by Ray Schroeder
This month we are looking at a variety of open source initiatives in online learning that are changing the way in which we develop, share and collaborate.

Values of Community Source Development — Lois Brooks, Syllabus — To help us understand open source in the context of higher education, Lois Brooks lays a groundwork based on the work of some of the best thinkers in the software development world. There are a lot of projects underway in higher education institutions right now that are pushing software into open source. Open source isn't new, of course, and in the 30 years that it has been a viable model for software development, some common practices and values have emerged. The structure and beliefs of the open source community are increasingly present in higher education. In recent years a trend toward community-based projects has emerged, where institutions pool their talent and resources to develop products for use by the education community.

Really Open Source — Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed — Few projects in academe have attracted the attention and praise in recent years of OpenCourseWare, a program in which the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is making all of its course materials available online— free—for anyone to use. In the four years since MIT launched the effort, use of the courseware has skyrocketed, and several other universities have created similar programs, assembling material from their own courses. With less fanfare than MIT, Rice University has also been promoting a model for free, shared information that could be used by faculty members and students anywhere in the world. But the Rice program— Connexions—is different in key respects.

It is assembling material from professors (and high school teachers) from anywhere, it is offering free software tools in addition to course materials, and it is trying to reshape the way academe uses both peer review and publishing. The project also has hopes of becoming a major curricular tool at community colleges.

MERLOT: A Model for User Involvement in Digital Library Design and Implementation — Flora McMartin, Journal of Digital Information — The task of finding online learning materials can be a hugely time-consuming activity. The search alone is arduous, but when added to the need for intensive instructor review of those materials, and that once identified they must also learn how to use the materials effectively for teaching, the task becomes formidable. It is no wonder that the hurdles to the effective use of online learning materials are many (CSHE 2004, Gibbs et al. 2004). Whether the classroom is real or virtual, faculty and instructors seek materials that support their teaching efforts, their pedagogy and student learning goals.

Connexions, continued from cover
In other content projects, the University of California-Merced is developing their Introduction to Biology and College Algebra courses in Connexions. The National Council of Professors of Educational Administration (NCPEA) is developing a Connexions knowledge base in school leadership and administration. They are also developing a community-based peer review process to identify and direct readers to high-quality materials.