FreeContent4SustainableEcosystems

= Concept Paper =

Useful Links
Towards a Global Learning Commons: ccLearn. By Ahrash Bissell and Jamie Boyle, http://learn.creativecommons.org/media/
 * Learning4Content funding proposal
 * Donations of Materials
 * Teaching About Force, Derek Chirnside
 * Educational Technology Magazine article:

=SECTION 1: Cover sheet= ''Note: Learning4Content Bid as Template: This is based on the successful bid proposal (2007) for the Learning4Content project which was submitted to the The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Public description of your project
''Please provide a brief statement that best describes your proposed work. This description will appear on our website and in our annual report. It can be no longer than 250 characters including spaces.''

To increase the availability of open educational content on WikiEducator; to leverage the skills base of educators to develop OERs who have learned wiki technology; and, develop clusters of community support for local educators that contributes to the development of free content AND the strengthening of local capacity.

Proposal summary
''Give a brief summary of your proposed work using no more than 300 words. Please write this description in plain English (no jargon). Assume the people reading it are knowledgeable, but are not educators. Describe the purpose of the proposal, including its importance; the way you plan to achieve your aims; expected outcomes; and the way you will evaluate your success.''

The FreeContent4SustainableEcosystems (FC4SE)  project will seek the contribution of specific educational content to WikiEducator, to be modified, customized and adapted by clusters of WikiEducators in developing countries. This project is in alignment with the Learning4Content initiative, which is training 2,500 educators in wiki skills in 53 countries.

WikiEducator, a Commonwealth of Learning-supported project, is a website dedicated to the collaborative development of free content for education that anyone can modify and use. WikiEducator has grown exponentially during its first year of operation and is currently ranked within the top 8% of most visited websites in the world.

In 2008, WikiEducator has launched the Learning4Content project - that is working closely with experienced Wikipedians who will be invited to present the training workshops for educators using COL's WikiEducator tutorials (http://www.wikieducator.org/Help:Contents) and the OER workshop toolkit in return for a small honorarium. COL is working closely with Erik Moeller, a board member of the WikiMedia Foundation to advise on liaising with Wikipedians. Mr Moeller is also a member of the WikiEducator International Advisory Board. The strategy of the Learning4Content project is to scale up training and content development by networking with: COL's focal points in 48 of the 53 countries of the Commonwealth; teachers, trainers and lecturers in the Commonwealth; and members of the Freedom Culture, most notably the Wikipedia community.

In the FC4SE projects, cluster participants will each sign a “Learning Contract” to customize a learning project. Progress will be monitored on WikiEducator which tracks every edit on the site, and the associated cluster project page.

The FreeContent4SustainableEcosystems project aims to achieve the following outcomes:


 * Identify areas for significant contribution / donation of OERs / learning materials;
 * Identify and connect leading WikiEducators in relevant countries who are interested in collaborating on WikiEducator.
 * Facilitate the development of special interest clusters and regional hubs for adapting donated content for local needs;


 * Communities & Sub-communities
 * Regional Hubs
 * Africa
 * West Africa
 * South Africa
 * East Africa
 * La Francophonie
 * Australasia
 * New Zealand
 * Australia
 * The Pacific (Other)


 * Provide support to XX clusters, special interest groups and regional hubs (Input from Derek Chirnside, NZ)
 * Educators to produce at least XXXX free content lessons for use in secondary schools, vocational education and formal tertiary education settings;
 * Assist the English Wikipedia to improve the quality of existing articles that can be used for educational purposes before converting these encyclopedia articles into lessons for learners who don't have access to textbooks;
 * Build capacity among women and poor and disadvantaged people.
 * Develop a sustainable network of educators collaborating on the development of free content for education in developing countries

Sectors / Focus Areas

 * Teacher Education, including professional development (Derek Chirnside)
 * Mother-Educators (i.e., Mothers of Intention, Bangladesh)
 * Subject Matter Groups
 * Journalism - (FreeContent4Journalism)
 * Entrepreneurship
 * Environmental Education
 * Special Needs Education
 * CultureWiki
 * Other

=SECTION 2: Proposal Narrative=

A. Background
The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) is an international intergovernmental organisation created by Commonwealth Heads of Government to encourage the development and sharing of open learning/distance education knowledge, resources and technologies. COL is helping developing nations improve access to quality education and training.

Headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, COL is the only official Commonwealth agency located outside Britain and is the world's only intergovernmental organisation solely concerned with the promotion and development of distance education and open learning. COL is helping to increase the capacities of developing nations to meet the demands for improved access to quality education and training.

Commonwealth Governments financially support COL on a voluntary basis. Major contributors include Canada, India, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa and the United Kingdom. For more information on COL, see: http://www.col.org/about/whatis.

Sir John Daniel is the Chief Executive Officer and President of COL. The agency operates with 35 staff members, one-third of whom are internationally recruited education specialists. It is also equipped with technology that enables it to connect effectively and efficiently with the rest of the Commonwealth from Vancouver. It has a small subsidiary operation in India, the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia.

The Commonwealth of Learning employs open learning and distance education to increase access to education and training. In part due to the efforts of COL and its Commonwealth-wide network over the past sixteen years, distance education is now a part of the mainstream of education and training. It enables students to learn at the location, time and pace of their choice, for less money and with improved results. COL's goals include maximising the transfer of information, ideas, innovations and resources to support this rapid evolution of distance education. COL's core competence in distance education for the developing world is particularly relevant for the design and development of asynchronous learning resources and OERs.

COL collaborates with governments and educational institutions and works with national and international development agencies, national and regional distance education associations and open universities and schools around the Commonwealth. Through its model-building programs, COL has:
 * enhanced access to learning and knowledge in more than 40 countries;
 * influenced the development of open schools and universities;
 * conducted training seminars and studies;
 * established an extensive network of education and technology specialists;
 * promoted a substantive OER development agenda through the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC) and COL's eLearning for education sector development initiative.
 * placed particular focus on poverty alleviation and the marginalized, empowerment of women and facilitated systemic changes in the delivery of education and influenced government policy.

B. Problem / Theory of Action
''Please describe the issue or problem you are planning to address and the evidence you have that the problem is important, and your theory of action for addressing the problem. If relevant, include a brief literature review or a discussion of your hypothesis and alternative hypotheses. Explain how your goal relates to the Foundation’s grant-making priorities. Discuss how your work advances the Open Educational Resources field beyond its current state and how it relates to any similar work being carried out. Please note that Sections 3 and 4, Logic Model and Program Chart, should be drafted before you complete items B through E of this section.''

WikiEducator is a compelling vision and a complex and socially interdependent ecosystem which is rooted in: (1) wiki skills development; (2) content development; and (3) community growth and sustainability. Using the power of mass collaboration, WikiEducator aims to solve hitherto unsolvable problems such as providing open and free access to educational materials that in turn can be distributed, modified and adapted without any restriction. These free and open educational materials can make a significant difference to the lives of people who would otherwise not be able to afford such access.

As WikiEducator moves forward to realize its goal of a free educational curriculum, it is focusing on providing wiki skills to educator through the Learning4Content project. However, a significant opportunity for leverage exists for supporting these individuals into Collaborative Clusters - so they can provide internal support while building individual and community capacity - essential components to sustainability. In line with WikiEducator's goal of developing a free content resources in support of national education curricula by 2015, Collaborative Cluster Development is one of the ways in which we can radically scale up the rate of free content production in digital formats, which can then be distributed using appropriate and accessible technologies. We can do so by providing additional support to individuals with wiki skills training, by developing interest-based clusters of support and connection.

Achieving scalability and economies of scale
The OER initiative must find ways to scale up the rate of free content production for education while at the same time achieving economies of scale in our advocacy and training approaches to equip educators with the skills necessary to participate in the global OER movement. COL's experience in open distance learning provides us with the core competencies in achieving scalability and economies of scale in educational delivery and these constitute the foundations of this proposal.

The FreeContent4SustainableEcosystems project hypothesises that:

(from L4C)
 * The existing skills of Wikipedians who are well versed in the basics of wiki editing and passionate about free content development provides us with a skilled resource of trainers across the globe;
 * Lowering the entry barriers for arranging workshops by providing free tutorials and workshop tool kits will enable us to scale up OER training opportunities in the developing world;
 * Incorporating a self-selection mechanism whereby prospective trainees must commit to developing a free content lesson in return for the free training will contribute to the sustainability of the project.

Given the dynamic nature of the wiki model, the project can adopt a learn-by-doing approach refining materials, learning resources and processes as the the project progresses. This will contribute to a recursive cycle of continuous quality improvement.

