EDUCAUSE | Contributed by Organizations or Campuses; Articles, Papers, and Reports; and OSS

New Tool for Online Collections

ckeller — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:21:06 -0600

Open source software package allows libraries, museums and collectors to more easily archive, display and manage their online holdings.

Traversing the LMS terrain

ckeller — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 14:37:29 -0600

With the emergence of strong open source contenders in the Learning Management System (LMS) arena, many schools are evaluating whether to stay with one of the commercial LMS products such as Blackboard/WebCT or moving to one of the open source solutions which are free to use, but offer no corporate support. There are many factors contributing to such a decision beyond price including migration from a current LMS, technical and faculty support and buy in. In the end, it is a decision that an institution needs to be well informed to make.

What's a Kuali?

ckeller — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 14:20:05 -0500

"A cute name belies the mission of this open source financial management software for higher education, which soon enters its next incarnation."

Blackboard Makes a Pledge

drupal — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 11:47:54 -0600

"After months of criticism that its patent policies had the potential to squelch important education projects, Blackboard on Thursday announced a "patent pledge" under which it vowed not to assert its patent rights to sue open source projects or home-grown software used by colleges and universities."

Open-source Group Wants Educational Patent Reversed

drupal — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 12:48:59 -0600

"A legal center is trying to overturn a patent it says threatens three open-source educational projects, a sign of the tension between patent holders and the collaborative programming community."

Blackboard Patents Challenged

drupal — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 10:36:48 -0600

"Open source group asked U.S. to revoke rights asserted by software giant. Sides trade charges on why compromise talks collapsed."

Open Education 2006: Community, Culture, and Content

drupal — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 12:47:58 -0500

Open Education 2006: Community, Culture, and Content was a multidisciplinary event designed to promote the discussion of the variety of research, development, and other activities necessary to move the field of open education forward. The proceedings include over 30 papers on topics such as Open educational resources, Tools and software supporting open education and Reusing and remixing open educational resources.

Analysis of Open Source Principles in Diverse Collaborative Communities

drupal — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 15:00:34 -0500

Open source culture and practice emerged as software hackers took control over the production, ownership and distribution of their skilled work. This revolution, quiet and unnoticed by most, began over twenty years ago. Along the way, free and open source software hackers developed organizational and dialog structures to support their ethos, creating a successful model for collaboration. This paper applies traits common to successful free software and open source hacker communities as a framework to analyze three non–hacker collaborative communities.

Software and Collaboration in Higher Education: A Study of Open Source Software

drupal — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 12:01:46 -0500

In recent years over a dozen open source software (OSS) projects have been launched among higher education institutions with the aim of meeting the community's needs more effectively and at less cost than do commercial options presently available. There is, however, a concern in the community that its adoption is hindered by uncertainty about future support for and improvements in the software. The creation of a new organization, which we refer to with generic term "OOSS" (Organization for Open Source Software), has been proposed to address this need. This concept has received significant interest from the community and from a group of senior college and university administrators. There is a desire for further exploration of the need for such an organization and for a clearer definition of what its mission and areas of activity would be.

Paul Courant, Professor of Economics and former Provost at the University of Michigan, has agreed to lead a study in collaboration with Ithaka. Michael Carter, a consultant with decades of experience in academic computing and instructional technologies with major universities and leading companies in the technology sector, is also assisting in this effort. The goal of the OOSS study is to evaluate the landscape and market environment for open source software (OSS) created by and for the higher education community, to assess the need for an organization to promote the support and adoption of these OSS projects, and to define this organization's mission and service model, should we determine that such an organization is desirable.

OSS Watch Survey 2006

drupal — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 15:57:29 -0500

During February and March 2006, OSS Watch conducted a survey of UK Higher Education (HE) and Further Education (FE) institutions. The purpose of the survey was:
* to produce an up-to-date picture of the deployment of open source software in HEs and FEs;
* to draw comparisons with the results of a similar survey undertaken in 2003;
* to scope areas for future work by OSS Watch.