Chronic Learning - An online repository for open-source educational materials

[baileythegreen]

Project Lead:

Bailey Harrington, @baileythegreen

Mentors:

Piv Gopalasingam, @PivG
Melissa Burke, @burkemlou

Week 1 (31 August - 4 September 2020): Meet your mentor!

• Create an account on GitHub
• Check if you have access to the HackMD notes set up for your meetings with your mentor
• Prepare to meet your mentor(s) by completing a short homework provided in the HackMD notes
• Complete your own copy of the open leadership self-assessment and share it with your mentor.
• Make sure you know when and how you'll be meeting with your mentor.

Before Week 2 (7 - 11 September 2020): Cohort Call (Welcome to Open Life Science!)

• Create an issue on the OLS-2 GitHub repository for your OLS work and share the link to your mentor.

• Draft a brief vision statement using your goals

  This lesson from the Open Leadership Training Series (OLTS) might be helpful

• Leave a comment on this issue with your draft vision statement & be ready to share this on the call

• Check the Syllabus for notes and connection info for all the cohort calls.

Before Week 3 (14 - 18 September 2020): Meet your mentor!

• Look up two other projects and comment on their issues with feedback on their vision statement
• Complete this compare and contrast assignment about current and desired community interactions and value exchanges
• Complete your Open Canvas (instructions, canvas)
• Share a link to your Open Canvas in your GitHub issue
• Start your Roadmap
• Comment on your issue with your draft Roadmap
• Suggest a cohort name at the bottom of the shared notes and vote on your favorite with a +1

Before Week 4 (21 - 25 September 2020): Cohort Call (Tooling and roadmapping for Open projects)

• Look up two other projects and comment on their issues with feedback on their open canvas.

Week 5 and later

• Create a GitHub repository for your project
• Add the link to your repository in your issue
• Use your canvas to start writing a README.md file, or landing page, for your project
• Link to your README in a comment on this issue
• Add an open license to your repository as a file called LICENSE.md
• Add a Code of Conduct to your repository as a file called CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
• Invite new contributors to into your work!

This issue is here to help you keep track of work as you start Open Life Science program. Please refer to the OLS-2 Syllabus for more detailed weekly notes and assignments past week 4.

[baileythegreen]

Vision Statement

I'm working (hopefully, eventually with others) to create a repository of open, accessible educational resources for academics and individuals trying to teach or learn something new, so that the learning curve for new ideas is a manageable one.

Twitter bio

Chronic Learning is an open resource for academics and individuals trying to teach or learn something new. It stems from a belief that knowledge should be free.

Link to ReadMe:
Chronic Learning ReadMe

Link to Open Canvas:
Chronic Learning Open Canvas

Link to Roadmap (Github Project):
Chronic Learning Roadmap

Link to Repository:
Chronic Learning Github Repository

[CooperSmout]

Hi @baileythegreen, sounds like a great project. Just in case you're not aware (I didn't see you in their Slack channel), there's a community called the Open Science Massively Open Online Community (OS-MOOC), which was originally conceived to develop an online course to teach researchers open science practices. I'm not sure how much overlap there is to what you're aiming to do here, but at the very least you might find some interested parties in that community. More information on their website, including how to join their Slack channel.

[baileythegreen]

Link to Open Canvas:
Chronic Learning Open Canvas

Link to Roadmap (Github Project):
Chronic Learning Roadmap

[baileythegreen]

@CooperSmout That sounds cool! I hadn't heard of them, but I will check it out.

[natty2012]

Hi Bailey, your project is really interesting. Looking forward to following in on more..

[evaherbst]

Hi! I just had a look at your Open Canvas, really interesting project! Will the topics of the courses be anything, or do you have a certain range in mind (e.g. a focus on science?).

I am following this with interest since we are also trying to create an online hub for resources (but a more specific type of workflow resource), and also are currently trying to work out where to host the website and those sorts of details.

[tlaguna]

Hi @baileythegreen ! Great project, I would love to contribute when it is running

About your open canvas, have you thought about how to generate your community of contributors? This is also important for my project so we can share ideas ;-)

[GeorgiaHCA]

Hi @baileythegreen! This is sounds like it could be a really useful resource. I like your vision statement because it is clear and unfussy, and it has a deefinite offer which will appeal to people.

[baileythegreen]

@evaherbst What exactly is a workflow resource? It sounds like a way of teaching a particular method, but I may be misunderstanding.

I envision my project as being very broad. Right now, the materials I have are all generated by me (so in fields I am more familiar with — biological sciences and programming), but the project is still in early stages. Right now I have a partially-built WordPress site for navigation and a large Dropbox for hosting materials. I am not sure these are the best solutions for long-term, but maybe a decent starting point.

[baileythegreen]

@tlaguna I am definitely looking for contributors!

I have thought a bit about how to build a community of contributors, but I am also in the midst of running some graduate student trainings at my institute, so have not had a lot of time recently. So far, my ideas boil down to: follow similar things on social media, share some content with appropriate tags to generate interest, and make it clear that contributors are welcome. However, I think some more targeted efforts are also going to be needed, and more content is needed before it makes sense to start sharing it. (Generating enough might require the help of some contributors.)

[smklusza]

I think this initiative is very promising. I myself sometimes have to teach courses a little outside my area of expertise so having materials from other academics and professionals that are subject matter experts in those areas would help tremendously in making sure that I can communicate those ideas effectively. Also, I love learning new things and this would be a chance for me to incorporate new ideas into research and other endeavors. Looking forward to seeing more about this project!

