Hi Steve, and others Great thread and very timely discussion :-). In many respects, this is the *raison* *d'**être* of the OER Foundation --- an independent organisation that provides leadership, networking and support for educators and educational institutions in fostering the development of a sustainable OER ecosystem. Our mission in life is to build a sustainable OER ecosystem -- one which is self-sustaining and results in real cost savings and efficiency gains for education institutions.
A few (rather long winded) reflections: I'm not surprised at the cost of an MIT OpenCourseware offering --- very much a standardised mass production model which is not succeeding in leveraging the potential of peer production systems. I wouldn't be surprised if these costs are significantly underestimated from the perspective of the attribution of fixed cost associated with the face-of-face, research-led teaching model of MITs operations. To what extent have the fixed costs and overhead of the MIT model been attributed to the costing of an OpenCourseware course? I wonder whether MIT would have moved into the OpenCourseware arena in the absence of the millions of dollars invested, for example by the Hewlett Foundation? Here we must commend the foresight of the Hewlett foundation in targeting a high profile institution and investing real dollars in moving this agenda forward in a substantive way. Everyone in higher education knows about MIT OpenCourseware and the marketing impact of getting the notion of open content into the sector should not be underestimated. Sadly MIT OpenCourseware uses a restrictive content license and content is stored in formats which does not facilitate easy remix :-(. For those of us with a background in the open distance learning model (distance education) --- we would not attribute MIT OpenCourseware as a model of pedagogical innovation. MIT OpenCourseware is more akin to the digitisation of lecture notes and lectures than we'll designed independent learning packages. Moreover, the cost of developing high quality learning materials using a team approach for design and development is significantly higher than the costs cited by MIT OpenCourseware. OERs are a low-cost alternative to high content development costs. This is not rocket science -- sharing the cost associated with developing high quality teaching materials among ten institutions is considerably cheaper than one institution doing this alone. What is need is a shift from the producer ==> consumer model where one institution tries to develop an OER course, that is a shift away from the mass-standardisation model. We need to think about sustainable OER in terms of the mass-customisation model, that is using flexible and agile design and development systems that are able to produce customised learning packages for individual institutions at costs which are lower than the traditional mass-standardisation model. Their is an extensive experience from industry in mass customisation approaches, yet education has been slow in refining the model for our benefits. OER combined with mass-peer collaboration provides fertile ground for implementing mass-customisation models for designing and developing high-quality courses, with added advantage for individual institutions to brand and customise the content (we permit derivative works :-) ) and to extend the diversity of their curriculum for courses with historically low enrolments (long tail economics.) The OER Foundation has costed this model, assuming 40 tertiary education institutions signing up for a "gold membership" status (USD$5000 -- significantly lower than the cost of an MIT OCW course ) we are able to reinvest back 80% of membership fees into paying academics to develop OER. Similarly, we calculate that individual organisations receive $14700 dollars worth of "benefits" for an outlay of $5000. That's pretty good math -- especially since these contributions represent an investment in the social good of education :-) Links: Operational business model: http://wikieducator.org/WikiEducator:OER_Foundation/Operational_plan Institutional Membership Categories: http://wikieducator.org/WikiEducator:OER_Foundation/Membership_categories#Table_of_OERF_Benefits_-_Detailed_Comparison Something to think about -- WE can make the future happen! Cheers Wayne 2009/11/16 Steve Foerster <[email protected]> > > Interesting article in the Guardian about OERs: > > http://tinyurl.com/yhf44oj > > What got me was the part near the end where it's talking about MIT's > OpenCourseWare project and says, "But it costs the university between > $10,000 and $15,000 to put the material from each course online because > the materials have to be properly licensed and formatted." > > I'm sorry, what? I'm racking my brain trying to figure out how they > could possibly spend fifteen grand just getting course materials from a > professor's PC to their web server. I mean, yes, they package things as > zip files and everything, but fifteen grand?! The only thing I can > think of is that they have to buy these materials from their own faculty > members, is that the case? > > (By contrast, imagine what WE could do with thirty million dollars!) > > -=Steve=- > > > -- > Stephen H. Foerster > http://hiresteve.com > http://hiresteve.com/blog > http://wikieducator.org/steve > > > > -- Wayne Mackintosh, Ph.D. Director, International Centre for Open Education, Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand. Board of Directors, OER Foundation. Founder and Community Council Member, Wikieducator, www.wikieducator.org Mobile +64 21 2436 380 Skype: WGMNZ1 Twitter: OERFoundation, Mackiwg --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
