The Search for Sustainable OER

By Keith Hampson

OER or open educational resources is one of the good news stories of 2011. OER takes many forms, but what binds initiatives like The Khan Academy, MIT OCW (Open Course Ware) and Stanford’s AI course is that they are all freely available to learners and other educators. It’s the “free” characteristic that has caught the attention of the press. In the context of higher education news stories about rising costs, tuition and student debt, this is our “man bites dog” news story.

Despite the importance of “free” to OER, there’s been little written about the economics of OER. How, specifically, can we make it sustainable? Even Taylor Walsh’s book on OER, Unlocking the Gates: How and Why Universities are Opening Up Access to their Courses, resisted challenging the logic of multimillion-dollar OER projects without revenue streams.

Continued at: http://todayscampus.com/article/The_Search_for_Sustainable_OER

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