AI is deeply connected to networked digital technologies — from the bazillions of works harvested from the internet to train AI to all the ways AI is shaping our online experience, from generative content to recommendation algorithms and simultaneous translation. Creative Commons engaged participants at Wikimania on August 15, 2023 to shape how AI fits into the people-powered policy agenda of the Movement for a Better Internet.
The goal of this session was to brainstorm and prioritize challenges that AI brings to the public interest commons and imagine ways we can meet those challenges. In order to better understand participant perspectives, we used Pol.is, a “real-time survey system, that helps identify the different ways a large group of people think about a divisive or complicated issue.” This system is a powerful way to aggregate and understand people’s opinions through written expression and voting.
Nate Angell and I both joined the conference virtually, two talking heads on a screen, while the majority of approximately 30 participants joined in-person in Singapore. After introducing the Movement for a Better Internet and asking folks to briefly introduce themselves, we immediately started our first Pol.is with the question: “What are your concerns about AI?” If you’re curious, you can pause here, and try out Pol.is for yourself.
In Pol.is, participants voted on a set of ten seed statements — statements that we wrote, based on previous community conversations,— they added their own concern statements, and then they voted on concern statements written by their peers in the room. Participants can choose “Agree,” “Disagree,” or “Unsure.” Overall, 31 total people voted and 532 votes were cast (with an average of 17.16 votes per person).
96% of participants agreed that “Verification of accuracy, truthfulness and provenance of AI-produced content is difficult.” This statement drove the most consensus among all participants in the group. Consensus indicates that people from different opinion groups have a common position, or in other words, people who do not usually agree with each other agree on this topic. The other two most consensus-driving concerns were: “Large-scale use of AI may have a negative impact on the environment” and “I suspect a push for greater copyright control would eventually be appropriated and exploited by big companies. E.g. Apple and privacy.”
The most divisive statement was: “AI is developing too fast and its impact is unclear.” Divisive implies the areas with the most differing opinions (rather than with the most disagreement, as widespread disagreement is a consensus too). The other three most divisive statements were also the most unclear statements, with more than 30% voting “Unsure”: “AI can negatively impact the education of students,” “AI can use an artist’s work without explicit permission or knowledge,” and “AI and the companies behind them steal human labor without credit and without pay.”
Back in our workshop room, we viewed the data report live, which was somewhat difficult due to limitations in text size. Participants in the room elaborated on their concerns, highlighting why they agreed or disagreed on particular points.
In the second half of the workshop, we asked participants to imagine ways we can meet one particular challenge. We focused our discussion on the only statement with 100% agreement: “AI makes it easier to create disinformation at scale.”
Participants were asked to write down their ideas in a shared document, and stand up to share their thoughts in front of the audience. The three major buckets for innovation in this space were education, technical advancement, and cultural advocacy. In education, participants brought up the need for critical thinking education to reinforce the ability to identify reliable sources and AI tools education to allow more people to understand how misinformation is created. Technical projects included developing AI to tackle disinformation, building a framework for evaluating AI tools during development, and creating better monitoring systems for misinformation. Participants also highlighted the need for cultural advocacy, from building the culture of citations and human-generated reference work to policy advocacy to maintain the openness of the commons.
Creative Commons will continue community consultations with Open Future Foundation in the next month. Sign up and learn more here.
“Andean Textile Fragment” by Peruvian. 1500. Walters Art Museum., here slightly cropped, is released into the public domain under CC0.
In January we hosted a webinar titled “Whose Open Culture? Decolonization, Indigenization, and Restitution” discussing the intersection of indigenous knowledge and open sharing. Our conversation spanned a variety of topics regarding indigenous sovereignty over culture, respectful terminology, and the legacy of colonialism and how it still exists today. While we strive for more open sharing, it is important to recognize the cases where culture should not be open to all.
