The change will allow instructors to publish and share their courses — syllabi, handouts, and so on — under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY).
This will mean that, for the first time, content in Blackboard will be available to those who aren’t registered for a course — learners not enrolled, learners not on campus. Professors will be able to share their material to Facebook and Twitter.
Blackboard also says that it’s revising its policies so that institutions that do open up their course materials this way don’t incur any additional licensing costs when people access the materials, even via webinars and the like. That means non-traditional, non-enrolled, non-revenue generating students will be able to access the material as “guests” without forcing schools to pay more.
“Sharing educational content is much more complicated that simply clicking the new ‘Share’ button,” he writes. How will universities handle the licensing of courses? Is it up to individual faculty? Will universities devise larger strategies to connect their open course content to other online efforts — both on their own campuses and alongside others?