IEEE-SPS / Connexions Joint Project on Open Access Education Richard Baraniuk Sidney Burrus Joel Thierstein Ray Wagner Connexions Rice University cnx.org.

IEEE-SPS / Connexions Joint Project on

Open Access Education

Richard Baraniuk Sidney Burrus Joel Thierstein Ray Wagner

Connexions Rice University

cnx.org

executive summary

IEEE-SPS/Connexions partnership on high-quality, certified, open-access educational content on signal processing

– IEEE content development project for K-12 to lifelong learning for practicing engineers

– IEEE certification process for open-access educational modules and courses

new opportunity for IEEE-SPS outreach and visibility

IEEE-SPS members gain access to and ability to contribute to a high-quality SP educational repository

open access movement

guiding principle: knowledge should be free and open to use and re-use

draws inspiration from open-source software Linux, Apache, Mozilla, Firefox

enabled by recent developments in info tech

authorretainscopyright

but opensaccessviaopenlicense

200+ million licensed works

Connexions (cnx.org)

• non-profit open education publishing project

• goal: make high-quality educational content available to anyone, anywhere, anytime for free on the web and at very low cost in print

• open-licensed repository of Lego-block modules that comprise courses/collections

• open-source tools enable authors, instructors, and learners to create, rip, mix, burn modules and courses

• Creative Commons open-content licenses, XML tools

Connexions (cnx.org)

• founded in 1999 by Richard Baraniuk, Sidney Burrus, Don Johnson (Rice faculty)

• initial content base created in signal processing– now also engineering, science, mathematics, statistics,

computing, history, anthropology, business, K-12 science and music, …

– translations in Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, German, Finnish, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, …

– 270+ courses, 4700+ modules

• global reach: 600k unique users monthly20 million hitsfrom 200 countries50% of hits outside USA

one of the most-used open education web sites

dsp in Connexions

stanfordillinois

michiganwisconsinberkeley

ohio statega tech

uteprice

cambridgenorway

italy[NSF P4I support]

spanish translation

Univ. Texas-El Paso

selected partners

lensescertification by peer review filtering

lensescertification by peer review filtering

ieee.org/sp/cnxcnx.org/ieee-sp

cnx.org/lenses/ni stanford.edu/cnx

benefits to IEEE-SPS

• free and convenient educational materials development and delivery platform for the SP community at large

• new opportunity for IEEE-SPS visibility and brand recognition

• outreach opportunity beyond the traditional borders of signal processing (extending to practitioners, educators, and students at all levels from K-12 through PhD)

• new outlet for authors’ unpublished educational materials

• new community building tool

• SPS taking lead in potentially IEEE-wide initiative

proposed project

1. IEEE-SPS open-access content development

2. IEEE-SPS review/certification (lens)

proposed project (1)

IEEE-SPS open-access content development

• from individual modules to complete courses/textbooks

• existing SPS Connexions content from don johnson, doug jones, rob nowak, nick kingsbury, justin romberg, j-c pesquet, lee potter, phil schniter, clay scott, ivan selesnick, sidney burrus, richard baraniuk, ed doering, davide rocchesso, anders gjendemsjø, minh do, …

• informal commitments to develop content from martin vetterli and jelena kovacevic (“wavelets and subband coding” book), charlie bouman, jan allebach, ed delp, mark smith, stephen mcLaughlin (CUP), al hero (CUP), julius smith, jean yves tourneret, patrick flandrin, mari ostendorf, alex acero, …

proposed project (2)

IEEE-SPS review/certification (lens)

– IEEE-SPS to review and certify Connexions’ open-access SP materials

– possible solution: small oversight/editorial board responsible for identifying reviewers

and making editorial decisions

?cnx.org

proposed project (1)

IEEE-SPS open-access content development

• from individual modules to complete courses/textbooks• initial focus on 3-4 content areas (TBD) – e.g. theory and

methods, biometrics, imaging, image processing, video, speech• each area to have a “champion”• volunteer translation into Spanish and Chinese

• existing SP Connexions content from don johnson, doug jones, rob nowak, nick kingsbury, justin romberg, j-c pesquet, lee potter, phil schniter, clay scott, ivan selesnick, sidney burrus, richard baraniuk, ed doering, davide rocchesso, anders gjendemsjø, minh do…

• informal commitments to develop content from martin vetterli and jelena kovacevic (wavelets and subband coding book), charlie bouman, jan allebach, ed delp, mark smith, stephen mcLaughlin (CUP), al hero (CUP), julius smith, jean yves tourneret, patrick flandrin, mari ostendorf, alex acero, …

action plan• develop IEEE-SPS/CNX agreement re asset allocation

(equipment, staffing, etc.)– (potentially) hire IEEE-SPS project manager– ray wagner to act as CNX liaison

• populate small oversight/editorial board– hammer out criteria and process for lens certification

• content development– identify champions and invite authors in initial focus areas– develop best practices documentation– LaTeX/Word to XML conversion process/tools

• visibility– booth and free tutorials at ICASSP 2008 and ICIP 2009– calls for participation and progress reports in Signal

Processing Magazine, Spectrum

• anticipated rollout: january 2008 for initial contributions