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This post is in response to H817/Open Learn 3.4 - Acivity 10 (Applying Sustainability Models:

• Consider the following:

• 1. Was the sustainability model for each OER 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.

Wiley defines 3 main sustainability models for OER, each characterised by markedly different levels of  institutional involvement,  centralisation,  control and  (paid for) staff involvement.

• MIT model - this is the most centralised, structured and control-oriented form of OER. The goal of MIT OCW is to publish each of the university's courses in OCW format. The project is very large-scale and ambitious. It involves the employment of a team of staff, and involves a large annual budget, and these staff undertake all the technical support needed to place the courses in the OCW format. Costs are high, but sustainability is ensured by attracting foundation and private donor support.
• The USU model - the aim of this model is (Wiley p 8) to 'publish as many of the courses in the USU course catalogue as possible', but does so in a less formally structured manner than MIT. This OCW format provides some technical support e.g. identifies 3^rd party owned content in any contributions to replace with USU owned content. To do the work of placing courses in the project this there is a small team of project employees but also use of student volunteers. Generally the project is medium-sized in scale and relatively cheap to run, although it has been fairly successful in obtaining support from foundations.
• The Rice Model - the intention 'enable the collaborative development of educational modules and course by authors from around the world' (Wiley, 2007, p 9). This OCW model is fully decentralised - courses do not come from only the host university but can come from around the world. There is no central controlling body - the site is (typically) self-organising; no technical support is provided to the course authors. Effectively this model is 'free' as the costs of course development lie with those uploading their courses onto the site concerned.

What is the relationship between these 3 (ideal-typical/polarised) models of sustainability and 4 specific examples of Open Education initiatives?

• OpenLearn - this seemed to be the one closest to the MIT model, in that it had the backing of a large institution, and would seem to use a dedicated team to write and support the OCW modules which are offered.

• Coursera ) These 2 OCW seemed to be more
• Jorum      ) representative of Wiley's USU model - e.g. Coursera is hosted by the University of Geneva -  but with some important differences. Neither featured content which was only provided by the one institution (though it would seem the founding institution for the latter was Stanford). Both would seem to have some kind of technical team (and support) to enable the provision of resources on their sites. JORUM is sustained by several UK institutions and official quangos e.g. JISC. Coursera's sustainability model would seem to involve offering additional fee-paying courses.

• Change MOOC - this would seem to be the closest to Wiley's Rice model.  There is no support team and no central control over resources which are uploaded by a range of academics.

References

David Wiley (2007) 'On the Sustainability of Open Educational Resource Initiatives in Higher Education, OECD [online]. Available from www.oecd.org/edu/oer