Connexions is a global repository of educational content provided by Rice University. The entire collection is available free of charge, and students and learners alike can explore all the content they desire.^[1]

Connexions was one of the first initiatives, pioneering, along with other projects such as MIT OpenCourseWare and the Public Library of Science, the idea of open educational resources — that scholarly and educational content can and should be shared, re-used and recombined, interconnected and continually enriched.

Subject matter[link]

Connexions contains educational materials at all levels — from children to college students to professionals — organized in small modules that can be connected into larger courses. Material is authored by people from all walks of life. Much content is created by university professors^{[citation needed]}, but the collection also contains very popular music content^[2] created by a part-time music teacher.^[3]

Connexions popular material is translated into many languages, aided by the open-content licensing.

Copyright[link]

To ensure the legal reusability of content, Connexions requires authors to license materials they publish under the Creative Commons Attribution License^[4] (presently, version 3.0). Under this license, the author retains the right to be credited (attributed) wherever the content is reused. The author grants others the right to copy, distribute, and display the work, and to derive works based on it, as long as the author is credited.

Comparison to other open education projects[link]

• First, in scale: Connexions has content from all over the world in a growing variety of languages, not just materials from one specific school or university. It also collects materials to support education in K-12, community college, university, continuing education, and industrial training settings.^[3]

• Second, by the way communities are supported: Connexions is globally accessible to anyone to not only read and use the materials, but also take them, customize them, and contribute them back to the repository or not.

• Third, in the way it is organized: Connexions is grassroots organized from the bottom up rather than from the top down like many other open education projects. Everyone is free to join and take on a leadership role.^[1]

Technical details[link]

Three key factors enable the collaborative environment in Connexions:

• Copyright licenses that preserve attribution but permit sharing: Creative Commons "attribution" licenses^[4]
• Semantic markup of documents using XML (extensible markup language) so they can be searched for and combined. The markup language used is called “CNXML”.^[5]
• Workspaces that facilitate collaboration by providing shared space, the ability to version materials and derive content from existing modules.^[6]

Funding[link]

The Connexions project was started in 1999 and initially supported by individuals and Rice University. That support has been substantially supplemented by grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.^[7]

See also[link]

• Creative Commons, the organization that created the licenses used by Connexions
• Open educational resources, the idea that educational resources can be shared in general through copyleft or other free culture movement licenses
• MIT OpenCourseWare, a similar initiative by MIT
• Rice University Press, Rice's all-digital platform based on the Connexions technology
• Wikiversity, a Wikimedia Foundation project, devoted to learning materials and activities

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• Connexions homepage, cnx.org
• TED Talk dated 2006-02 Founder Richard Baraniuk discussing Connexions