Creative Commons provides educators and the expertise they need to harness Open Educational Resources (OER). We strive to make education more accessible to more people around the world. One way we do this is through our CC Certificate training, which is licensed CC BY 4.0 and available for use. 

Today, we’re delighted to announce our training materials are now available as audio files licensed CC BY 4.0. Thanks to the fantastic work of Jonathan Poritz, we can now offer materials in another format for learners. Jonathan Poritz has been contributing to open education efforts for nearly a decade* and facilitates CC Certificate courses regularly.

To celebrate the recent additions to our open licensed CC Certificate resources, we asked Jonathan a few questions. Our interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

CC: Thank you for your hours of work making the CC Certificate OER available in a new format, and improving the accessibility of our resources. What a gift. Can you tell us about your process for this? 

Poritz: So the process was pretty simple: I just went into my clothes closet and read the whole thing to my laptop.  The clothes closet seems to be the place with the best acoustics in my house.

Editor’s note: Jonathan elaborated in a conversation with CC Certificate participants, noting: “I would go in there, close the door, and record for a while. … when I was too hot…I’d take a break out in the world!”

I’m actually not being facetious here. I work a lot in Open Educational Resources (OER) at my university and in my home state (Colorado, USA).  When I talk to people about making and using OER, one thing I like to emphasize is that only OER gives teachers and learners real agency: because of the open licensing—Creative Commons licensing, which enables OER—a teacher can retain, reuse, redistribute, revise, and remix OER.  In other words, only OER allows for real pedagogical academic freedom, real autonomy, and agency for teachers and learners. 

I think of myself as a “Z-professor,” in that I only use OER in my teaching. The “Z-this” and “Z-that” terminology is used in the OER world to describe things like zero textbook cost degree programs, also called “Z-Degrees” or “Zed Creds.” These programs use entirely OER or other zero-cost resources, so I’m used to having that kind of agency.  When it occurred to me that an audio version of the CC Certificate materials should be made and that it would enable more learners to access this fantastic resource, I just went into my closet and recorded it!

A Zed Cred/Z-Degree is a “set of courses in a specific program area that allows a student to earn a credential, such as an associate degree or certificate program, with zero textbook costs by way of using open educational resources and/or free library materials.” Source: BCcampus Open Education program.

I knew I didn’t need to ask permission to do this because the CC Certificate materials are licensed CC BY 4.0, so I have all the permissions I need. Regarding the technical process, I happened to already have a pretty good external microphone, and the Audacity audio editing software, which is FLOSS (free/libre/open-source software).

CC: Do you have other ideas for how CC might increase the accessibility of our training resources? Or, ideas for people who are curious about accessing the CC Certificate course content? 

Poritz: Another version of the audiobook! When I got to the end of the full reading, I had more experience doing this than when I started, so I will do a better job the next time.  Fortunately, the CC team around the CC Certificate course regularly revises and improves the course materials, so I will have a chance to do a new audio version in a few months.

In a larger sense, it might be a good idea to get a real accessibility expert to look over the materials—I certainly do not have such expertise!  I knew about reading books out loud because I used to read math books for Reading for the Blind when I was a university student myself (100,000 years ago), but a real accessibility expert might have things to say.

It seems to me that another thing CC can do is along the lines of that periodic revisit and improvement of the CC Certificate course materials.  It means that the materials are always tracking the best and most current knowledge about law, practices, policies, resources, etc.  I know that there are also discussions about how to improve the course in other ways (e.g. to use more methods of open pedagogy, to make it more relevant to a very international audience, etc.). This is a highly non-trivial task!  There are so many different legal systems around the world, and so many local traditions of educational and cultural production and consumption, it is hard for CC to make something that is localized to every one of those situations.  But (as you know!) there are some steps in this direction already.  For example, facilitators accept assignments from participants in their local languages, when the facilitators can read the languages, or when the participant attaches an automatic translation which they have checked for reasonable accuracy.  And, I understand, there are some additional translations of the course materials into other languages coming out soon!

