Welcome to Open Spires
Keep in touch with the
latest project activities through the Open Spires Blog!
Audio and video recordings from the recent Beyond
Walls conference on Podcasting held at Oxford are now
available in the media centre to the right. These are made available
under Creative Commons .
Open Spires is a HEFCE/JISC pilot project starting in May 2009 and finishing end of April 2010. It has two purposes: to increase the amount of audio and video content released from Oxford as Open Content Resources (OER), and to enable the University to investigate and disseminate the institutional implications of making some of this material available as 'Open Content'. This means content that is available for reuse and redistribution by third parties globally, provided that it is used in a non-commercial way and is attributed to its creator.
This funding enables Oxford University to build upon the Oxford on iTunes U podcasting service launched in October 2008, which has widespread participation from Oxford academics. Oxford podcasts currently include recordings of public lectures, including those from eminent visiting speakers, interviews with researchers, and conference presentations. The project will have a global impact, as the free-to-download resources are in many cases from speakers, researchers and visiting lecturers with high international profiles.
Licensing as 'Open Content' would make it possible for the contributor(s) to sign an additional legal statement that makes the material available for reuse and redistribution globally provided that it is used in a non-commercial way and it is attributed to the relevant academic(s). Copyright remains with the originator.
Through the Open Spires project, we will research the practicalities of Open Content and then report back to the UK HE community on our findings. Within Oxford, the project will support colleagues who choose to make content available; there will be no requirement to make content available in this way.
Benefits:
- Make more high quality material openly available for teaching, learning and research;
- Ensure expert legal scrutiny - the complex licensing and IPR issues associated with Open Content will be overseen by Legal Services;
- Improved support for colleagues in making informed choices for open content licensing and distribution;
- Global impact - Enable Oxford to release more material from eminent speakers and researchers that has a global impact and relevance;
- Accessibility - text transcripts will be created to accompany and enhance the existing audio recordings;
Open Spires will look at:
- Scoping, requirements, use cases
- Policies, processes, workflows
- Open Content licences
- Service management
- Training and support
- Evaluation and dissemination