Richard Baraniuk Rice University Connexions Update and Progress September 2010
Connexions (1/2) Next-generation open access creation/collaboration/publishing/learning platform Textbook/course = connected collection of Legos Current stats: –17000 Legos, 1000 texts, 2 million users/month Large scale collaborators –Community college open textbook project (Hewlett) –Siyavula: complete K-12 curriculum for South Africa (Mark Shuttleworth) –CA Free Textbook Initiative –IEEE: peer review of engineering content –Wolfram/Mathematica + NI/LabVIEW: interactive simulations
Connexions (2/2) Latest tech news:iPad/iPhone/Andrdoid support via ePub format (iBooks, etc.) Connexions sister project launched Summer 2010: “Learning Machines” –Goal: exploit latest results in machine learning technology and cognitive science to build a textbook that learns who is reading and customizes itself to their goals, background, level, etc. –Fall 2010: launching pilot in engineering with Rice, Georgia Tech, UTEP, Rose-Hulman, TI, NI, Pearson, and others (funded thru NSF CI Team Program, PI: R. Baraniuk) –Spring 2010: launching pilot in K-12 with major charter school organization in Texas
55 faculty adoptions across USA in customized versions in CNX Approved by California Free Digital Textbook Initiative (met 19/19 standards) free online: 2 million uses to date iPad/iPhone/Android via ePub $26.31 in print (627 pages)
Additional Details
today’s education pipeline authoring editing peer review publishing distribution lecturing testing graduating accrediting
open education ecosystem feedback lecturing testing graduating accrediting distribution publishing peer review editing authoring
Connexions – primordial state
textbook / course
personalized textbooks
Connexions (cnx.org) usage per month: 1.7 million unique users 77 million hits from 190 countries non-profit open education platform founded 11 years ago 1000 open textbooks/courses Lego modules from contributors worldwide in many languages free on-line low-cost print funding HF, NSF, OSI, …
Community College Open Textbook Project 100+ CC’s in USA and Canada developing a suite of free open textbooks (CNX Collab Stat in use at 31 colleges across USA) Government of Vietnam developing new curriculum at 40 universities Siyavula / Shuttleworth Foundation complete K-12 curriculum for South Africa IEEE quality review of open materials some Connexions partners
unexpected consequences Catherine Schmidt-Jones private music teacher, USA music theory textbooks Sunil Kumar Singh engineer and parent, India physics textbook
unexpected consequences Catherine Schmidt-Jones private music teacher, USA music theory textbooks 15 million uses to date Sunil Kumar Singh engineer and parent, India physics textbook 4 million uses to date
outreach
inreach
CNX quality control
quality control must be scalable peer review exclusive community inclusive
lenses social software for quality control inspiration:
lenses social software for quality control inspiration: IEEEcnx.org
lenses social software for quality control inspiration: cnx.org/lenses/ johnDoe rice.edu/cnx IEEEcnx.org
cnx.org/lenses coming in Fall 2010:
CNX interactivity
interactivity see do
interactivity see do
semantic / active content Mathematics Markup Language (MathML)
CNX platform
Rhaptos Connexions’ platform Open source, open standards Plone + numerous other tools Internationalization in planning stage (OSI) Enterprise Rhaptos just released; can install locally