To your second question: CC has given the world an amazing gift by releasing these materials with a CC BY license. It should go a long way to making this knowledge more widely accessible, across geographic and economic barriers.  The cost of formally taking the CC Certificate course does remain an obstacle, although the scholarship program has made tremendous inroads into that.

I do believe that taking the course provides benefits that just reading the CC BY licensed materials does not. Aside from the direct interaction with the other participants (and the section facilitator), there is always a sense of joining an absolutely amazing global community around openness that comes from working together on the course.  I’m humbled by the privilege of meeting and learning about these truly amazing groups of people and what they are doing, every single time I facilitate a course.

CC: After so many hours sweating in your clothes closet, what’s next? What do you hope to see in Open Education efforts given the “great pivot” to online teaching we’ve seen? 

Poritz: I have great hope, but also great fear about what’s happening right now in this great pivot.  As should be clear from the things I’ve said above, I think Open Education has a lot of solutions to offer to many issues in education.  In fact, as a “Z-professor,” I think “open” is the only way to go with education!

This crisis could help educators work (rush!) toward more open practices, or move in the opposite direction.  We in open communities must work to clarify and promote the solutions that open education offers—and a great many of us already are. We also need to highlight how problematic the closed approaches are to learners.  

If I had to list the issues which bedevil open education right now, my list might include: 

• General lack of knowledge of open practices with which things like the CC Certificate course can help enormously. 
• Lack of ancillary materials (automatic homework systems, test banks, etc.) for many OER, which many people are working to overcome.
• Difficulty in finding existing OER for particular purposes, which again, people are improving. For example, there are various OER search tools, and CC Search is getting better all the time. 
• Complex platforms to create and remix OER: also an area of rapid work and improvement.
• Spotty record on accessibility for OER, although commercial resources are actually not all that much better!

I think the community can step up to improve accessibility, similar to how a random person with a quiet clothes closet can record any work with an open license and make it accessible to more people.

I’m headed back to the closet to record!  Maybe I’ll tackle a math OER textbook I wrote next—it should be an interesting challenge to try to describe all the equations, graphs, and diagrams!

CC: Thank you so much, Jonathan!

You can access the audio files on the CC Certificate website, or on Jonathan’s website!

*In addition to his work with the CC Certificate, Jonathan is the Director of Teaching and Learning and an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Physics, both at Colorado State University-Pueblo. He is also a member of the Colorado Department of Higher Education’s Open Educational Resources Council. Learn more about Jonathan here. 

The CC Certificate is an in-depth course about CC licenses, open practices, and the ethos of the Commons. The course is composed of readings, quizzes, discussions, and practical exercises to develop learners’ open skills. We provide personalized engagement with expert facilitators and copyright lawyers in the field. 

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The CC Certificate aims to increase our global community’s expertise in open licensing and awareness of our shared, digital commons.  Our first goal is to train at least one person interested in open licensing in every country and territory, around the world. So far, we have CC Certificate graduates from 44 countries and counting!

One way to bring the CC Certificate to more people is through the Certificate scholarship program, which launched with 18 scholarships in 2019. I’m pleased to announce we’ve awarded 28 scholarships in 2020 to our CC Global Network members who are passionate about developing their open licensing expertise and contributing to our vibrant global community. 

While we prioritize offering scholarships to CC Global Network members, anyone is welcome to join the network (it’s free).

