-K — 6th grade students. We will also be making the OER professional development courses and instructional content available via open repositories.

Climate Change: OER integrating SDG components in Education in two Southeast Asian Countries

Update from Dr. Suma Parahakaran: This project worked with the Malaysian Ministry of Education as well as Malaysian and Laotian schools, creating OER and experiential learning activities. Primary and Secondary school students engaged in cross disciplinary, technical, and integrated learning activities, such as setting up solar panels on rooftops. They got to attend workshops and brainstorms with international experts and teachers. Students also created videos, brochures and other resources focused on ethics, climate change and sustainable development education. Finally, students then entered a competition related to Climate Change and Sustainable Development OER. For more information and results of the competition, view the project website. 

What’s next? While there are private Youtube links to the videos, they will be made public soon. Project lead: Dr. Suma Parahakaran

Alquimetricos

Update from Fernando Daguanno: Alquimétricos is an OER project that uses connectors and sticks to build geometric structures for STEAM education. Through experiential learning, the project develops students’ spatial, mathematical and kinetic understanding. The Alquimétricos Kit Zero is already published online and available to purchase: see our repositories for ready-to-print and fully editable CC BY files, including content, packaging and labeling. 

During 2023 we developed a new product line of elementary-school-oriented kits, drawing from eight years of experiences and research. The kits include a deck of cards with guidelines, a bunch of hubs and sticks that help educators make Alquimétricos’ activities dynamic in the classroom. The new kit was developed and introduced as part of the (FADU-UBA) DiJu post degree “Toys and Games Design” course 2023. It was launched in Argentina at the Open Education Meeting in Bariloche – Argentinian Patagonia, presented at the OpenEd Conference 2023 and displayed at the CC Global Summit in Mexico City.

What’s next? Next steps include translation to Portuguese and English and sharing the project in global OER repositories. We will seek support proofreading and sharking Kit Zero in a community call in early 2024. 

Global Commons: Unlocking Open Education with Creative Commons

Update from Lisa Di Valentino and John Okewole: This project developed a short animated video describing Creative Commons and how CC licenses support the implementation of the United Nations Recommendation on OER. We currently have a first version of the video created by Brainboxx Studios for which we will re-record the English narration. We have also solicited translations of the transcript from other subgroup members in the nine other UNESCO languages, and have offers for translation in Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Italian (of which we now have a draft), and Spanish. 

What’s next? We will finalize the English video and determine how to translate the video text.  We will also design handouts in the various languages explaining the benefits of using Creative Commons licensing for open educational resources.

CC Open Education Lightning Talks

Lightning Talks are seven-minute presentations on a given area of expertise or work. Based on community demand, CC hosted Open Education Lighting Talks online in February and in-person, at the CC Summit in October. Community members’  presentations ranged from explorations of OER for social justice to practical applications, such as using machine translation algorithms for OER translation and recommendations for digital publishing. CC also presented a forthcoming microcredential course on which we are partnering with the University of Nebraska Omaha, in effort to bring more open licensing expertise to new audiences. 

What’s next? We look forward to learning more from the open education community in future CC Open Education Lightning Talks!

Creative Commons extends our gratitude to the inspiring CC community members making a difference in their educational contexts. We look forward to continued open education collaborations in 2024! If you would like to join our Open Education community, visit the CC Open Education Platform site for more information.

The post CC Open Education Platform Activities: 2023 in Review appeared first on Creative Commons.

This December, Creative Commons led a CC Certificate Bootcamp, or condensed Certificate training, for faculty and staff from 16 different California Community Colleges implementing Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) degree programs. This marked the second CC Bootcamp for California Community Colleges after the California legislature invested $115 million to expand ZTC degrees and the use of open educational resources (OER) within the statewide California community college system. ZTC degrees and increased use of OER reduce the overall cost of education and shorten the time to degree completion for students. With the average cost of course textbooks estimated at $100/student/course, ZTC degrees are crucial for students’ higher education. Further, students’ grades achieved in ZTC programs are higher than in traditional courses.

The CC Certificate program provides training and tools for ZTC program faculty and staff to legally and effectively implement the open licensing requirements of California’s historic investment in education. After learning about copyright basics, fair use, the public domain, and CC licensing, participants brainstormed and initiated some great ways to support ZTC program faculty and student needs. Examples of participant work include using generative AI to create “Creative Commons Bots,” tools to help others learn about licensing, and test their own knowledge with quiz questions; creating a grants guide for OER funding; drafting a potential strategic plan for OER/ ZTC work (work in progress), and remixing previous courses or resources to address ZTC communications and learning needs for localized audiences (works in progress). See what participants are saying below.

