Developing a Sustainable Financial Model in Higher Education for Open Educational Resources

Abstract

Financial issues regarding the sustainable production, dissemination, and use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in higher education are reviewed and proposed solutions critiqued.Use of OER produce demonstrable cost savings for students. Yet OER development continues to rely almost completely on government and philanthropic funding. This indicates that a mismatch exists between the financial interests of students and those of higher education institutions.Before OER will be broadly adopted, changes to government policy are required to align institutional objectives with faculty motivations and student needs.

Incentivizing the Production and Use of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education Institutions

“…It also might be considered an infringement on academic freedom. As Annand (2015) argued, campaigning for additional government funding to encourage production and use of OER merely re-directs public money from one worthwhile endeavour to another, overall. As the case study described above illustrates, the most reasonable and feasible means to align the financial interests of intermediaries and final consumers in the post-secondary textbook market is for governments to decree that publicly-funded institutions should include the cost of all learning materials in their tuition fees.…”

“…Various lists of OER funding models have been developed (Dholakia, King, & Baraniuk, 2006;Downes, 2007), but most presuppose state or philanthropic funding. As Annand (2015) noted, this is transitory and requires institutions to continually compete for funds. Granting authorities still need to re-deploy scarce funds to encourage OER adoption in the face of competing resource claims by equally-worthwhile endeavours.…”

How Korean Language Arts Teachers Adopt and Adapt Open Educational Resources: A Study of Teachers’ and Students’ Perspectives

“…One of the most significant barriers for long-term OER projects are financial difficulties (Annand, 2015;Butcher & Wilson-Strydom, 2008). The lack of business model is pointed out as a main weakness of OER (Downes, 2007;Hylén, 2006;Wiley et al, 2014 reached US$60 million (Kim, 2013;Lee, Kim, & Jeong, 2015).…”

Open Praxis vol. 11 issue 2

“…To cover certain material development costs such as special commissioning charges and technology upgrade costs, such organizations are often pressurized to continuously raise philanthropic funds. (Annand, 2015;Hannon, Huggard, Orchard & Stone, 2014;Olcott, 2012a). However, to circumvent these costs, whilst still achieving the generation of novel content and wide distribution, a reliance on volunteers and online users is a necessity; both of which are required to allow Pratham Books to create and disseminate content both online and offline, as well as cover a range of topics in multiple languages and divergent audiences, whilst also ensuring that their notfor-profit business model survives.…”