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples had a significant impact on the ability for indigenous people to advocate for their rights, and for institutions to have clearer guidance on the treatment of indigenous cultural expressions. But there is much more to be done. Institutions stewarding indigenous cultural expressions must be patient and take the time needed to build relationships with the communities whose culture is in their collections in order to establish ways of sharing with consideration and consent.
In this webinar, we were joined by:
Jane Anderson, Vice Chair & Founding Member, Strategic Advisor, Co-Founder, Local Contexts
Stephany RunningHawk Johnson, Executive Director, Local Contexts
Camille Callison, University Librarian, University of the Fraser Valley
Erna Lilje, Curator, Indigenous knowledge & material culture, Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen
We shared a reading list in our announcement post, here are some more links as shared by the panelists and by some audience members during the conversation:
In this series, we tackle some of the more complex challenges that face the open culture movement, bringing in speakers with personal and professional expertise on various topics. Watch past webinars:
The CC Open Education community had a busy 2023! Five project teams, spanning nine countries, worked on open education projects ranging from developing STEAM, interactive, and climate change-related OER, to international curriculum alignment and translation work. Community members also worked on multimedia resources supporting the UNESCO Recommendation on OER, and presented in CC’s biannual Open Education Lightning Talks. Community members reflect on their accomplishments, lessons learned and what is next below. CC staff lightly edited text for clarity.
Building a K-12 Interactive Open Textbook
Update from Werner Westermann: This project developed a K-12 Open Textbook in the subject of Civics and Citizenship subject for 11th and 12th Grade, aligned to the official K-12 curriculum of Chile. With the CC funding, we made 60% progress on one Open Textbook for 11th grade, surpassing ourinitial goal. We worked with teachers, creators of the interactive resources and a graphic designer on all four learning units of the 11th grade Open Textbook, as defined by Chile’s official curriculum for Civics and Citizenship. To help others’ open education projects, we share some lessons we encountered:
This type of community engagement requires specific and explicit guidelines and benchmarks for quality. Like any book development, this Open Textbook required a general editor to orchestrate community contributions, manage expectations, and enforce quality guidelines and benchmarks.
Standardized workflowsare necessary. It was most efficient to load content, then follow up with graphic and interactive resources, rather than focus on those specifics first. We tested an AI Smart Import tool that creates H5P interactive resources in seconds, in order to save up to 50% development time.
Community adoption of a tech tool (the H5P editor in our case) requires flexibility to adapt to the tool for mastery. We had a lot of discussions about what H5P could and could not achieve. For better results, postpone specific expectations and work on what is editor enabled.
What’s next? The next step is to complete the 11th grade Open Textbook development and publish it, pending funding. We also await an AI tool for Spanish support to speed up production.
Popularization of OER in Ukraine: Small steps to a big goal
Update fromTetiana Kolesnykova: Polytechnic University of Milan and the Ukrainian State University of Science and Technologies (USUST) partnered to translate and localize a MOOC on OER: “Using Open Educational Resources in Teaching.” This OER provides equitable and inclusive access to education amidst full-scale war in Ukraine. Despite the war, the project achieved its aim: there is now a version of the MOOC for Ukrainian learners. Our lessons from this work included: listening to each other, negotiating where needed, and compromise. We were not looking for perfection but for a good result to be achieved within all limitations. With teamwork and strong motivation, we solved the challenges of the project together; and the end result exceeded our expectations. As a result: All MOOC subtitles for each video, the course description and all tests were made available in Ukrainian, ensuring participants gain a better understanding and support with the final assessment. We also created eight additional instructions and illustrations in Ukrainian. We developed a mock-up of the Certificate of Completion of the course “Using Open Educational Resources in Teaching” adapted into Ukrainian. Several faculty and librarians tested the MOOC in Ukrainian.
We started promoting the Ukrainian localisation of the MOOC “Using Open Educational Resources in Teaching” in October. Politecnico di Milano (METID) and the Scientific Library of the Ukrainian State University of Science and Technologies (USUST) presented our collaborative project at international conferences, national webinars, publications, and on the website of the USUST Scientific Library.