An experiential-based approach
COL's experience working with educators across the Commonwealth, shows that the lack of basic ICT skills is a significant barrier for participation in the development of free content on WikiEducator. We have demonstrated through our experiences with WikiEducator that educators can become proficient free content producers using wiki technology, if provided with an opportunity to acquire the basics of wiki editing. COL has gained first hand experience in facilitating basic wiki training with the target audience, including:


 * 100 wiki skills training workshops involving at least 2 500 educators from 53 Commonwealth countries (Learning4Content initiative, beginning January 2008)
 * UNESCO basic wiki skills training involving program officers and support personnel
 * Four OER workshops on basic wiki skills involving countries from East and West Africa (see: http://www.wikieducator.org/FLOSS4Edu_Regional_Chapters);
 * An OER workshop for teacher educators in India, involving representatives from more than 30 institutions;
 * Two Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC) boot camps in Mauritius and Singapore;
 * Two international training workshops presented in eLearning delivery formats for VUSSC member countries
 * A Pacific regional workshop for OERs involving participation from nine Pacific countries (see: http://www.wikieducator.org/FLOSS4Edu_Pacific_Workshop).

COL has used this experience to develop a series of tutorials on wiki editing and community building. An OER OER Workshop Toolkit is currently being developed to support the planning and administration of these training workshops. All materials are licensed as free content which can be used without restriction.

For educators who do not have Internet access, an alternate solution has been created, with the Open Office (save to wiki option), thereby increasing access.

Collaborative Clusters
Collaborative clusters leverage the important gains in wiki skills development made by the Learning4Content initiative, to bring together clusters of like-minded individuals to create open and free educational materials. They are designed with a grassroots focus for growth, maintenance and sustainability in mind.


 * sustain communities of interest
 * provide internal support / capability
 * build individual / community capacity
 * grassroots-oriented
 * opportunities for internal / external leverage
 * identity/branding
 * news items
 * connections with other clusters
 * project focused

Partners
* The WikiMedia Foundation - The Commonwealth of Learning is collaborating with the Wikimedia Foundation to develop technology to produce portable document format (pdf) versions of content directly from the wiki. In this way, printed study materials can be produced for learners without access to the Internet thus widening access to the benefits of digitally authored OERs.

* Wikipedia - A Top 10 website and the largest encyclopaedia developed in the history of human kind has demonstrated that through the principles of mass-collaboration and self-organisation it is possible to produce large volumes of high quality free content. COL has established WikiEducator to support free content development in education and uses the same software, as the Wikipedia.

Other

 * Local partners
 * Certificate granting programs (i.e., CCNC)
 * The InGots

C. Inputs
''Inputs include money, staff time, knowledge and expertise, equipment, and facilities. Please describe the major inputs that will be devoted to the project. Attach a one-page curriculum vitae of each key participant as well as any significant advisors or consultants. Please discuss resources (including in-kind) that are to be contributed by your organization as well as other sources, including foundations and government agencies. Explain why you believe your proposed project is likely to succeed with the resources you intend to devote to it. If there is a strategic plan and/or business plan, describe briefly and attach.''

The successful implementation of the Learning4Content project will require the following inputs:


 * 1) Training materials. COL has developed 11 free content tutorials covering the basics of wiki editing using Mediawiki software (http://www.wikieducator.org/Help:Contents). Mediawiki is the same software used by the popular Wikipedia encyclopedia, currently a top ten website. COL has run two pilots using these tutorials in eLearning format with 110 participants from 30 countries. These tutorials will be used as the core training materials for the project. This resource is an estimated contribution of $8 000.
 * 2) Workshop resources. Face-to-face workshops require resources including preparation checklists, draft agendas, workshop activities and slide show resources. COL is currently developing an OER workshop toolkit for the Learning4Content project. This workshop toolkit is based on the practical experience of presenting 3 capacity development workshops in Africa and a Pacific regional workshop (http://www.wikieducator.org/OER_Workshop_Toolkit). Drawing on this experience COL is in the process of refining the learning design and workshop activities for the OER workshop toolkit. We estimate this resource contribution to be $13 000
 * 3) Learning contracts. Prospective participants in the Learning4Content project will commit to developing a free content lesson on WikiEducator in return for training in basic wiki editing.  COL has commissioned the development of a learning contract for this purpose (http://www.wikieducator.org/Metawikieducator/Learning4Content/Proposal_outlines). We estimate this resource contribution to be $3 000. Learning4Content workshop participants can potentially become future workshop facilitators.
 * 4) Learning4Content trainers. The phenomenal international success of the Wikipedia has resulted in a global community of volunteers with wiki editing skills. The Learning4Content project will draw on this global community to facilitate capacity building workshops for educators around the world.
 * 5) Project leadership. COL has extensive experience in the use of technology to widen access to education, particularly in the developing regions of the world. The project will be led by Dr Wayne Mackintosh who has a proven international track record in free software and free content for education. The Learning4Content project is an integral component of WikiEducator's strategic plan (http://www.wikieducator.org/WikiEducator:About) which is now moving into the second phase of scaling up free content development. Sir John Daniel, CEO and president of COL is the patron of WikiEducator and the community is guided by an International Advisory Board (http://www.wikieducator.org/Advisory_board) covering five global regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, the Caribbean, the Pacific and North America.  Deserving particular mention with reference to the Advisory Board is our capacity in gender equity. Dorcas Muthoni the co-founder of LinuxChix Africa and Dr Savithri Singh, Principal of an Undergraduate college at the University of Dehli, India are both Advisory Board members of WikiEducator. The COL team will be complimented by the skills of Dr Tanyss Munro, Education specialist for Governance with responsibilities for Gender in COL's program.