This year, scholarship recipients hail from 25 countries: Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Benin, Brazil, Chile, Finland, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Nepal, Netherlands, Nigeria, Portugal, Rwanda, Slovenia, South Africa, Taiwan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

Please welcome the following CC Certificate scholarship recipients!
Algeria: Hanae Lrhoul
Argentina: Maximiliano Marzetti
Australia: Prodip Roy
Bangladesh: Mohammed Galib Hasan
Benin: Adebayo Fawaz Ludovic Tairou
Brazil: Chico Venancio
Chile: Werner Westermann
Finland: Susanna Ånäs
Ghana: Felix Nartey
India: Omshivaprakash Hodigere Lakshmeshvaradavaru
India: Savithri Singh
Indonesia: Dian Eka Indriani
Kenya: Hildah Nyakwaka
Mexico: Ken Bauer
Nepal: Kshitiz Khanal
Netherlands: Sebastiaan ter Burg
Nigeria: Felix Olakulehin
Portugal: Teresa Cardoso
Rwanda: Boris Bahire Kabeja
Slovenia: Maja Bogataj Jančič
South Africa: Derek Moore
South Africa: Kathryn Kure
South Africa: Wynand van der Walt
Taiwan: Rock Hung
Tanzania: Hamis Juma
Tunisia: Sami Mlouhi
Uruguay: Ileana Silva
Venezuela: Jose Luis Mendoza

To learn more about these scholarship recipients or to register for an upcoming course, visit the CC Certificate website!

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We’re happy to announce that our collaboration with the American Library Association (ALA) to create the print companion to the CC Certificate has finally come to fruition! 

The book, Creative Commons for Educators and Librarians, is now published under CC BY and offers an additional way to access the openly licensed CC Certificate content. It’s available in print at the ALA store, or it can be downloaded from our website! 

Whether you’re a volunteer, professor, instructional designer, researcher, administrator or technologist—or simply looking for a great holiday gift—this book offers a background on copyright law, as well as a clear guide to open licensing and open advocacy. You can read this book on its own or while taking the CC Certificate course. 

The ALA is the oldest and largest library association in the world, “providing leadership for the development, promotion and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship in order to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all.” 

After initial collaboration with the ALA on “Copytalk” webinars, we were delighted to partner with them for this project under the shared goal of increasing equitable access to information. 

Download or buy a hardcopy of Creative Commons for Educators and Librarians today!

Interested in taking the CC Certificate? Check out our website to learn more. For additional information about this collaboration with the ALA, read our previous post, “Book Preview: “Creative Commons for Educators and Librarians.”

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The Creative Commons Global Network (CCGN) is a passionate community that lights up our vibrant, collaborative, global commons. The CC Network is also critical to our mission of sharing. To support CC Network members, we launched a scholarship program for CC Certificate courses. 

Today, we are proud to highlight our first 10 CC Certificate Scholarship recipients. The CC Certificate provides an-in depth study of Creative Commons licenses and open practices, uniquely developing participants’ open licensing proficiency and understanding of the broader context for open advocacy.

After launching the official CC Certificate courses in July of 2018, we offered 18 scholarships a year later. We’re thrilled to enroll our first scholarship recipients in the September 2019 and January 2020 classes! They join the ranks of 507 other participants from 42 countries or territories who have enrolled in  CC Certificate courses. These initial scholarships are just the start. We aim to increase the number of scholarships we offer by 50% next year, and further increase the number in subsequent years. 

Although we will share more about our scholarship recipients on the CC Certificate website in the coming weeks, we are delighted to name them here:

September 2019 courses:
Alice Joseph Mihayo
Brian Ssennoga
Fitriayu Penyalai
Margaret Lopez

January 2020 courses:
Juliana Monteiro
Margorie Merel
Jorge Gemetto
Nurunnaby Chowdhury
Raphel Berchie
Roshan Kumar Karn

How does the scholarship program work?

It’s simple. Creative Commons offers as many scholarship tickets as we can to CC Network Chapters. As leaders in the field with regular connection to local community members, Chapter leads and representatives determine the recommended scholarship recipients. They send scholarship recommendations and contact information to CC, and we help recipients register in the Librarian or Educator Certificate courses. 

The Scholarship program covers 80% of the recipient’s ticket, requiring scholarship recipients to contribute the remaining US $100. 

