Activity 10: Applying sustainability models
Models
All information from Wiley (2007)
MIT Model
- Publishes its own courses – republishes new versions, archives old
- Massive undertaking
- Has time limit
- At least 29 staff
- Large budget – cost per course is roughly $10,000
USU Model
- Publishes its own courses
- Removes all third-party owned content from courses
- One full-time member of staff, 5 part-time (students)
- The model appears to be sustainable for USU and could be replicable by other universities/organisations.
- Cost per course roughly $5,000
Rice Model
- To enable the collaborative development of educational modules and courses by authors from around the world.
- Minimal staff - site is self-organising
- Course cost – more or less nothing
Organisational configurations can range from large and highly structured (MIT) to medium-sized and less formally structured (USU) to almost fully decentralised (Rice). Wiley (2007)
Open Education Initiatives
Coursera
Coursera seems to fit the Rice module as they do not provide their own courses. It is a for-profit educational technology company founded by Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller from Stanford University meaning it is US based. They currently offer 571 courses.
“Coursera provides universal access to the world’s best education, partnering with top universities and organizations to offer courses for anyone to take, for free.” (Coursera, 2015)
They partner with dozens of universities and organizations from around the world which offer courses under the Coursera banner. They are a for-profit organisation but I am not sure where their money or profit comes from. I would assume universities and organisations pay to ‘advertise’ or run their courses through Coursera with the view of promoting their university/organisation through these courses possibly considering the courses as ‘taster courses.’
FutureLearn
This is very similar to Coursera but is owned by the UK based Open University (OU). They do not seem to offer US university/organisations courses, presumably because of Coursera. Unlike Coursera, they do offer courses from their own organisation.
FutureLearn also follows the Rice model and more clearly than Coursera because it also develops its own courses.
Note: Both Coursera and FutureLearn now offer certificates for $49 or £29 respectively. This does not include P&P so probably some profit is being made from these.
Jorum
“Jorum is the UK’s largest repository for discovering and sharing Open Educational Resources for higher and further education and the Skills sector.” (Jorum, 2015)
Jorum offers resources rather than full courses and so doesn’t really fit into any of the models but the Rice model would be the closest if we ignore the fact that they offer materials and not modules or courses.
References
Wiley, D. (2007) On the Sustainability of Open Educational Resource Initiatives in Higher Education, Paris, OECD. Also available online athttp://www.oecd.org/ edu/ ceri/ 38645447.pdf (last accessed 31 March 2015).