While it is too early to measure the success of the Ukrainian MOOC “Using Open Educational Resources in Teaching,” we know it is already raising awareness of OER opportunities among the wider Ukrainian academic community.
What’s next? We will continue our teamwork, and ignite new OER adaptations in a sustainable way.
STEAM Ahead with OER in South Africa project
Update from Dan McGuire: This collaborative project between Ghana, South Africa and the US created, curated, and sourced OER content aligned to Ghanaian and South African education standards.
Our colleague, Peter Amoabil observed that using the MoodleBox and OER materials provided learning opportunities for students without the need to rely on the internet, which is very useful in Ghana where over 95% of schools don’t have internet access. Students were able to use the digital content for all subjects and especially for reading in their mother tongue, Dagbani. Reading materials in Dagbani have previously been very hard to acquire.
In South Africa, we were able to translate both reading materials and math assessments from English into isiXhosa for students in grades Pre-K through 1st grade. Students were excited to learn using WIFI devices.
What’s next? Translating educational materials into the students’ mother tongue is especially valuable and innovative. We plan to expand the professional development for use of digital OER materials aligned to national standards to more teachers in both Ghana and South Africa. This project helped us establish a process to create and deliver learning materials to Pre-K — 6th grade students. We will also be making the OER professional development courses and instructional content available via open repositories.
Climate Change: OER integrating SDG components in Education in two Southeast Asian Countries
Update from Dr. Suma Parahakaran: This project worked with the Malaysian Ministry of Education as well as Malaysian and Laotian schools, creating OER and experiential learning activities. Primary and Secondary school students engaged in cross disciplinary, technical, and integrated learning activities, such as setting up solar panels on rooftops. They got to attend workshops and brainstorms with international experts and teachers. Students also created videos, brochures and other resources focused on ethics, climate change and sustainable development education. Finally, students then entered a competition related to Climate Change and Sustainable Development OER. For more information and results of the competition, view the project website.
What’s next?While there are private Youtube links to the videos, they will be made public soon. Project lead: Dr. Suma Parahakaran
Alquimetricos
Update from Fernando Daguanno: Alquimétricos is an OER project that uses connectors and sticks to build geometric structures for STEAM education. Through experiential learning, the project develops students’ spatial, mathematical and kinetic understanding. The Alquimétricos Kit Zero is already published online and available to purchase: see our repositories for ready-to-print and fully editable CC BY files, including content, packaging and labeling.
During 2023 we developed a new product line of elementary-school-oriented kits, drawing from eight years of experiences and research. The kits include a deck of cards with guidelines, a bunch of hubs and sticks that help educators make Alquimétricos’ activities dynamic in the classroom. The new kit was developed and introduced as part of the (FADU-UBA) DiJu post degree “Toys and Games Design” course 2023. It was launched in Argentina at the Open Education Meeting in Bariloche – Argentinian Patagonia, presented at the OpenEd Conference 2023 and displayed at the CC Global Summit in Mexico City.
What’s next? Next steps include translation to Portuguese and English and sharing the project in global OER repositories. We will seek support proofreading and sharking Kit Zero in a community call in early 2024.
Global Commons: Unlocking Open Education with Creative Commons
Update from Lisa Di Valentino and John Okewole: This project developed a short animated video describing Creative Commons and how CC licenses support the implementation of the United Nations Recommendation on OER. We currently have a first version of the video created by Brainboxx Studios for which we will re-record the English narration. We have also solicited translations of the transcript from other subgroup members in the nine other UNESCO languages, and have offers for translation in Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Italian (of which we now have a draft), and Spanish.
What’s next? We will finalize the English video and determine how to translate the video text. We will also design handouts in the various languages explaining the benefits of using Creative Commons licensing for open educational resources.
