Connexions
Encyclopedia
Connexions is a global repository of educational content provided by Rice University
. The entire collection is available free of charge, and students and learners alike can explore all the content they desire.
Connexions was one of the first initiatives, pioneering, along with other projects such as MIT OpenCourseWare
and the Public Library of Science
, the idea of open educational resources
— that scholarly and educational content can and should be shared, re-used and recombined, interconnected and continually enriched.
Connexions popular material is translated into many languages, aided by the open-content licensing.
Attribution License (presently, version 3.0). Under this license, the author retains the right to be credited (attributed) wherever the content is reused. The author grants others the right to copy, distribute, and display the work, and to derive works based on it, as long as the author is credited.
. That support has been substantially supplemented by grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
.
Rice University
William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University or Rice, is a private research university located on a heavily wooded campus in Houston, Texas, United States...
. The entire collection is available free of charge, and students and learners alike can explore all the content they desire.
Connexions was one of the first initiatives, pioneering, along with other projects such as MIT OpenCourseWare
MIT OpenCourseWare
MIT OpenCourseWare is an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to put all of the educational materials from its undergraduate- and graduate-level courses online, partly free and openly available to anyone, anywhere. MIT OpenCourseWare is a large-scale, web-based publication of...
and the Public Library of Science
Public Library of Science
The Public Library of Science is a nonprofit open-access scientific publishing project aimed at creating a library of open access journals and other scientific literature under an open content license...
, the idea of open educational resources
Open educational resources
Open educational resources are digital materials that can be re-used for teaching, learning, research and more, made available for free through open licenses, which allow uses of the materials that would not be easily permitted under copyright alone...
— that scholarly and educational content can and should be shared, re-used and recombined, interconnected and continually enriched.
Subject matter
Connexions contains educational materials at all levels — from children to college students to professionals — organized in small modules that can be connected into larger courses. Material is authored by people from all walks of life. Much content is created by university professors, but the collection also contains very popular music content created by a part-time music teacher.Connexions popular material is translated into many languages, aided by the open-content licensing.
Copyright
To ensure the legal reusability of content, Connexions requires authors to license materials they publish under the Creative CommonsCreative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
Attribution License (presently, version 3.0). Under this license, the author retains the right to be credited (attributed) wherever the content is reused. The author grants others the right to copy, distribute, and display the work, and to derive works based on it, as long as the author is credited.
Comparison to other open education projects
- First, in scale: Connexions has content from all over the world in a growing variety of languages, not just materials from one specific school or university. It also collects materials to support education in K-12, community college, university, continuing education, and industrial training settings.
- Second, by the way communities are supported: Connexions is globally accessible to anyone to not only read and use the materials, but also take them, customize them, and contribute them back to the repository or not.
- Third, in the way it is organized: Connexions is grassroots organized from the bottom up rather than from the top down like many other open education projects. Everyone is free to join and take on a leadership role.
Technical details
Three key factors enable the collaborative environment in Connexions:- Copyright licenses that preserve attribution but permit sharing: Creative CommonsCreative CommonsCreative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
"attribution" licenses - Semantic markup of documents using XMLXMLExtensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
(extensible markup language) so they can be searched for and combined. The markup language used is called “CNXML”. - Workspaces that facilitate collaboration by providing shared space, the ability to version materials and derive content from existing modules.
Funding
The Connexions project was started in 1999 and initially supported by individuals and Rice UniversityRice University
William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University or Rice, is a private research university located on a heavily wooded campus in Houston, Texas, United States...
. That support has been substantially supplemented by grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation is a private foundation, established by Hewlett-Packard cofounder William Reddington Hewlett and his wife Flora Lamson Hewlett in 1967. The Hewlett Foundation awards grants to support educational and cultural institutions and to advance certain social and...
.
See also
- Creative CommonsCreative CommonsCreative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
, the organization that created the licenses used by Connexions - Open educational resourcesOpen educational resourcesOpen educational resources are digital materials that can be re-used for teaching, learning, research and more, made available for free through open licenses, which allow uses of the materials that would not be easily permitted under copyright alone...
, the idea that educational resources can be shared in general through copyleftCopyleftCopyleft is a play on the word copyright to describe the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work...
or other free culture movementFree Culture movementThe free culture movement is a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify creative works in the form of free content by using the Internet and other forms of media....
licenses - MIT OpenCourseWareMIT OpenCourseWareMIT OpenCourseWare is an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to put all of the educational materials from its undergraduate- and graduate-level courses online, partly free and openly available to anyone, anywhere. MIT OpenCourseWare is a large-scale, web-based publication of...
, a similar initiative by MIT - Rice University PressRice University PressThe Rice University Press was a publishing house, a division of Rice University.Relaunched in 2006 after a ten-year hiatus, the press was noted for its unique all-digital platform. Rice's digital press operated just as a traditional press, up to a point. Manuscripts were solicited, reviewed, edited...
, Rice's all-digital platform based on the Connexions technology - WikiversityWikiversityWikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project, which supports learning communities, their learning materials, and resulting activities. It differs from more structured projects such as Wikipedia in that it instead offers a series of tutorials, or courses, for the fostering of learning, rather than...
, a Wikimedia Foundation project, devoted to learning materials and activities
External links
- Connexions homepage, cnx.org
- TED Talk dated 2006-02 Founder Richard Baraniuk discussing Connexions