Connexions evolves as it grows
Online knowledge base surpasses 10,000 modules, launches Consortium, plans enterprise version

BY MIKE WILLIAMS
Rice News staff

How Connexions has grown sometimes amazes even Joel Thierstein, the fellow pushing hardest for that very thing.

The Rice initiative to give knowledge an open-source home is building strength upon strength as it fulfills its mission to serve as a repository for educational materials of all kinds.

	A branding feature to be released on Halloween will allow organizations to put their own look on content in their Connexions lenses.

This week, the nearly 10-year-old endeavor neared a milestone as the 10,000th module was soon to be posted to Connexions. In Connexions-speak, a module is a chunk of knowledge, or learning object, that can stand alone or be part of a collection — or any number of collections — assembled by users, who may be assembling materials for a formal course or simply learning for pleasure.

“We’re on the exponential-growth part of the curve now,” said Thierstein, Connexions’ executive director and the driving force behind a range of initiatives that will soon expand the program’s reach.

With more than a million visits a month, Connexions has already become one of the world’s most popular open-education resources, as well as one of the most comprehensive. And it only gets better from here.

Thierstein is promoting the next step in its evolution, the Connexions Consortium, which will help shape the platform’s direction as well as support it financially. He’s also preparing to offer an enterprise version of Connexions’ sophisticated software.

“The Consortium will ultimately be responsible for the platform,” said Thierstein, whose goal is to make Connexions a self-sustaining resource. “This is a big thing for us. We’ve only just launched it, and we’ve already got several members.”

The Consortium Web site, http://cnxconsortium.org/, which went live this month, pitches it as “a unique opportunity to shape the Connexions platform and to leverage it to create new markets, expand existing markets and participate directly in the revolution that continues to change the way the world of education works.”

Members will pay from $2,500 to $20,000 for a seat at the table, which will get them a range of benefits and a say in how Connexions grows. Thierstein said founding members would receive special benefits and a discount on dues.

The enterprise version of Connexions, on track to debut in January 2010, will let companies run the open-source software to make proprietary information available to in-house clients while maintaining links to the larger resource.

“The platform is robust and can be used in a global corporation without any problem,” said Thierstein. “They’ll get, effectively, a shrink-wrapped version of Connexions to launch on their own servers.

“It enhances our mission, because these people are potential Consortium members. They’ll want the software to be maintained and kept up to date,” he said. “Also, they can take advantage of all the information academe has poured into Connexions, draw it into their own systems and make it accessible to their people.”

A branding feature to be released on Halloween will allow organizations to “put their own look on content in their Connexions lenses,” he said.

Thierstein has reason to believe the next 10,000 Connexions modules will appear much faster than the first. For instance, Connexions is providing a home to the Shuttleworth Foundation’s Siyavula project and hundreds of free lessons for K-12 students. “They told us they have 40,000 pages of material to upload,” he said. “I don’t know how many modules that will wind up being, but it will be a lot.

“I hope we hit 20,000 modules in the next year or so. We’ve got a great reputation in the education community, and the more content in Connexions, the more likely people are to add.”