If you’re new here, read more about the More Good Foundation. We help members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon church) share their beliefs on the Internet. Learn more about what Mormons believe or talk with Mormons at LDS.net.
Christopher Phillips has been advocating an LDS content repository like commoncontent.org. If the Church were to license some or all of its content with a Creative Commons, GFDL, or other license, it would make it much easier for institute and seminary instructors, Sunday School teachers, and other members to share notes and collaborate on materials.
Imagine, for example, licensing the Teaching of the Presidents manuals with a Creative Commons ShareAlike license. Derivative works would be allowed. Church members could volunteer to read the manuals aloud and make audio recordings, just as the LibriVox project is doing with public domain works. These audio recordings could be shared with hearing-impaired Church members around the world. They’d also be useful for members learning a second language since Gospel teachings give so much context and common ground when learning a foreign language. Recordings could be made of all Church publications and in all languages. The Church could call Church Service Missionaries to manage or participate in this movement.
Last year J. Max Wilson blogged about how many universities including MIT, Harvard, and Utah State have begun OpenCourseWare initiatives to share their course content online and how a similar initiative might affect and help the Church. Brother David Wiley is the professor in charge of the OpenCourseWare initiative at Utah State.
I expect that, in the not so distant future, the Church will begin to extend a university level education, through BYU, to its members in all nations through the use of missionaries and Internet based classes. Someday we may very well see stake centers throughout the world become hubs in a vast, interconnected education system. Just as they can now do genealogical research, faithful latter-day saints of all means will be able to attend classes and attend lectures and lessons by professors and experts in all kinds of fields through web-enabled learning centers in stake centers everywhere, directed and helped locally by “education” missionaries. (OpenCourseWare, Education, and the Church, by J. Max Wilson)
