Transcript Slide 1
A Platform for Interactive Learning
An Open Educational Resource (OER)
C. Sidney Burrus
The Connexions Project, Rice University
September 26, 2007
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Disruptive Technologies
Disruptive technologies change the world in
two phases:
1. The new technology first does what the old
technology did, only better. Results are
often “Intended Consequences”
2. The new technology then redefines the
problem, asks new questions that were not
possible in the first phase. Where
surprising innovation is observed.
Results often “Unintended Consequences”
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Two Phases of the Web
• Web 1.0: HTML, presentation (looks and
layout), hypertext links, searchable, two
dimensional. Contains shared data and
information. Readable by people.
• Web 2.0: XML, presentation and content,
meta-data, smart hypertext links, smart
searchable, three dimensional. Contains
data, information, and some knowledge!
Readable by people and machines.
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Open Educational Resources
The Open Educational Resource (OER)
movement was inspired by the Open Source
movement in software.
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Open Course Ware “OCW” (MIT)
Connexions “Cnx” (Rice)
Wikipedia (Wikibooks, etc.)
Open Society Institute “OSI” (Soros Foun.)
PLoS, PubMed, EOL, etc.
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What is Connexions?
1. A repository of “chunks” of information
• Modules encoded in XML, one concept, a few
pages, a quantum of information content
2. A set of tools for authoring, maintaining
and using the repository
• Module editor, importer, course or book
composer, repository organizer, Creative
Commons license, tools for printing books
3. A community of people who share
educational interests and information
• Interest groups (authors, instructors,
students), shared workspaces
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Books and On-Line Use with XML
Books from Connexions:
• Personalized, on-demand printing, up-to-date,
inexpensive, collaboratively authored, allows
pre and post publication review, never “out of
print”, “Long tail” publications. One button buy
On-Line use of Connexions:
• Allows modern pedagogy: concept-based,
problem solving-based, discovery-based
learning. Dynamic, interactive, linked, adapts to
learning style, student and author driven, allows
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assessment and evaluation”
Create, Author
stanford
illinois
michigan
wisconsin
berkeley
ohio state
ga tech
utep
rice
cambridge
norway
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italy
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Two References
1. R. G. Baraniuk, C. S. Burrus, Don Johnson,
and D. L. Jones, “Sharing Knowledge and
Building Communities in Signal Processing”,
IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, Sept 2004.
2. Richard G. Baraniuk, “Create, Rip, Mix, and
Burn Educational Material”, video of talk in the
World Flattens session at TED in Monterey,
CA, given Feb, 2006.
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Vietnam opencourseware
MOET
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Author of Music Content
Catherine Schmidt-Jones
600,000+ page views per
month
[December 2005]
many by
US K-12
teachers
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Connexions in Spanish
DSPanish
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Interactive, Dynamic Virtual Lab
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Multimedia
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Global use of Connexions
Possible tool to respond to the
challenges of the present and future
• Training and education of the
workforce for the 21st century.
• Becoming part of an international
community using a global standard
technology in Higher Education. Not
fragmented.
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Global use of Connexions
• Allows progressive teaching techniques at
all levels and in all disciplines.
• Leap-frogs old educational methods and
jumps into the future (the way cell phones
are doing). Connexions is currently being
used in Asia. Allows scaling.
• Produce high quality, accessible educational
content in Spanish, Portuguese, English,
and French for the Western Hemisphere
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Global use of Connexions
• Supports traditional class rooms,
distance education, virtual labs, self
learning, teacher training
• Compatible and integratable with
course manage and assessment
systems: Moodle, Sakai, etc
• Makes education accessible to all. Is
sustainable, is scalable
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Two Global References
1. C. S. Burrus, R. G. Baraniuk, J. P. Frantz, and
C. Holmes, “Connexions: Sharing Knowledge
and Building Communities for Global
Education”, Proceedings of the ASEE
International Colloquium on Engineering
Education, Beijing, China, 2004.
2. Richard G. Baraniuk and C. Sidney Burrus,
Plenary talk, “Connexions in the Americas”,
ASEE Global Colloquium on Engineering
Education: Engineering Education in the
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Americas and Beyond, Rio de Janeiro, 2006.
eXtendable Markup Language
XML can also be thought of as “X” being an
unknown that can be defined:
• mathML
x3 + 7x2 – 2x + 1 = 0
• chemistryML
H 2O
• musicML
(a music score)
• “whatever you are teaching”ML
where the rules of your subject define the
markup language. The language
“understands” your subject!!
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The XMLs use semantic “tags” and meta-data
Selected Partners
Foothill-De Anza
Community College
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Usage
Current State
Repository: 4500 modules, 18,000 revisions,
250 courses or books, 7000 author accounts,
147 countries,
In Sept. 2006: 17M hits, 1.2M pages views,
520K unique users from 157 countries
Globalization
Europe: Germany, Norway, England, etc.
Asia: China, India, Pakistan, Japan, Vietnam,
North Korea(?)
LACCEI: ?? (conversation with Argentina,
Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay started)
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Peer Review
Connexions:
inclusive
open-contribution policy
how to find high quality materials?
what is quality?
who decides?
who is the expert?
Post-review rather than pre-review system
wikipedia, bloggers
poster sessions at a conference
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The Connexions Project was started at Rice
University in 1999, but now is global and
one of the most used OERs worldwide.
An invitation to you and your project
If you are interested in being involved in
Connexions, see http://cnx.org/ or contact:
[email protected]
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