Personal Blogs

H817 Activity 10: Sustainability?

Tuesday, 29 Mar 2016, 10:10

Visible to anyone in the world

Edited by Steve Bamlett, Wednesday, 30 Mar 2016, 22:02

Activity 10: Sustainability

•Read Wiley (2007), On the Sustainability of Open Educational Resource Initiatives in Higher Education.

1.Was the sustainability model for each initiative apparent?

2.Did Wiley’s models cover all approaches or did you think a different model was operating for one or more of them?

•You can share these reflections in either the forum or in your blog.

BLOG

First of all, I wondered if the same ‘working definition of ‘sustainability’ genuinely applies to the instances we are asked to look at as that in Wiley (2007). The date is significant. Are definitions of ‘sustainability’ sustainable over time or do they change: do they have to change. I consider the answer to that is – yes!

I found Wiley’s definition (p. 5f.) could fit the one I used in my role-play as QUiPS, since it focused not so much on the sustainability of the archive content but on its end products: ‘learning’ or ‘use of learning’. For QUiPS, sustainability must be about dissemination continually of updated ideas.

When we look at Weller’s exercise examples – mainly on pages updated in 2016, only one had a recognizable likeness to Wiley's models and that, because it is a model originated in 2006, and possibly a declining brand (for good or ill) – although I think its demise would be ill.

However, like all time-based issues, socio-cultural agenda change. Wiley in 2007 did not consider the role of learner involvement in rewriting materials (see my blog above). I’ve added it to make a point that none of these agencies consider it an agenda item, which may have something to do with their corporate – and increasingly (Open to Future Learn) character. The world here is a globalized or ‘glocalized’ one, not quite captured by Wiley. One that is straining towards grobalization (for the terms see (Ritzer 2007[1]).

None, other than Open Learn are comfortable in Wiley’s categories.

Criteria	Cousera	BCcampus	FutureLearn	OpenLearn
Course production goals	[2]A partnership (142 institutions) based at mainly federal level in the USA, including Rice, Pennsylvania, Stanford as well as curational experts (MoMO – Museum of Modern Art) but with global links to 28 countries (see Knox 2016 on this as an instance of global ‘imperialism’).	[3]This is nearer to the old ‘Rice’ model in that partners appear to unite around a common goal in opening up learning rather than in (just) selling themselves. Some partners shared with other institutions here. Course production goals open to innovation from the periphery and less centralism.	[4]The OU of the future is an offshoot private company with lots of partners, in the semi-public private sector (and antagonistic to ‘commercial’ providers in a fairly patrician way, it feels from the reading from the last activity. 82 partners are all establishment universities, archives and professional bodies – all on the road to a kind of ‘privatisation’.	[5]Founded in 2006, the site has an old-fashioned air to it now. Locked in the OU perhaps as it still is but not for that long.. The old OU link to the BBC is prominent (God bless her!)
Control over course produced	High from the centre (as standard control?) but with some distribution to partners at distance.	Much lower from centre and highly distributed at level of partner input and self-regulation.	Appears to be very high, in the names of standard control – hence importance of ‘establishment’ nature of partners. Maybe then (a guess a very authority prone conception of education	Totally from within the OU’s larger structures and not divorcable from that.
Learner Control	Very little in pre-design but lots in assessment modes	Lots – it has the development of Open Textbooks not seen elsewhere that I found.	Very little that is made prominent here. Of course the usual ‘satisfaction questionnaires’ but is that involvement.	I looked at my learner page. Mainly a monitor of activity in which I see what the stealth systems allow me to see.
Target Organisation Size (relative in this list)	Huge! Grobal!	Distributed widely but not usung anything very common at the level of control but concepts – openness!	Aims to Grobal.	Aims I would think to diminish or be absorbed into normal work of parent organisation.