“This is one of the best professional development experiences I’ve had in years”

“Thank you so much for sharing wonderful resources and CC practices. I will share this knowledge with my colleagues”

“You’ve nailed the condensed week workshop. So much fun, and creating work groups was really beneficial”

We are proud to support California Community Colleges’ collaboration as they strengthen their foundations for open education. CC is grateful to the Michelson 20MM Foundation for generously funding this bootcamp at San Bernardino Valley College. Special thanks also go to the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges for their liaison work, expertise and support, to San Bernardino Valley College for hosting the event, and to Fresno Pacific University for providing professional development credits to faculty.

If you’re interested in advancing open education efforts in your own institution, Creative Commons offers an array of learning, training, and consulting opportunities to support our global community in developing open licensing expertise and a deeper understanding of recommended practices for better sharing. Visit the CC Training & Consulting page to learn more about our training services, workshops, lectures, and CC Certificate courses. Register for our next CC Certificate online courses, starting 29 January.

The post More California Community Colleges Get CC Certified! appeared first on Creative Commons.

As we end 2023, we want to showcase the incredible work of CC community members to translate the CC Certificate content. Thanks to 21 volunteers this year and numerous volunteers in the past, the reading content of our CC Certificate training is now available in 10 languages. This makes our fundamental open licensing and open advocacy training more accessible to over one billion people in their native languages. 

The CC Certificate program offers in-depth courses about copyright, CC licenses, open practices and the ethos of our global, shared commons. CC Certificate courses target (1) Academic Librarians, (2) Educators and (3) Open Culture advocates, but are open to everyone. Learn more about the CC Certificate and other professional learning opportunities, then register for a Certificate course today. If you are a CC Certificate graduate and would like to translate course content in 2024, please contact certificate administrators on the alumni listserv. 

Slovak

The Slovak Centre of Scientific and Technical Information contacted CC in 2022, noting the need for CC Certificate content in Slovak. Thanks to Gabriela Fišová, Judita Takačová, Jakub Klech, and Barbora Bieliková, who translated content earlier this year, the Centre now has a complete translation. 

Download the Slovak translation files, view them on the CC Certificate translations webpage, or on Zenodo. 

Bengali

Bangladesh Open University (BOU) faculty, Sadia Afroze Sultana and Mostafa Azad Kamal, translated the CC Certificate content to make open licensing training more accessible to the 184+ million Bengali-speakers worldwide. Sadia is a CC Certificate alumna and facilitator; Mostafa is the CC Bangladesh Chapter Representative and also a CC Certificate alumnus. CC thanks Mostafa and Sadia; CC also thanks BOU faculty Asma Akter Shelly and Ananya Laboni, and graduate students Aminul Islam Rana and Mir Khadija Tahera for reading the translated copies and providing feedback. 

Download the Bengali translation files, or view them on the CC Certificate translations webpage.

French 2.0

Building on last year’s French Translation, a community of volunteers from seven countries embarked on a two-week French translation 2.0 sprint, to increase the accessibility of the French translation for different francophone audiences. Nicolas Simon, a CC community member who provided the original French translation supported the sprint, and reviewed the final draft. Adou Jean-Constant Atta, Aman Ado, Emmanuelle Guebo Kakou, Fawaz Tairou, Karen Ferreira-Meyers, Kamel Belhamel, Nyirahabihirwe Clementine, Touré Kahou, Namon Moussa Traore, and Yao Hippolyte Bondouho added local contextual considerations such as recommended links. 

Download the French translation files, or view them on the CC Certificate translations webpage.

With these translations, the CC Certificate reading content is accessible in 10 languages: Arabic, Bengali, Burmese, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Slovak, Turkish, and Yoruba. The latest translations make our open licensing training more accessible than ever before and we thank open community members for making that possible. 

The post CC Certificate Translations in Slovak, Bengali, and localized French appeared first on Creative Commons.

Crossposted with permission from The Michelson 20MM Foundation 23 Aug 2023 blog post.

“Open Educational Resources 2023 Spark Grantees” used with permission from The Michelson 20MM Foundation.

Creative Commons licenses enable much of the open content across the arts, sciences, and academia, including open educational resources (OER). Creative Commons (CC) offers CC Certificate courses, or training on CC licensing and open tools, which have become a key tool for open communities around the world. Currently, 1,459 people from 65 countries have been  Creative Commons (CC) Certified, having taken and passed one of the CC Certificate courses. Given Governor Gavin Newsom’s historic investment in California Community Colleges’ (CCCs) Zero-Textbook-Cost (ZTC) degree programs, it is critical to ensure faculty, students, and staff have the capacity they need to create, use, and share the open resources supported by this funding. For this reason, The Michelson 20MM Foundation is elated to award a 2023 OER Spark Grant to Creative Commons.

