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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Ranit Schmelzer, 202.538.1065, [email protected]

Washington, D.C. (September 26, 2016) –  Nicole Allen, Director of Open Education for SPARC, issued the following statement commending Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Senator Michael Bennett (D-CO) for including support for open educational resources (OER) in Section 3 of the Innovation for Tomorrow’s Workforce Act of 2016 (S. 3344).

“SPARC commends Senator Hatch and Senator Bennet for promoting innovation in career and technical education programs through open educational resources. High quality career and technical education is key to preparing a strong and modern workforce, and the cost of acquiring high quality instructional materials and tools can be a significant barrier, particularly for those in our nation’s most economically distressed communities. 

“A growing body of evidence shows that using open educational resources in place of purchasing traditional resources can yield the same or better student outcomes, while substantially reducing costs. Section 3 of Hatch-Bennett bill would empower state and district leaders to invest in flexible open educational resources, so that the instructional materials supporting CTE programs are more affordable, sustainable and locally-relevant. We strongly encourage Congress to adopt the open educational resources language in this proposal as part of the next Perkins CTE Act reauthorization."

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SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, is a global coalition committed to making Open the default for research and education. SPARC empowers people to solve big problems and make new discoveries though the adoption of policies and practices that advance Open Access, Open Data, and Open Education. Learn more at sparcopen.org.

OpenCon is more than a conference. It’s a platform for the next generation to learn about Open Access, Open Education, and Open Data, develop critical skills, and catalyze action toward a more open system for sharing the world’s information—from scholarly and scientific research, to educational materials, to digital research data. OpenCon 2016 will be held in Washington, DC on November 12-14, with satellite events hosted around the world.

SPARC joined with allies CCSSO, SETDA and CoSN to host a briefing on Capitol Hill about Open Educational Resources (OER) today. The standing-room-only event educated Congressional staff about OER and how its use can help support student success across all levels of education.

The briefing kicked off with opening remarks from Congressman Jared Polis (CO-2) who co-chairs the bipartisan Congressional E-learning and Open Source Caucuses, which also co-sponsored the event. Congressman Polis has been a staunch supporter of OER in the House Rules and Education and Workforce Committees, co-sponsoring the House version of the Affordable College Textbook Act and backing language in the Every Student Succeeds Act that inserted OER as an allowable use of state grant funds.

[caption id="attachment_1931" align="aligncenter" width="350"] Congressman Jared Polis kicks off the OER briefing. (Image licensed CCBY by Creative Commons U.S.)[/caption]

SPARC also acknowledged other Congressional champions on OER, including Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Al Franken (D-MN), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Congressman Ruben Hinojosa (TX-15).

Moderated by SPARC’s Nicole Allen, the briefing panel include three compelling speakers who illuminated different angles of the OER space:

• Michael Carroll, Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law. Mike covered OER from the legal perspective, discussing how educational resources immediately become copyrighted once created, and how permission to openly use resources can be granted through Creative Commons licenses. He also addressed the difference between resources that are merely ‘free’ and those that are truly ‘open.’
• Ethan Senack, Higher Education Advocate at U.S. PIRG. Ethan covered the higher education perspective with emphasis on students. His message was that OER were a powerful means to expand equity and access in education. He also highlighted how textbook costs are crippling to college students and how taxpayers are impacted because of the funding we invest in higher education through student aid.
• Val Emrich, Director of Instructional Technology at the Maryland State Department of Education. Val spoke to the K-12 experience, highlighting how Maryland was one of 13 states to commit to supporting districts and educators to transition to using OER as part of the Department of Education-led #GoOpen Campaign. Val also provided rich details on how OER is being implemented at the ground level, including content curation and adaptation, and teacher professional development.

[caption id="attachment_1930" align="aligncenter" width="401"] Speakers on the Capitol steps (left to right) Mike Carroll of Creative Commons U.S., Nicole Allen of SPARC, Val Emrich of the Maryland State Department of Education, Layla Bonnot of CCSSO, and Ethan Senack from U.S. PIRG. (Image licensed CCBY by Creative Commons U.S.)[/caption]

The briefing follows just days after the Department of Education organized its first event for the #GoOpen Campaign, which brought together more than 100 state and district leaders, vendors and OER experts to discuss how to advance OER. SPARC attended the event and coordinated a session on defining and discovering OER.

Briefing Resources:

• Open Educational Resources FAQ
• Department of Education Open Licensing Policy Fact Sheet
• Briefing Invitation

Six months ago, a coalition of more than 100 organizations signed a letter calling on President Obama to adopt an Executive Branch-wide policy to open up federally funded educational materials to the public. Since then, the Administration has taken several significant steps in this direction, through the 3rd Open Government National Action Plan and the U.S. Department of Education (ED) Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on open licensing.

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has taken the latest and largest step by formally adopting a department-wide open licensing policy, which reads:

"…the Department of Labor requires intellectual property developed under a competitive Federal award process to be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license. This license allows subsequent users to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt the copyrighted work and requires such users to attribute the work in the manner specified by the recipient."

This language was officially posted in the Federal Register in December as part of an update to the DOL’s uniform grant making rules. It will apply to all intellectual property developed under future DOL competitive grant awards—which includes everything from books to manuals to computer code—and will ensure these resources are licensed for the public to freely use, share and build upon. According to an analysis by New America, the requirement will impact approximately $300-400 million in Federal awards each year.

This policy builds on DOL’s leadership on open licensing at the program level, most notably through the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grant program. Launched in 2011, this $2 billion program to improve workforce training required grantees to put a Creative Commons Attribution license on all grant-funded content and an appropriate open software license on grant-funded code. All of the openly licensed resources developed under TAACCCT are being archived online for public access at skillscommons.org.

The DOL open licensing policy is similar to ED’s proposed policy, in that both apply broadly to intellectual property produced through competitive grants, and require the use of a license that permits full reuse of the material on the condition of attribution. DOL takes an additional step by explicitly naming the Creative Commons Attribution license, although it does not make a special provision for software licensing, which ED’s proposed language does. Nether policy directly addresses the sharing and distribution of resources to the public once licensed, which will be a critical element for both agencies to address as they move toward implementation.

SPARC applauds DOL and the Obama Administration for ensuring that the public can freely and fully use the resources that our taxpayer dollars fund, and for the Administration’s ongoing leadership on this important issue. We look forward to working with our allies inside and outside the government to expand this type of policy to additional agencies to ensure that public investments ultimately serve their intended purpose: promoting the public good.