In this initial round, we’ve prioritized scholarships for CC network members in Global South countries who want to use Certificate knowledge to fuel their own community efforts and “pay it forward” to their communities. Once we are able to offer all interested CC Country Chapters in the Global South at least one scholarship, we will provide scholarships to other CC Country Teams until, one day, we’ll have at least one community member trained in every interested CC Network country.

The post Meet Our First CC Certificate Scholarship Recipients! appeared first on Creative Commons.

From June—August 2019, Creative Commons hosted eight CC Certificate classes for Academic Librarians and Educators. Participants in the classes studied Creative Commons licenses, copyright, the public domain, and open practices. Certificate students developed open licensing proficiency and deepened their understanding of the broader context for open advocacy. See examples of the assignments participants shared under CC licenses here!

Graduates from these classes included 67 educators and 90 librarians. Together, they joined the Certificate alumni community of 442 remarkable people making extraordinary changes in every region of the world. From translating Certificate content in multiple languages, to hosting workshops to developing entire graduate-level courses, CC Certificate alumni bring a new level of advocacy to open education and open access.

#MondayMotivation my @creativecommons certification came in! Still super proud of the work I accomplished and the knowledge I gained to move forward in my librarianship. #LibraryTwitter pic.twitter.com/DmFCrcTXcp

— Elizabeth Beaver Batte (@beaverbatte) September 9, 2019

Image: Elizabeth Batte tweeted her Certificate graduating from the June 2019 class. She will join Jeanne Pavy, another June Certificate graduate, and present how they plan to use gained knowledge on campus, and the impact of CC licenses in higher education at the 2019 LOUIS User Conference on October 15.

The 2nd #Creatives #Commons Algeria Chapter meeting was held this morning at the University of Bejaia. I’ve given a session titled: what is Creative Commons? @algeria_cc @creativecommons pic.twitter.com/OelHf0o6q8

— Kamel Belhamel (@kamelbelhamel) September 24, 2019

Image: Certificate alumnus, Kamel Belhamel, puts his CC knowledge to great use at the University of Bejaia, in Algeria. View his slides and the 2nd CC Algeria Chapter meeting notes.

Here’s what our alumni are saying:

• 72% use the knowledge they gained from the course at least weekly
• 86% use the knowledge they gained from the course at least quarterly
• 62% are consulted by colleagues as an open licensing expert since graduation

Interested in taking the CC Certificate? Don’t miss out—we are now accepting new registrations for our 2020 courses!

The post Congratulations to Our 157 June CC Certificate Graduates! appeared first on Creative Commons.

Over the last several months, Creative Commons has collaborated with the American Library Association (ALA) on the first-ever print complement to the CC Certificate program—and we are thrilled to announce that the book will be available in November!  

The CC Certificate program is Creative Commons’ official training in open licensing. It targets copyright law, CC legal tools, and the recommended practices of working in our global, shared commons. The CC Certificate is currently offered as a 10-week online course, or as a 1-week in-person training (bootcamp) to educators and academic librarians.

After training hundreds of academics, technologists, lawyers, instructional designers, and non-government organizations, we’ve received many requests to make the Certificate accessible to more people. Addressing that demand, we:

• Implemented a training program for facilitators, so we can host more classes at once;
• Launched a scholarship program to make the Certificate program more affordable to colleagues in the Global South; 
• Collaborated with colleagues around the world on translations in multiple languages as well as Certificates for different audiences (ex: GLAM); 
• Posted all of our course content freely accessible in downloadable file formats online; 

And now, we’ve collaborated with the American Library Association to create the print companion to our online course! Titled Creative Commons for Educators and Librarians, this publication is licensed CC BY, and offers an additional way to access the open-licensed Certificate content. Pre-order this book in print at the ALA bookstore, ahead of its official release in November 2019. 

Learn more about the CC Certificate course here.

