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Kathryn Evans

Applying Sustainability Models

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I started by making a mind map to visualize the paper - turns out its hard to type on a train and juggle a coffee!  When I looked at the initiatives I was unsurprised to find there was not a perfect fit to Wiley's model.  The nature of technological and business innovation would always give rise to new models - in fact crowdfunding is giving further ideas for bringing together authors and finance for courseware, personally I'm thinking along the lines of a co-operative model with crowdfunding and advertising revenues funding individuals to develop courses within their area of expertise.

Coursera - I initially thought MIT model as they seem to have a LOT of staff and a LOT of vacancies, currently 170 staff and growing.  Then I looked at the volunteer page and saw that they have over 350 mentors as well as translators and testers, which would fit more with the USU model.  So a blended model is operating here.

BCcampus - I was firstly struck by how often I saw the word sharing, then I spotted the CC was merely attributable so I was thinking Rice model.  I see they are government funded and only have around 25 staff so I was staring to think USU model.  I can't see where they get their authors from so I was unable to make a firm decision - maybe they don't fit ANY of the models, which meets my initial expectation of this task.

FutureLearn -  I have taken a course here so I did have a little insight.  On investigation I see they have 85 partners worldwide although are wholly owned by OU.  The jobs page included learning developer (my initial thought was RUN AWAY before I end up with another job! Then I read it and found I'm not yet qualified for this, need to finish MAODE). I'm seeing this one very much as the MIT model.

OpenLearn - I see this as a different model entirely, its main function is to serve as a try before you buy course for the OU and it does this very effectively.  As these are taster courses I don't see a fit to any of the models but that it is their own model.

In summary - Wiley's models are a useful guideline or framework for building new models and each organisation will build their models individually according to their own needs.


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