2.3.9 Connexions 

Lead 

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Rice University, and the Hewlett Packard Corporation 

Origin 

U.S.A 

Background 

The Connexions Project was launched at Rice University in 1999 to challenge both modes of teaching and 

learning as well as how knowledge is developed and shared. The cost to develop Connexions is being paid 

by individuals, institutions, and foundations that sponsor the project. Sponsors include the William and Flora 

Hewlett Foundation, Rice University, and the Hewlett Packard Corporation. 

URL 

http://cnx.rice.edu/ 

Aims and 

Connexions is a rapidly growing collection of free scholarly materials and a powerful set of free software tools. 

Objectives 

It has two primary goals: 

To convey the interconnected nature across disciplines, courses, and curricula; 

To move away from centralised, solitary authoring, publishing and learning process to one based 

on connecting people into global learning communities and share knowledge. 

A fundamental aspect of Connexions is an emphasis on free content that is open licensed to facilitate sharing, 

easy re use and easy re contextualisation. The free software tools also foster the development, manipulation 

and continuous refinement of the materials by diverse communities of authors and teachers. 

The aims are to encourage: 

authors to publish and collaborate  

instructors to rapidly build and share custom courses  

learners to explore the links among concepts, courses, and disciplines.  

They use the Content Commons license which allows for small "knowledge chunks" they call modules that 

can be reused to connect into courses. Thanks to the Creative Commons open license, anyone can take their 

materials, adapt them to meet their needs, and contribute them back to the Commons. To start viewing 

content, one can just search or browse   no login is required. 

There is a content creation tool `Course Composer', which can be used to build a free custom course using 

modules from the Content Commons and publish it on the web or in print. 

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