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This month, I’ll mark five years as CEO at Creative Commons. That makes me the longest-serving CEO in the organization’s history, and it’s also the longest I’ve served with the same job title. Every day I get to work with some of the brightest, most dedicated staff and community members in the open movement. Anniversaries are a good time to reflect, and as we all arrive home from our annual CC Summit in Lisbon, I wanted to share a few reflections on where we’ve come from, and where we’re headed.

TL;DR – In the last five years we’ve rebuilt CC from the ground up, with a more solid financial foundation; a revitalized multi-year strategy and plan to focus on a vibrant, usable commons powered by collaboration and gratitude; and a renewed and growing network. We’ve developed and launched new projects and programs like CC Search and the CC Certificate program, and through it all, played a vital role in defending, advancing, and stewarding the commons.

We produced this video, entitled “Remix,” not long after I started at CC to share our new strategy.

Some key facts. In the last five years, we’ve:

• Articulated a new vision for CC, with a 5-year strategy to bring it to life, that focuses on a “vibrant, usable commons, powered by collaboration and gratitude”
• Developed and launched CC Search, now indexing over 300M images, working closely with partners like the NY Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum, and Flickr
• Redesigned the entire Creative Commons Global Network from the ground up, from codes of conduct to community prioritization and collaboration, with a goal of being more open, accountable, and community-led. The new network is nearly 3x larger than the previous affiliate community.
• Established “The Big Open,” a platform to acknowledge the interconnected nature of the many communities we work in, including Mozillians, Wikipedians, Open Education, Open Science and academia, Open Government, and Open Data
• Co-created the CC Certificate with community experts and advisors, and certified over 250 people from all over the world to be practitioners and advocates
• Authored the State of the Commons report, published every year since 2015 to demonstrate the size and reach of the Commons online, today at over 1.4B works (with the next report out in mere days)  
• Hosted the largest and broad-reaching community-led CC Summits ever, in Seoul, Toronto, Toronto (again), and Lisbon
• Raised over $26M from foundations, corporations, thousands of individual donors, and dedicated event sponsors, to support our work and community around the world
• Worked with institutions around the world to help expand and protect the commons, from the New York Met, to Flickr, to Medium, to MIT’s edX platform. In each case, we’ve been there to teach, advise, support, and advocate on behalf of CC users, open knowledge, and shared creativity
• Built a more diverse team at Creative Commons, with a majority of both leadership and staff who are women, and a global staff that better represent the communities and cultures we serve, and the geographies in which we work

The all-new CC Search

We’ve had some difficult moments too. In 2015, CC was forced to make a round of difficult layoffs in order to stabilize our budget and program. We recovered, but those kinds of changes are painful for everyone. In 2017, we learned that CC community member and friend Bassel Khartabil had been murdered by the regime in Syria. Many of us joined together with his family and friends to create a fellowship in his name, and I’m proud to see that Majd Al-Shahibi will speak at this year’s summit as the inaugural Bassel Khartabil Fellowship recipient.

This can be a lonely and unforgiving job. People treat you like a character — like the Office of the CEO — not like a person who has feelings, hopes, and doubts. And no doubt I have made mistakes. Like many in a role like this, I constantly replay how things worked out, and wonder how I might have done them differently in a different context. I think it’s normal for leaders to do that, and I’d worry about anyone who says they regret nothing, or would never change a past decision. Most of the leaders I admire obsess about doing the right thing, both before and after the fact, but also recognize that we almost always have to do something — hopefully the right thing, or at least the best thing for the moment we’re in, with the information we have. Still, within these difficult moments lies the knowledge that everything we do moves us towards a more equitable world.

