Activity 10 - Sustainability

In his report for OECD in 2007, David Wiley defined sustainability as ‘an open educational resource project’s on-going ability to meet its goals’. Wiley proposed three models of sustainability, which he labelled:

·         the MIT model (all courses offered by MIT, a large organisation, with a high degree of control and high cost per course offered)

·         the USU model (many courses offered by USU, a medium sized organisation, with a small degree of control, and a smaller cost than MIT)

·         the Rice model (many courses offered anywhere, by a small organisation, at no cost and virtually no control)

Using these criteria, the four open education initiatives compare as follows:-

Change MOOC – uses the Rice model mainly, with lots of contributors and no cost, but controlled by the instigators of the course (which is the MIT model)

Coursera – appears to use the USU model.

Jorum – uses mainly the Rice model, but it has a very large number of courses, giving the feel of a large organisation.  It wasn’t obvious what degree of control there was.

OpenLearn – is the MIT model, with a high degree of control, and all courses produced by the OU

It’s not always easy to see which of Wiley’s models was used, mainly because you can’t always see the authorship of the courses straightaway.  As a student of the OpenLearn (and OU) set-up, it was easier to ‘find’ the ownership of these courses, but to a non-student, the OpenLearn set-up would not have been transparent.

 

Personal comment - not part of the Activity :-)

This is hard work now, as the course has finished, but I'd done most of the reading for the Activity, so reckoned I might as well carry on for as long as I could - but holidays, gardening, sailing, etc get in the way.  I don't know how people who work full time manage to keep up, but maybe they don't do the holidays and other stuff.  Or maybe they are more driven and dedicated!!