CC Open Education Lightning Talks
Lightning Talks are seven-minute presentations on a given area of expertise or work. Based on community demand, CC hosted Open Education Lighting Talks online in February and in-person, at the CC Summit in October. Community members’ presentations ranged from explorations of OER for social justice to practical applications, such as using machine translation algorithms for OER translation and recommendations for digital publishing. CC also presented a forthcoming microcredential course on which we are partnering with the University of Nebraska Omaha, in effort to bring more open licensing expertise to new audiences.
What’s next? We look forward to learning more from the open education community in future CC Open Education Lightning Talks!
Creative Commons extends our gratitude to the inspiring CC community members making a difference in their educational contexts. We look forward to continued open education collaborations in 2024! If you would like to join our Open Education community, visit the CC Open Education Platform site for more information.
At Creative Commons, we believe that addressing global challenges – like the climate crisis – requires opening the knowledge about those challenges. We are thrilled to announce the release of our “Recommendations for Better Sharing of Climate Data”— the culmination of a nine-month research initiative from our Open Climate Data project. These guidelines are a result of collaboration between Creative Commons and government agencies and intergovernmental organizations. They mark a significant milestone in our ongoing effort to enhance the accessibility, sharing, and reuse of open climate data to address the climate crisis. Our goal is to share strategies that align with existing data sharing principles and pave the way for a more interconnected and accessible future for climate data.
Our recommendations offer practical steps and best practices, crafted in collaboration with key stakeholders and organizations dedicated to advancing open practices in climate data. We provide recommendations for 1) legal and licensing terms, 2) using metadata values for attribution and provenance, and 3) management and governance for better sharing.
The full report can be accessed [link to gdoc] and the PDF version is available here [link]. Access the summary version [link] for a concise overview, including its PDF version [link].
Opening climate data requires an examination of the public’s legal rights to access and use the climate data, often dictated by copyright and licensing. This legal detail is sometimes missing from climate data sharing and legal interoperability conversations. Our recommendations suggest two options: Option A: CC0 + Attribution Request, in order to maximize reuse by dedicating climate data to the public domain, plus a request for attribution; and Option B: CC BY 4.0, for retaining data ownership and legal enforcement of attribution. We address how to navigate license stacking and attribution stacking for climate data hosts and for users working with multiple climate data sources.
We also propose standardized human- and machine-readable metadata values that enhance transparency, reduce guesswork, and ensure broader accessibility to climate data. We built upon existing model metadata schemas and standards, including those that address license and attribution information. These recommendations address a gap and provide metadata schema that standardize the inclusion of upfront, clear values related to attribution, licensing and provenance.
Lastly, we highlight four key aspects of effective climate data management: designating a dedicated technical managing steward, designating a legal and/or policy steward, encouraging collaborative data sharing, and regularly revisiting and updating data sharing policies in accordance with parallel open data policies and standards.
As we release these recommendations, we extend an invitation to join us in an ongoing journey of collaboration. Together, we can continue to develop policies and practices that open up data, fostering advancements in climate research and innovation. Send us your comments at openclimatedata@creativecommons.org.
2023 was quite a year for the Creative Commons (CC) Open Culture Program, thanks to generous funding from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing & Peter Baldwin. As the team grew from one full time employee to a team of three, we have had increased capacity to carry out our programmatic work. At the same time, pandemic-related travel restrictions eased, allowing the Open Culture Team to lead and participate in events and convenings in diverse locations, including Morocco, Uruguay, USA, Switzerland, UK, Mexico, and Portugal, to name a few. This allowed us to connect with community members in person, further cementing pre-existing strategic partnerships and engaging with new audiences. In this blog post we look back on some of the year’s key achievements.
Here are the top 5 things we are particularly proud of (in no particular order):
We completed Open Culture Voices — a series of insightful video interviews with open culture experts from around the world. It came to a close in November, gathering ca. 70K views across all platforms.
