1999

• October: Connexions is born! Early on it's called the Secret Web Initiative
• Many planning discussions. First faculty involved: Richard Baraniuk, Don Johnson, Bill Wilson, and Sidney Burrus. Don Johnson suggests the name “Connexions”
• Skunk works project; Brent Hendricks and Yan David Erlich drive technical decision to go with XML and MathML
• Richard Baraniuk presents Connexions at the first Rice Alliance meeting

2000

• Dean Sidney Burrus and Chuck Henry contribute first support
• Bill Sick, Bob Maxfield, Burt McMurtry get involved as advisory council members and key funders
• Rice President Malcolm Gillis and Provost Gene Levy contribute
• First team of summer students develop software and content
• First Connexions implementation goes live
• Rice University Electrical Engineering courses Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering and Introduction to Physical Electronics become the first courses offered with Connexions
• 200 modules in repository

2001

• Premiere of Connexions "web-based authoring interface"
• Connexions hosts workshop to form collaborative authoring community around Digital Signal Processing content
• Michael Stewart joins advisory council and contributes funding
• 500 modules in repository

2002

• Geneva Henry joins Connexions as first Executive Director
• DSP Laboratory at University of Illinois becomes the first non-Rice course offered using Connexions
• Connexions releases "ZAnnot", the first piece of system to be released Open-Source: Zope implementation of Annotea protocol
• Kitty Schmidt-Jones and Anthony Brandt start Connexions' second major content focus around music materials
• Hewlett Foundation awards Connexions first major grant
• Connexions becomes one of the first Creative Commons license adopters
• 900 modules in repository

2003

• Connexions goes global as Information and Signal Theory from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology becomes the first international course to use Connexions
• New Edit-In-Place technology announced, making it easier for authors to edit Connexions modules
• 1600 modules in repository

2004

• Connexions announces 1.0 site launch
• Second Hewlett Foundation grant awarded to Connexions
• National Instruments becomes first corporate Connexions author, adding LabVIEW Graphical Programming Course to repository
• Connexions begins beta-testing Microsoft Word importer and new editing interface for modules
• 2300 modules in repository

2005

• Rhaptos 1.5 software released. Rhaptos is the code name for the software developed and used by Connexions
• Authors can import Microsoft Word documents directly into Connexions with the Word Importer
• Edit-In-Place capabilities are expanded and it becomes the default editor in workspaces and workgroups
• W. Joseph (Joey) King joins the Connexions team as its Executive Director
• Beta launch: each version of module now has its own "discussion forum" allowing online discussions among users
• Connexions adopts the 2.0 version of the Creative Commons Attribution License
• Connexions has content in Chinese, English, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and Thai languages
• 2800 modules in repository

2006

• Usability expert Manpreet Kaur joins Connexions
• Connexions receives 3rd Hewlett foundation award

2007

• Joel Thierstein joins the Connexions team as its Executive Director
• Overall site organization redesign under the direction of Dr. Manpreet Kaur
• Lenses introduced for content reviewing and quality assurance
• 4500 modules in repository