[baileythegreen]

@smklusza What field are you in, and what sorts of things do you end up teaching that are outside of your expertise? One of the things I need, aside from contributors, is ideas of what would be useful content.

[smklusza]

@baileythegreen I am traditionally a developmental geneticist and I am teaching at a 4-year university. So far I've had to teach Anatomy and Physiology, which isn't too far off the beaten path. Sometimes an elective course may need to be filled with something new that no one has taught before. I am likely to teach Biocomputing in the future, which is a senior level course introducing students to bioinformatics concepts. It would presently be a challenge for me to effectively communicate biological ideas in a programming and mathematics way. Hence, having open source educational materials from someone that is an expert in that area would be immensely helpful.

[baileythegreen]

@smklusza How fortuitous! I am a computational geneticist. And I work with many other computational geneticists/bioinformaticians! At the moment, I am quite busy delivering graduate student training, but perhaps it would be useful to have a more in-depth conversation about this in the coming weeks.

[baileythegreen]

@smklusza Another thing I am not sure of is how to find or direct advertising about this resource to those who would benefit. I'm a PhD student right now, so am not really hooked in to the teaching network at my university (and my institute doesn't actually participate in the teaching very much, either). Do you have any advice for reaching people who would benefit from this?

[baileythegreen]

Up Goer Five editor version of my vision statement:

I'm working to build a database of open, accessible learning materials to make learning something new, easier.

This still has three words that are not in the ten-hundred-most-common words (database, accessible, and materials), and I feel it loses a lot of the information.

Incidentally, if you don't know Up Goer Five, it is my favourite xkcd:

[smklusza]

@baileythegreen I definitely would love to talk more about this in the future! As for advice with reaching people, I don't have much specific advice beyond reaching out through social media and looking for education partnerships and groups that contain a significant number of people from PUIs/4-year colleges and universities. For example, I am a member of the Genetics Education Partnership (GEP), which crowdsources genome annotation work with undergraduate students that wind up in publications. In my limited experience, it seems like there's many of these teaching-centric groups that are still quite surprisingly isolated from others in terms of exposure. Something like this could be pitched to many groups and might help to connect more like-minded people with each other.

[baileythegreen]

@smklusza I've messaged you in the slack. Looking forward to talking some more.

[malvikasharan]

@all-contributors please add @baileythegreen for idea and content.

[allcontributors]

@malvikasharan

I've put up a pull request to add @baileythegreen! 🎉

[malvikasharan]

@all-contributors please add @CooperSmout for review.

[allcontributors]

@malvikasharan

I've put up a pull request to add @CooperSmout! 🎉

[malvikasharan]

@all-contributors please add @natty2012 for review.

[allcontributors]

@malvikasharan

I've put up a pull request to add @natty2012! 🎉

[malvikasharan]

@all-contributors please add @tlaguna for review.

[allcontributors]

@malvikasharan

I've put up a pull request to add @tlaguna! 🎉

[malvikasharan]

@all-contributors please add @GeorgiaHCA for review.

[allcontributors]

@malvikasharan

I've put up a pull request to add @GeorgiaHCA! 🎉

[malvikasharan]

@all-contributors please add @smklusza for review.

[allcontributors]

@malvikasharan

I've put up a pull request to add @smklusza! 🎉

[natty2012]

Hi @baileythegreen , I have a question on licensing, what were your considerations on the choice of the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license? will the non-commercial part of it restrict the use of the material for text-books for example, that are for commercial use?

[baileythegreen]

@natty2012

BY --> because I want anyone who contributes to have their work recognised.
SA --> because I want people to share derivative works openly, as well.

will the non-commercial part of it restrict the use of the material for text-books for example, that are for commercial use?

Maybe, but the purpose of this project doesn't really have use in textbooks in mind. One category of materials it aims to cover are those that are so niche andor modern that they aren't generally in textbooks. In my field of human genetics, for example, there are analyses that are used, and finding a basic explanation for them was very difficult for me because existing textbooks don't cover them and journal articles don't explain them.

I'll admit, I understand the NC component less-well. I went for it because I am not convinced that I want to allow commercial use, but I am also still debating the #licenses.

It is my understanding, however, that use of materials under a different license could still be negotiated with another party, if that was agreeable to the creator (I would require this) and of interest to the other party.

[natty2012]

@natty2012

BY --> because I want anyone who contributes to have their work recognised.
SA --> because I want people to share derivative works openly, as well.

will the non-commercial part of it restrict the use of the material for text-books for example, that are for commercial use?

Maybe, but the purpose of this project doesn't really have use in textbooks in mind. One category of materials it aims to cover are those that are so niche andor modern that they aren't generally in textbooks. In my field of human genetics, for example, there are analyses that are used, and finding a basic explanation for them was very difficult for me because existing textbooks don't cover them and journal articles don't explain them.

I'll admit, I understand the NC component less-well. I went for it because I am not convinced that I want to allow commercial use, but I am also still debating the #licenses.

It is my understanding, however, that use of materials under a different license could still be negotiated with another party, if that was agreeable to the creator (I would require this) and of interest to the other party.

I'm intrigued that you're focusing on the basics - which I agree too, may lack in textbooks, sometimes. I'm also happy to learn from you about negotiations with licensing is possible. Thank you for this, it'll lend some help for us as we think through the topic of licensing for our project.