In addition to the contributions in kind identified above, COL will also be committing CAD60 000 to the Learning4Content project from our program budget to finance honoraria for facilitators, over and above the funding from this grant proposal.

Achieving COL's strategic plan
COL's program is guided by our three-year strategic plan, 2006 - 2009 entitled learning for development (http://www.col.org/colweb/webdav/site/myjahiasite/shared/docs/3YP-06-09_web.pdf). eLearning for education sector development, an official initiative of COL's programme, has specified the development of OERs as a strategic priority. In realisation of these strategic priorities, COL's WikiEducator has developed a business plan in support of the achievement of the corporate development vision.

The strategic objectives for the eLearning initiative are aimed at achieving the four C's, namely:


 * A thriving community of practitioners and policy makers throughout the Commonwealth committed to leveraging the potential of e-learning for development using OERs. For example, active community networks clustered around: learning for livelihoods; open schools, tertiary education; and VUSSC.
 * The capacity and skills to engage meaningfully with the supporting technologies and global best practice in e-learning for development.
 * Free content development supporting capacity building, by refining existing resources and reconfiguring them in formats that facilitate reuse across the Commonwealth.
 * Ensuring smart connections which refer to the technology requirements for a cost effective OER and eLearning initiative. Connectivity also refers to the “connections” among different open source software solutions to fill the gaps between existing mainstream technologies and the unique requirements of ODL so as to widen the reach and access of free content in the developing world.

WikiEducator's business plan is divided into three distinct phases:


 * 1) Establishing foundations (May 2006 - Dec 2007). This phase involves setting up the technologies and processes to facilitate community development for free content.
 * 2)  Scaling up free content development (Jan 2008 - Dec 2008). The prime purpose of Phase 2 is to scale up the rate and quality of free content development building on the foundations established during Phase 1.  Phase 2 will be realised through ongoing community development with special emphasis on scalable capacity development. The Learning4Content proposal is the flagship project of this phase of WikiEducator's business plan.
 * 3) Sustainable implementation of free content in education (Jan 2009 - ). The purpose of this phase is to prioritise activities which implement free content into mainstream educational activities. The success of the free content movement in education will be measured when real students enroll in real programmes using free content.

D. Activities
''Describe the activities you will undertake to achieve your intended outcomes. Explain why these activities will lead to your intended outcomes and how you will overcome any obstacles. Describe how you will measure whether or not you have successfully carried out your activities. What key constituencies, including traditionally underserved groups, participate in the work of the project? Discuss any significant collaborations with other organizations or program units.''

The Learning4Content project is categorised into distinct types of activities, namely foundation activities and specific project activities. The foundation activities are the prerequisite building blocks for the successful delivery of the Learning4Content project and represent COL's contribution in kind to the project. These will be followed by the specific project activities of this proposal which will be co-funded from COL's core programme budget.

Foundation activities
The Learning4Content project requires a set of free content resources as primary inputs. The development of these resources have commenced and have been funded through COL's core programme. Consequently the building blocks for the project will be in place prior to the commencement of the project.

Intended outcome: Free content resources required for the Learning4Content project are developed and completed before commencement of skills development workshops.

Project activities
The following activities are required for successful delivery of the project.

Intended outcome: All activities completed to enable the training of at least 2 500 teachers in basic wiki editing skills and corresponding development of 2 500 corresponding lessons of free content.

