KMDI - Knowledge Media Design Institute

Knowledge media are building blocks of a knowledge society

• Research Projects

Project Open Source | Open Access

A site of network building, critical enquiry, and student engagement around the emerging phenomenon of openness.

KMDI has longstanding interest in open source and open access, producing an international interdisciplinary conference on the topic in May 2004. In late 2004, KMDI received an award from the Provost's Academic Initiatives Fund for this project.

Project Open Source|Open Access is a cross-divisional, tri-campus initiative to develop a networked community to share knowledge, enhance coordination, increase awareness, and to encourage research and knowledge mobilisation on all apsects of 'openness'. A few highlights of the project are below. Full details can be found on the Project website at open.utoronto.ca or by writing to open@utoronto.ca

In broad terms, the goals of Project OS|OA are to:

• raise the U of T's profile as a contributor to the international debates on open source and open access

• extend the university’s technology transfer capacity through the release of open source software created by members of the university community

• enrich the student experience by providing a focal point for students to participate in projects on the phenomenon of openness

• pilot next generation open source applications to support teaching, research and administrative practices

• raise the profile of U of T faculty research by  increasing  the visibility of their research results through open access journals and institutional repositories that rely on open source software applications as well as exploring ways in which scholarly communciation is being transformed by the turn to the digital and more open practices

Student Experience Program Awards

A photo from Dave Kemp's show - Image Matter - supported by a Student Experience Program Award is featured below. Image Matter is an artistic project produced through collaboration between Dave Kemp (a Toronto-based visual artist) and Kevin Robbie (a physicist specializing in nanostructured materials) that investigates the nature of value and new forms of value resulting from advances in digital technologies, specifically as related to photographic images. The content of Image Matter is made freely available for non-commercial use through the application of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

To see all the projects and deliverables received to date please visit the Project site.

Sakai Foundation

KMDI is the University of Toronto's institutional partner in the Sakai Foundation, a consortium of academics and developers from more than 100 institutions of higher education worldwide, including the University of Michigan, MIT, Berkeley, University of Indiana , Stanford, and Cambridge University (UK). Project OS|OA is conducting a series of pilot projects and research projects with Sakai's Collaborative Learning Environment. The strengths of the Foundation is it's community source culture and practices, its commitment to accessibility and the increasingly global nature of the community of faculty, students and developers participating.

If you are interested in learning about the Sakai User's Group please contact the Project at the address above.