connexions
The Connexions Project
Sharing Knowledge, Building Communities
Geneva Henry
Rice University
UNESCO Second Global Forum on International Quality Assurance,
Accreditation and the Recognition of Qualifications in Higher Education
Widening access to quality Open Educational Resources (OER)
28 - 29 June 2004
Paris, France
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Connexions Goal
“Provide and maintain a commons where
individuals and communities worldwide can
create and freely share knowledge”
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Background of Connexions
• Need to make updated, quality materials
available to students that shows how concepts
relate to each other
• Remove barriers to publication so information
is more readily exchanged and updated
• Make information reusable so it can be used
and modified to meet the needs of its users
• Turn traditional peer review into peer
collaboration in creating the quality materials
• Let anyone participate
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Connexions Objectives
1. Provide a content commons of free,
interconnected educational materials
2. Facilitate access to the commons and
foster its growth
3. Facilitate content reuse
4. Foster community participation in
the commons
5. Ensure sustainability of this resource
into the future
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Connexions Approach
• Modularity
• Interconnectedness
• Open licensing
• Collaboration
• Open participation
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Connexions
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Conceptual Model: Components
repository
modules
courses
editing
environment
modules
courses
viewing and
navigation
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Content Types
• Module
– Single topic building block
– Standalone, but cross-linked
• Course
– Sequence of modules
– Customizations
repository
modules
courses
editing
environment
modules
courses
viewing and
navigation
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Editing Environment
• Workspaces (private and group)
• Collaboration
• Create and manage content
repository
modules
courses
editing
editing
environment
environment
modules
courses
viewing and
navigation
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Repository
• Storage
• Version Control
• Access
repository
repository
• Search
modules
courses
editing
environment
modules
courses
viewing and
navigation
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Viewing
• Single modules
– Multiple formats
• Courses
– Persistent navigation
– Module customization
repository
modules
courses
editing
environment
modules
courses
viewing
viewing and
and
navigation
navigation
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Key Technologies
• All software is Open Source
– Work with existing OS software (e.g. Zope, Plone,
PostgreSQL, Annotea)
– Connexions software to be released in Summer 2004
• XML markup of content to preserve semantics
• Commons modules available to popular search engines
to improve visibility of content
• Tools to support course assembly, annotations, and
navigation of courses without getting lost
• Open licenses using Creative Commons attribution
license
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Open Content Licensing
• Current IP policies discourage sharing
• Creative Commons licenses provide common
legal vocabulary for sharing content
• Sharing and (re)use requires that IP be
integrated into content
• Publisher collaborators
– Kinko’s, Cambridge University Press
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Connexions Ethos
• There are still many things licenses do not
govern. They are different for every group of
academics.
• Our philosophy:
• Licenses should enable not restrict
• Everything else should be guided by
existing norms
• Tools should remain maximally flexible but
legally watertight
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Commons and Usage Growth
To date:
1800 modules
38+ courses
Hits:
Q4 2002: 6,000–8,000 a day
Q1 2004: 150,000–250,000 a day
Worldwide authorship:
ECE, CS, bioinformatics, math,
nanotech, physics, statistics,
botany, music, …
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Prototype Communities
• International Community in Digital Signal Processing (DSP)
– Rice, Illinois, Ohio State, Georgia Tech, Michigan, Polytechnic, Cambridge,
École Polytechnique, ENST, ENS Lyon, INRIA (France), EPFL (Switzerland)
– National Instruments and Texas Instruments Japan
– Spontaneous contributions from NTNU (Norway), Univ. Verona (Italy)
• Electrical and Computer Engineering (Rice core curriculum)
– goal: 15+ interlinked courses with prerequisites is >1/3 complete
• Bioinformatics (Rice, Baylor, MD Anderson, University of Houston)
– genetics, statistics, computer science, bioengineering, …
• Botany/Biodiversity (BRIT, AMNH)
• Music appreciation and theory (college and K–12)
• UC Merced
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• Content Commons
– 1800 new modules
– 38+ courses
• User Community
– ~450,000 “users”
– 96% outside Rice University
– 1395 author accounts
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Views by User Address
9.2 million views over six months
Unknown
23%
Colleges and
Universities
32%
Other
1%
Countries
18%
In 2 years, views have
increased from less than
1,000 up to 20,000 per day.
Commercial
26%
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Views from Colleges & Universities
domestic (.edu) and international
32% of total
Top 20 educational institutions
(excluding Rice – 149,000 views)
0
U. of Kentucky
U. of Illinois
Texas A&M
Stanford
Georgia Tech
U. of Michigan
U. of Maryland
Ohio State
Cambridge
Purdue
U.C. Merced
U. of Washington
U. of Texas
U. of Southern California
MIT
Oklahoma State
Penn State
Hokudai U., Japan
U.C. Berkeley
U. of Houston
etc.
5,000
10,000
15,000
20,000
17,387
17,355
4,570
4,157
3,765
3,701
3,614
3,583
3,550
3,191
3,156
2,913
2,785
2,738
2,685
2,506
2,483
domestic
2,465
international
2,380
2,322
Institutions teaching courses through Connexions
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Views from Homes and Businesses
.com and .net addresses, domestic and international
Page views for top 15 commercial sites
26% of total
0
20,000
40,000
60,000
ntli.net (Wales)
74,757
rr.com
57,605
47,584
2iij.net (Japan)
41,082
ukrtel.net (Ukraine)
33,914
cox.net
aol.com
33,013
comcast.net
27,296
pacbell.net
19,377
16,649
verizon.net
swbell.net
attbi.com
mindspring.com
15,511
14,300
13,253
ameritech.net
12,559
domestic
ceinetworks.com
12,508
international
rogers.com (Canada)
etc.
80,000
10,128
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Worldwide Access
from 157 out of 243 assigned country codes
25% of total
Unknown
Australia
27%
Other
30%
Other
Top-Level
Domains
Country
Codes
Japan
2%
Taiwan
10%
Germany
3%
Singapore
3%
France
3%
Italy
4%
Poland
5%
UK
7%
Canada
6%
Next most
prevalent
countries:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Finland
Denmark
Sweden
Japan
United States
Israel
Belgium
Switzerland
Greece
Pakistan
Spain
Mexico
Argentina
etc.
(5,000–15,000
page views each)
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http://cnx.rice.edu
ghenry@rice.edu
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