Jennryn is the Director of Learning and Training at Creative Commons. She runs the Creative Commons Certificate program, a training in open licensing, copyright, and the ethos of our global, shared commons. She focuses on projects to increase collaboration and support for open education, globally. Prior to Creative Commons, Jennryn worked on open policy and open educational resources (OER) at the U.S. Department of State. She has also enjoyed gaining a different perspective on education through international development work in Thailand and as a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger.
The ten week online Creative Commons Certificate course provides an-in depth study of Creative Commons licenses and open practices, developing participants’ open licensing proficiency and understanding of the broader context for open advocacy. Courses are composed of readings, quizzes, discussions, and practical exercises to develop learners’ open skills. Personalized engagement with expert facilitators and copyright lawyers in the field is provided.
Based on feedback Jennryn has ensured the Certificate program covers 100% of CC’s cost of delivery, including paying all community instructors who teach, technology and content maintenance, and program expansion and updates, including reaching new audiences and new languages. To ensure the Certificate is inclusive of colleagues less able to pay, especially those in the Global South, Jennryn has created a scholarship fund subsidizing CC Certificates to as many participants as possible.
There is more community demand for the Certificate training than CC can currently accommodate. To address this, Jennryn has led the creation of a CC Certificate Facilitator Training . In addition she has supported translations of Certificate content which is now available in eight languages: Arabic, Burmese, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, and Yoruba. Certificate course materials have been adapted to include more local case studies about copyright law and open licensing in different countries.
In addition to the CC Certificate program Jennryn is responsible for the Creative Commons Open Education Platform which is part of Creative Commons Global Network, a community of advocates, activists, scholars, artists, and users working to strengthen the Commons worldwide. The Creative Commons Open Education Platform is a space for open education advocates and practitioners to identify, plan and coordinate multi-national open education content, practices and policy activities to foster better sharing of knowledge.
“Jennryn catalyzes open education by organizing, mentoring, and supporting the Creative Commons Certificate program and Open Education Platform. Her work has ensured thousands of people around the world have acquired open education skills and practices, building capacity and catalyzing open education everywhere.”
Award Nominator
“Jennryn Wetzler’s nomination presents a comprehensive overview of her significant contributions to the Open Education movement through the Creative Commons Certificate program and Open Education Platform. Her leadership, commitment to inclusivity, and efforts to constantly improve and expand the program based on community feedback make her an outstanding candidate for the Catalyst Award.”
Award Reviewer
Explore more about this award…
Podcasts from Open Education Global
We were fortunate to have Jennryn Wetzler visit our studio during Open Education Week for a conversation about her Open Education Individual Award for Excellence in the Catalyst category. The name “Catalyst” is an apt description for Jennryn’s work at Creative Commons as someone who “supports the ideals of the Open Education movement through their own practices and who creates engagement in Openness within an organization or community.”
This was recorded as an Open Education week event where we offered a seat in the studio for anyone who wanted to be there, which included her colleague Jonathan Portitz.
You can learn in this podcast about Jennryn’s early experience in the Peace Corps, her work in the US State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and the catalyzing role she has played for Creative Commons including the highly successful CC Certification program , the Open Education Platform, and new interests in the area of Open Journalism. We were easily able to draw Jonathan into a animated discussion around artificial intelligence and he also reminded us about the definition of catalyst from chemistry as “a chemical which helps other reactions happen without being consumed itself.”
This aptly fits Jennryn Wetzler. Also stick around to learn about her activity for finding a “powerful” sense of balance, and more of what makes Jennryn the type of person the Catalyst word is designed to recognize.
Keep that in mind as the nominations for the 2024 OE Awards opens May 13, and we hope you know of a person in your sphere of Open Education work that ought to be recognized as a Catalyst this year.
In This Episode
FYI: This section of show notes alone was generated by AI Actions in the Descript editor we use to produce OEG Voices.
Episode 67: OE Award Winner Jennryn Wetzler
In this episode, Alan Levine interviews Jennryn Wetzler, winner of the Catalyst Award at the Open Education awards for Excellence. They discuss Jennryn’s background, work at Creative Commons, involvement in Open Journalism, and perspectives on open education and AI. The conversation touches on the impact of OER in various contexts, the importance of human connections in the face of challenges, and the power of community collaboration in education.
- Introduction to Open Education Week
- Jennryn’s Journey and Catalyst Award
- Peace Corps Experience and Education Insights
- Open Education Work at Creative Commons
- Challenges in Open Journalism
- The Importance of Human Connections and AI
- Community Collaboration and Impact
- Reflection on Work and Inspirations
at Descript.com
Additional Links and Quotes for Episode 67
I oversee our training and learning efforts writ large, and then our consulting efforts trying to use the certificate, kind of foundational learning and apply it in different contexts for different audiences and reimagine it in different settings, too.
So one of the things that we are really hoping to announce possibly today, is this micro credential program with the University of Nebraska Omaha, which came about through the certificate program. So this is one example of how the learning and training program finds new partnerships and pathways to keep bringing open licensing expertise to new communities.
Jennryn Wetzler on the CC Certificates program
- Niger (Wikipedia) where Jennryn was located for her Peace Corps experience
- State Department Collaboratory (US Government)
- Open COVID Pledge
- Washington School of Law Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property (PIJIP)
- Creative Commons Certification
- Creative Commons and University of Nebraska at Omaha Partner on a Microcredential Course
- Introduction to Open Educational Resources (course at University of Nebraska)
- CC Open Journalism
So as a connector across cultures, as something to open access to more education in a time of war, and as a something to point to so other people know, if it’s possible here in this really challenging set of circumstances where people are losing access to, electricity where they have, bomb sirens going off regularly, interrupting meetings and workflows and so on.
If they can make it work in a place that’s in the midst of war, then this can be done anywhere, this kind of collaboration and translation and the cross cultural understanding that goes with the translation can be done anywhere. So they did it.
Jennryn Wetzler on CC Education Platform support for librarians in Ukraine
- CC Open Education Platform
- OEG Voices 051: Tetiana Kolesnykova on the Open Resilience of Librarians
- Gratitude to those Behind the Scenes (Paola Corti in OEG Connect)
Once again we urge listeners to make nominations for the people, projects and resources deserving a 2024 OE Award for Excellence — all of which will be future voices on this podcast.
Our open licensed music for this episode is a track called Catalyst by Anemoia licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Like most of our intro music, it was found at the Free Music Archive (see our full FMA playlist).
This was another episode we are recording on the web in Squadcast. This is part of the Descript platform for AI enabled transcribing and editing audio in text– this has greatly enhanced our ability to produce our shows. We have been exploring some of the other AI features in Descript, but our posts remain human authored unless indicated otherwise.