“Creative Commons likes to say we put the open in open educational resources,” Jennryn Wetzler, Creative Commons Director of Learning and Training shared. “We have six different licenses and two public domain tools that enable creators to legally share their copyrighted content much more flexibly than traditional, ‘all rights reserved’ copyright. They’re applied to over 2.5 billion works online and enable sharing, enable adaptation, and remix — and so much innovation and learning.”

The Creative Commons Bootcamp is a proven model in California and beyond. CC has found that just one CC graduate on a campus can have a ripple effect — increasing open education awareness, acceptance, and use within their community. In January, Creative Commons, in partnership with the CCC Academic Senate’s OER Initiative, helped 12 individuals from the CCC system receive their CC Certification through a Michelson Spark Grant. Less than eight months later, the 12 graduates have hosted OER tutorials, planned OER conferences, developed LibreTexts training for faculty, and mapped ZTC conversions courses — further exemplifying the value of having a CC Certified individual on campus.

Building upon the success of the Bay Area Bootcamp, and acutely aware of the importance of an impactful ZTC funding implementation throughout the CCC system, CC is partnering with the CCC Academic Senate’s OER Initiative again to host a Bootcamp for 25 Southern California CCC faculty. Not only does the expanded training further the goal of bringing more CC Certified experts to the 116 CCCs, but also it provides key stakeholders within the CCC system the opportunity to be connected with OER and ZTC experts throughout the world, providing support as the newly CC Certified individuals work on creating, adopting, and maintaining ZTC programs on their campuses.

True to the nature of open access, CC Certificate courses are openly licensed, which enables graduates to not only reuse, but also remix the material within their institutions if other faculty and staff members are interested. This means that the investment in individuals from 25 community colleges has the potential to impact at least 22% of the CCC system.

As OER gains momentum throughout the state and nation, CC anticipates that the Bootcamp will fill up quickly. In order to ensure it has the intended impact, CC and the CCC Academic Senate will share registration information; they will focus on priority registration, but also establish a wait-list to maximize the number of CCC campuses involved. It will be exciting to see how the 25 campuses leverage the training and inspire other CCCs to embrace OER.

“OER lets students have access to the materials they need to succeed free of cost, largely due to open copyright and Creative Commons licenses,” Cailyn Nagle, OER Program Manager stated. “Creative Commons has been an invaluable resource to the state — and beyond — and we are thrilled to extend CC Bootcamp participation to an additional 25 California Community Colleges.”

Register now to earn a CC Certificate in 2023 or learn more about the CC Certificate Program.

The post How CC Will Advance Open Licensing Understanding Within 25 California Community Colleges appeared first on Creative Commons.

This post was prepared collaboratively by Jennryn Wetzler, Werner Westermann, Lisa Di Valentino, Dr. Suma Parahakaran, Tetiana Kolesnykova, Paola Corti, Dan McGuire, and Fernando Daguanno.

“Abstract Backgrounds” by NichoDesign is licensed via CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

In February and March, the CC Open Education Platform community voted on five winning ideas to advance open education globally. Five project teams, spanning Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ghana, Italy, Malaysia, Ukraine, South Africa, and the USA have received CC Open Education funds. The CC Open Education Platform also funded ongoing global community work supporting the UNESCO Recommendation on OER. We are delighted to share updates about the projects now underway.

CC lauds all of the open education community efforts, and we look forward to sharing additional highlights at the end of this year.

Title: Building a K-12 Interactive Open Textbook

Contact: Werner Westermann
Location: Chile

“Educación Ciudadana” by Werner Westermann is licensed via CC BY 4.0, except where otherwise noted.

Summary: The Building a K-12 Interactive Open Textbook project works with community members to support the development of a K-12 Open Textbook in the subject of Civics and Citizenship subject for 11th and 12th Grade, aligned to the official K-12 curriculum of Chile. Thus far, the project has gathered a core team focusing on content selection, H5P deployment, and graphic design. The core team has discussed: curricular alignment and structuring learning chapters; textual content creation and reuse; graphical content selection using Wikimedia Commons; creating learning chapters and reusing previous developments, using Interactive Book H5P tool. The team has H5P packages and trials hosted in Pressbooks, thanks to support of REBUS Foundation.