None of this work would be possible without the team of talented humans who make up the CC team. I am full of gratitude for their daily energy, excellence, and commitment to the work we do. CC is also quite fortunate to have a strong Board of Directors who have provided mentorship, advice and counsel, and helpful criticism and support. I especially want to acknowledge our former board chair Paul Brest, whose board term ended last year, and who taught me a great deal about leadership, management, and strategic planning (and logic models). Finally, I want to thank my wife Kelsey, who was an active leader in the CC movement long before I came along, and who continues to support my work as an advisor and partner.

Creative Commons Global Summit by Sebastiaan ter Burg.

What’s next?

Creative Commons’ 20th anniversary is just around the corner (Jan 15, 2021), and it deserves a celebration worthy of the organization’s reach and impact. We’ve already started planning, and we hope to create a celebration that looks as far forward as it does back.

CC Search is taking off, and we’ll soon be adding more content types like open textbooks and audio. We’re also working on enhanced search tools that will enable new types of discovery and re-use.

The CC Certificate continues to grow and sell out with each cohort. We’ll be opening up a round of scholarships to improve accessibility for anyone who wants to take the course (though all the content is also CC BY, allowing anyone to read, copy, and remix it). We’re also expanding the content to serve additional communities, like the GLAM sector.

And this year, for the first time in CC’s history, the Global Network will lead and govern itself, set priorities and drive community growth and development. That’s a profound change, and a collaborative result that I’m  certain will have an incredible impact.

There’s so much more to do, so many important ways we can help. “Pick big fights with your enemies, not small fights with your friends,” has been a favorite phrase of mine, and today there remain so many vital fights to have on behalf of shared knowledge and free culture. And CC has so many good friends to fight them with. I’m deeply grateful for those collaborations.

I look forward to doing this work for many years to come, with all of you in The Big Open.

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From January to April 2019, Creative Commons hosted three CC Certificate courses and a Facilitators course to train the next cohort of Certificate instructors. Participants from Australia, Qatar, South Africa, Egypt, Indonesia, Canada, Argentina, United Kingdom, Colombia, Spain, Mexico, Denmark, New Zealand, Sweden, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and United States engaged in rigorous readings, assignments, discussions and quizzes. See examples of the participants’ assignments they’ve publicly shared under CC licenses. With these courses now complete, we are thrilled to announce 62 new CC Certificate graduates and 7 new CC Certificate facilitators!

Interested in taking the CC Certificate?  We are now accepting new registrations for our June and September courses.

There is nothing more gratifying than following your passion. Thank you @creativecommons for offering a course for educators. I encourage other educators to learn more about #openlicensing #cccert pic.twitter.com/uMhtA9TCwV

— Cathy Germano (@cjgermano) March 31, 2019

The CC Certificate provides an in-depth study of Creative Commons licenses and open practices, uniquely developing participants’ open licensing proficiency and understanding of the broader context for open advocacy. The training content targets copyright law, CC legal tools, as well as the values and good practices of working in the global, shared commons.

u know, I’m more delighted w getting the #cccert not for the knowledge or community (cool tho they were/are) but for the experience of taking a course that was different and where facilitators exhibited a real and meaningful flexibility with assignments + listened to feedback pic.twitter.com/wFxHjy7GdW

— ℳąhą Bąℓi, PhD مها بالي (@Bali_Maha) April 2, 2019

The CC Certificate is currently offered as a 10-week online course to educators and academic librarians. In late 2019 / 2020, Creative Commons will expand Certificate offerings to include 1-week boot camps, additional facilitator trainings, scholarships, and translations of the Certificate into multiple languages.

Just received my #cccert! Thank you for a great online course @cgreen and @creativecommons! Learned a lot! Ready now to spread the love @KAU, the rest of Sweden and wherever needed and wanted! #ONL191 #OER #OpenEducation #openaccess #LastNightInSweden pic.twitter.com/LxgUNYhRR3

— Jörg Pareigis (@joergelp) April 1, 2019

Congratulations to our 62 new Certificate and 7 facilitator graduates; we are filled with gratitude for their amazing work. Now… let’s go change the world!

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