E. Outcomes
''Outcomes are expected effects from the proposed project on the target population. They may be intermediate outcomes or ultimate outcomes. Please describe the outcomes you wish to accomplish with this project and how you will demonstrate whether you have achieved them. Describe the key obstacles to accomplishing your intended outcomes. Discuss how you believe the work of your project will generalize beyond its current setting.''

The following outcomes are specified for the project:


 * 1) At least 2500 teachers/educators trained in basic wiki editing skills. This is based on the assumption that facilitators will be able to identify on average 15 teachers/educators for each workshop.
 * 2) 2500 lessons of free content developed. This is based on the assumption that participants honour their learning contract signed before participation in the skills development workshop.
 * 3) The establishment of a community of free content developers.
 * 4) The implementation of free content in the classroom.
 * 5) The identification of technological requirements that will contribute to an "open participatory learning infrastructure".

The key obstacles and corresponding risk management strategies are highlighted in Section D covering the activities for the project.

F. Evaluation
''Discuss your plans to evaluate both your strategy and your outcomes, noting the measures and methodologies you intend to use and the percent of your budget you will allocate. Please keep in mind that the intention of evaluation is to ensure accountability, provide ongoing feedback about how well you are moving toward your goals, and capture knowledge developed for your organization, the Foundation, and others in the field.''

COL's activities are planned and implemented in accordance with a results based management system. The Learning4Content project is a planned action which forms part of the eLearning for Education sector development initiative in COL's core development programme. This means that the Learning4Content project is an integral component of COL's monitoring and evaluation systems. Key performance indicators assist with the monitoring of the WikiEducator initiative inlcluding:


 * Growth in the Number of registered users;
 * Daily logs of activity on WikiEducator where the Learning4Content project will be hosted;
 * Learning contracts and planning for Learning4Content workshops will be hosted within a dedicated name space created for the project;
 * Review of the content developed under the Learning4Content project.
 * Monitoring of the growth in legitimate content pages on WikiEducator;
 * Online Participant monitoring questionnaires;
 * External independent evaluation of COL's eLearning initiative which includes the Learning4Content project.

G. Intellectual property rights
''In every grant where Foundation resources are used to create products, agreement about the licensing of these products must be made explicit in the grant application. Products include but are not limited to reports, papers, publications, content, and software.''

COL's WikiEducator subscribes to the Free Cultural Works Definition (http://freedomdefined.org/Definition) which only permits free content alternatives of the Creative Commons licenses. In adherence to COL's guidelines on copyright for sharing educational resources, this project supports the Creative Commons Attribution and Share Alike license (http://www.col.org/colweb/webdav/site/myjahiasite/shared/docs/COL_Copyright_Guidelines_May_2007.doc). All reports, papers and content developed under the Learning4Content project will be released under this free content license.

The Mediawiki software used for WikiEducator uses the GNU General Public License of the Free Software Foundation.

H. Compelling reasons for the grant

 * 1) The Learning4Content project will be able to test and implement an approach purposefully designed to scale up the rate of free content production for education by leverage COL's experience in achieving economies of scale associated with skills development in using wiki technology for collaborative authoring of OERs across 53 Commonwealth states.
 * 2) The project will demonstrate the feasibility of a networked ecosystem among leading free content projects.
 * 3) The project will provide an international test case to identify the technological requirements for an "open participatory learning infrastructure" that are appropriate for developing society contexts.
 * 4) Learning4Content establishes the foundations for a community-driven free textbook project by increasing the number of skilled educators to participate in collaborative authoring using social software technologies;

=SECTION 3: Logic model=

''A logic model is a graphical representation of cause and effect that links inputs to activities to outcomes, typically by tracing events over time. It describes how an organization or project plans to get from here (inputs) to there (outcomes). Although the model shows forward movement, an organization often begins its planning process by articulating its intended outcomes and then working backward to determine how to achieve them.''



=SECTION 4: Programme chart=

=Section 5:Financial information=

Budget for the Learning4Content project for the year ending 31 December 2008

Notes


 * A flat rate of $1000 per workshop is used to cover a small honorarium for the facilitator and limited workshop incidentals. Specifications for minimum duration of the workshop are covered in the selection process.
 * Facilitators are required to identify host institutions that will provide access to computer laboratories for the training.
 * Participants must have access to a computer with an Internet connection for completion of the lesson content on WikiEducator