This time the Monthly Insight to Interoperability talks about interoperability aspect related to "open content". As usual, it is all about making content available for sharing and reusing. Possibly in "open content" issues related to the quality, multilinguality and licensing of the content become even more prominent.

As the editor of the Monthly Insight to Interoperability was herself attending the workshop, the Policy editor Anja Balanskat will conduct the interview this time.

Anja Balanskat: In your last Insight Special Report you talked about the use of open source software in European schools. What is "open content" and does it have anything to do with open source software and development?

Riina Vuorikari: The term itself has not been well defined, so many things fall under the term open content or open source content, depending who is talking. Basically, the idea is that it follows the development methods of open source community way of working and that it is made available for all to reuse, to modify and to distribute, just as is open source software. This is usually guaranteed under the use of some recognised licences.

Anja: I guess that you mean that anyone could use any educational content that is defined under "open content". But how do you make sure that people know which piece of resource is open content and which one is "closed" content by a publisher who wants to sell it for a school or an individual?

Riina: The fact that the content is "open" could also be expressed in licenses. Traditionally, the creation of learning content by teachers falls under the copyright, but this is not always enough in this context because a developer of an open content learning material might want to express some more restrictions.
That is why something like Creative Commons License could be used to express the terms of reuse e.g. whether the original source has to be acknowledged, whether the resource can be modified, whether any commercial re-use can take place, and whether any derivative work is allowed.

Another example is the approach taken by Finland where an expert group commissioned by the Ministry of Education drafted four different license models for web-based learning resources that are created by teachers, staff members and third party suppliers. The goal was to make clear the terms of use and re-use as well as ownership of resources. The work was co-ordinated by and is now disseminated by the Ministry of Education in Finland.

Anja: A licence can tell me that I can reuse a piece of content that I have found. What if I want to use it in another lingual context, don't you think that might be problematic?

Riina: One of the success factors of open source software is exactly the fact that you can adapt it in any language context that you want. Just imagine the multiple language versions of Linux or OpenOffice.org that exist! The trick is that the multilinguality has already been foreseen in the development phase and translating of the application has been made rather easy, in many cases just by translating some text files.

The same should be applied for the development of the "open" digital content. If translation and also other localisation needs were taken into account at the design and development stage of the content, such as separation of the content and its presentation, the translation would become easier. Also other things could be envisaged to help to facilitate the localisation efforts at the design phase, it would be essential to develop a good set of guidelines.

Anja: How do you envisage the sharability and searchability of open content resources taking place?

Riina: In the same way that we share any other content, by the use of metadata and resources' networks. There has been a lot work carried out in this by European Schoolnet (European Learning Resources-network and Celebrate), but also a great number of other international players at any educational sector, just take Ariadne or Edna from Australia as an example.

What should be explored for open content is whether any of the existing application profiles is good enough to express the needs of the community or should an "open content" application profile be created. In my opinion, it should be important that, apart from the licensing, the quality of the content could be expressed, too.

Anja: It is interesting that you mention the quality of learning resources, I was also wondering how could a teacher trust in an open content resource? Is there any guarantee of the quality?

Riina: This is a crucial aspect and not to neglect. It should be envisaged that the developer of the content is responsible for the quality, too, as otherwise inspecting it becomes very time-consuming. The quality approach that the producer of the content follows could also be expressed in the form of metadata.

For the European Treasury Browser-network we developed a metadata field that could express the origin of the quality approached applied for each piece of learning resources. The important part that allows transparency for the end-users is that this quality assessment should be made available on the Internet for users to inspect.

Say, I find some content that I want to use, and by following the link in the metadata I could go to a website that explains who is responsible for making this piece, whether is it a Ministry of Education or a group of teachers. This should already give indication for a user whether they value the source trustworthy or not. Note that here the responsibility is given back to the user, nobody else can choose for them.

Also, I think that one could use the European Quality Observatory (EQO) for expressing the different quality approaches, after all that is the common place to describe the quality of eLearning services.

Anja: It seems to me that many of the things we've been working here in European Schoolnet could be applicable for open content. Do you think that this could be something interesting for our Ministries of Education and National Educational authorities?

Riina: I think this should be very interesting for them, as this kind of setting could provided a win-win situation for many interested actors. For example in the latest Celebrate interview round, our national educational authorities in Europe expressed that they have become very active in the field of digital learning resources, especially Learning Objects (LOs) have attracted a lot of their attention.

Many of them also communicated that LOs are increasingly seen as an important, and in some cases a key, component in the content development strategies. Furthermore, many Ministries are interested in open source content development strategies where "Learning Object economy" is for open source and commercial content to co-exist. Of course, there are issues related to creating material that complies with the national curriculum, but there are plenty of areas that are common in Europe, too.

Anja: Provided that the issues dealing with multilinguality, national curricula, quality and so on was part of the agenda, how do you envisage Ministries and National Educational Authorities working in an open source way?

Riina: I know that many people think that open source is some work that only goofy hackers do and there is no control over what will be done and what not, but that is really not the case. For example many big companies like IBM and SUN Microsystems have invested millions in different applications developed in the open source way. It is very viable for commercialisation.

Pooling resources on the national, European and international level would be reasonable for a variety of interest groups. A model for collaboration could follow the model of "community sourcing" that comprises many of the principles of open source development efforts, but relays more explicitly on defined roles, responsibilities, and funded commitments by community members than some open source development models.

Anja: Is there any ways to work on this?

Riina: On the web one can find "open content" in many different contexts, for example the Wokipedia seems to be a good source of information.

As for European Schoolnet, this is something that will fall under the LIFE initiative, eLearning Interoperability Framework for Europe, where we talk about the use of open standards a lot.

As for the continuation of the workshop in Italy, I've been acknowledged that the AICA is interested in following this up maybe in terms of an annual conference. Also, United Nations has shown considerable interest in bringing this up in some ways in the next World Summit on Information Society in Tunisia.

Anja: Thank you. Will you stay at disposal for questions?

Riina: Of course, I'm available by mail, as usual.

Information about the AICA workshop on Open Content:
http://linfe.it/UserMode/authors/opencontents-may2004/programme

The paper of Riina Vuorikari: Methods for Sharing Open Source Content:
The School Network's Perspectives
http://www.eun.org/insight-pdf/open_content_vuorikari.pdf

ICA, Associazione Italiana per l'Informatica ed il Calcolo Automatico:
http://www.aicanet.it/

European Learning Resources (ELR):
http://resources.eun.org

Documentation available about ELR, previously known as European Treasury Browser,
http://etb.eun.org

CELEBRATE- brokerage system Documentation available
http://celebrate.eun.org/docs

The Creative Commons Liceces
http://www.creativecommons.org/

License models for web-based learning resources by the Ministry of Education in Finland:
http://www.minedu.fi/opm/hankkeet/koul_ja_tutk_tietostrategia/10verkko_opetus/sopimusmallit.html

More about Community Sourcing way of working:
http://www.sakaiproject.org/

Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_content

The Quality Selection Policy:
http://www.eun.org/goto.cfm?did=9602

An example about the Quality Selection Policy-metadata:

Quality Statement, its origin and URL
Internet Safety Statement and its URL
the responsible body for creating the quality policy
the responsible body for the actual selection and inclusion of resources
the review of hyperlink
the human review the content