Open Source Connects Courseware at Rice University

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Open Source Connects Courseware at Rice University

6/26/2007

By Linda L Briggs

As the Internet rapidly reshapes how scholarly information is disseminated at colleges and universities, an open-source, open-community initiative at Rice University in Houston may portend the future.

Called Connexions, it's an online environment that encourages the creation and sharing of content on virtually any topic in higher education, organized into modules that can easily be incorporated into a course or used for research or study on a particular topic. The eclectic mix of participating instructors from universities around the world includes universities within the United States, as well as China, Norway, Italy, and Vietnam.

A non-profit project, Connexions' goals include making high-quality educational content available online to all at no cost through the Internet. The project invites authors and educators worldwide to help create textbooks, courses, and learning materials from its global open-access repository.

Connexions was created in 1999 by Rice University Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Richard Baraniuk, who said he always imagined the program eventually reaching across universities, cultures, and languages around the world. By avoiding any barriers to entry and using open-source software and the universal markup language XML, an open standard, Connexions also reaches across common technical and licensing barriers.

The thousands of modules of content on Connexions can be accessed by anyone, within or outside academia. Content contributors to Connexions must step over a somewhat higher hurdle than users by registering and, unlike a non-academic site such as Wikipedia, agreeing to attach their names to their material. Baraniuk said Connexions is also in the process of introducing a method to allow peer reviews of some material, thus introducing a quality filter familiar to academia.

Instructors at Rice--or anywhere--can use Connexions as they choose; some have eliminated course textbook requirements completely and are using Connexions instead. Two required introductory courses in the electrical engineering department at Rice, Baraniuk said, now use Connexions for all course material; students no longer have to purchase a textbook. Others are using material at the site to augment course content.

Reflecting Baraniuk's engineering background, most of the content is still in technical disciplines. Under the science and technology heading, for example, there are more than 2,500 modules currently available and 117 courses. There are just 17 modules so far on business topics, and six courses.

One of his goals is to continue to get more contributors involved, Baraniuk said, both within academia and from outside.

He cited three key differences between Connexions content and that found on public contribution sites such as Wikipedia: no anonymous authors, multiple entries per topic, and a system that will allow content to be "filtered" by professional societies, editorial boards, and publishers. "If users trust those sources," Baraniuk said, "they can jump to content that has been peer-reviewed."