Open Content

In Feb, I gave a talk at the MoodleMoot in Albuquerque about developing open content like open source software. Right now there are two primary models for developing creative commons (or similar) content. First, a single author develops a piece of content and shares it with the world. Comments and suggestions for improvement are fed back to the author, who then makes changes or not. Second, the wiki model, allows anyone to develop edit or author, with limited version control or QA. So what you see one moment may be different from what the next person sees.

In this presentation, I argue for a middle way, mirroring the open source development process. Anyone can contribute, but only trusted members of the community can commit patches to the main release. There is a punctuated release cycle to release a new version, which has been quality checked and used by the beta testers.