Title: Climate Change: OER integrating SDG components in Education in two Southeast Asian Countries

Contact: Dr. Suma Parahakaran
Location: Malaysia and Laos PDR

Summary: This project supports OER for Climate Change and the sustainable development goals (SDGs); it focuses on OER creation through experiential activities in schools. Where Malaysia’s Global Environment Center (GEC) focused on climate change and water resources education, Laotian Sri Sathya Sai Institution focused on climate change work, installing solar lights and solar-generated electricity to reduce a primary and secondary school’s carbon footprint and energy costs. The project has also created a greenspace within the Laotian school for students and staff to engage in outdoor learning and gardening.

The project will be compiling OER content from both education centers, and displaying videos, activities and other media outputs on the project website. Next steps include hosting a competition for Climate Change and network building for collaboration.

Title: “Popularization of OER in Ukraine: Small steps to a big goal”

Contact: Tetiana Kolesnykova
Locations: Ukraine and Italy

Image from Using Open Educational Resources in Teaching by Politecnico di Milano – METID is licensed via CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Summary: Polytechnic University of Milan has partnered with the Ukrainian State University of Science and Technologies (USUST) to translate and localize a MOOC on OER. The Polytechnic University’s learning innovation unit (METID) developed and shared a MOOC, “Using Open Educational Resources in Teaching” to meet the needs of Ukrainian teachers and academic library professionals. This partnership overcomes language barriers and ensures equitable and inclusive access to education in times of a full-scale war.

After METID and USUST agreed on a process and the necessary parameters to ensure the project would be sustainable for both partners, they adapted subtitles, infographics, the course description and summative weekly quizzes. USUST also created a bilingual version of the quizzes, which helps students in obtaining the MOOC’s final Certificate of Completion. Next steps include: creating instructions in Ukrainian; debugging video subtitles; verifying the MOOC content; and testing the process with teachers and librarians. USUST will also develop a mock-up of the Certificate of Completion of the course “Using Open Educational Resources in Teaching” released by Polimi Open Knowledge platform adapted into Ukrainian. The certificate will be generated in Ukrainian at the Ukrainian State University of Science and Technologies, indicating the amount of training in ECTS credits.

Title: STEAM Ahead with OER in South Africa project

Contact: Dan McGuire
Locations: Ghana, South Africa, and USA

Screenshot of the website for Rural Literacy Solutions.

Summary: This collaborative project creates, curates, and sources OER content that meets the needs of elementary students and is aligned with Ghanaian Education standards as well as South African standards. The project has a special emphasis on incorporating materials edited and adapted for and translated to the local languages in addition to the use of English language materials. Dan McGruire and colleague, Peter Amoabil, created a video explainer about the Ghanaian portion of the project, which works Amoabil’s nonprofit, Rural Literacy Solutions. There are some great pictures on their website of students reading OER materials in their local language on the server in their classroom that is not connected to the internet via an open source learning management system.

Title: Alquimetricos

Contact: Fernando Daguanno
Locations: Argentina and Brazil

Icon for Alquimétricos.

Summary: Alquimetricos is a STEAM OER project that inspires wonder, using card games, connectors and sticks to build geometric sculptures. Through experiential learning, the project develops students’ spatial, mathematical and kinetic understanding. For this phase of project work, Alquimetricos is developing a STEAM OER collection repository translated to English, Portuguese, and Spanish. The first draft translations will be machine-generated. Alquimetricos will then organize a set of online workshops and collabora-thons to share, revise translations and document the contents and replication process, inviting Creative Commons community members to join.

The project is also developing a card game, which teachers can download and share with their K-12 classes for STEAM education. The digital version will be free, and the printed version will be available for sale. Fernando piloted the project and card games with students and teachers at the International book fair at Comodoro Rivadavia, in Chubut, Argentina, a 10-day learning fair for over 10,000 people.

Next steps include: (1) providing a demo of the card deck at the CC Summit, in Mexico City this October. (2) Alquimetricos will also produce a short video summarizing case studies of its CC BY-licensed educational products being used.

Title: Global Commons: Unlocking Open Education with Creative Commons

Contacts: Lisa Di Valentino, John Okewole
Locations: Nigeria, USA, and global

Summary: This project is developing a short animated video describing Creative Commons and how it would accommodate the implementation of the UN recommendations for OER. The video will have narrations in different languages, potentially including: English, French, Spanish, Hindi, Mandarin could be the initial ones that would hopefully be ready by the end of the year. Team members are also developing 2-3 one-page graphic handouts explaining Creative Commons licenses, and the CC organization, also in different languages. Handouts will be shipped to CC Open Education Platform community members engaging in communications around the UNESCO Recommendation for OER.

The post CC Open Education Platform Activities 2023 appeared first on Creative Commons.