Advantage
One of the benefits that producers can enjoy when making their materials accessible freely online is larger publicity. Leveraging on OER platforms for instance allow producers of the content (eg. researchers or educational institutes) to reach out to a wider audience and thereby achieve greater publicity and viewership/readership of their work. Take Standford University for instance. The launch of their Coursera platform instantly allows the University to reach millions of students and adult learners across the globe (Dunn, 2013). While there is certainly no need for the University to advertise itself as it is already amongst the world’s most prestigious universities, I think Stanford greatly enhances its soft power through this act of sharing its educational resources online for the entire world. Just imagine the kind of support and goodwill Stanford has gained as a result of sharing its high-quality lectures to the public. If Stanford wants to shape a certain idea across the globe, the university is now able to do so through its OER platform. That is scary.
Disadvantages
Cost can be both an advantage and disadvantage. While consumers of the materials on OERs can benefit from its low costs, content producers on the other hand may question its sustainability. Who pays the content producers for constantly producing new content? Who pays for maintaining the content online? As more people subscribe to the content, the online platforms that support free content will have to become more sophisticated and will incur more cost. To simply rely on the government and taxpayers’ money may not be feasible in the long run. Consumers of the content, will inevitably bear some cost somewhere down the road (Peterson, 2014)
Another issue is that of copyright. Based on Professor David Wiley’s 4Rs (2012), producers of content literally have to allow their content to be used in anyway possible. Question. How many authors or researchers who painstakingly put in years of research into their study, would support the idea of an open system where their work can be revised or remixed, even though they may still be cited? The credibility of research can potentially decline if content producers do not receive the necessary rewards, whether monetary or in other forms.
The idea of OER is worth exploring but brings with it great risks. Perhaps we should continue to monitor the effects of Stanford’s Coursera and Harvard-MIT’s MOOC before jumping into the bandwagon.
References
Dunn, D. (2013). Education Finally Ripe for Radical Innovation by Social Entrepreneurs – Forbes. [online] Forbes. Available at: http://ht.ly/jPTX3 [Accessed 9 Dec. 2014].
Peterson, D. (2014). The Pros and Cons of MOOCS. [online] About.com. Available at: http://adulted.about.com/od/Adult-Education-in-the-U.S./a/The-Pros-And-Cons-Of-Moocs.htm [Accessed 9 Dec. 2014].
Wiley, D., Green, C. and Soares, L. (2012). Dramatically Bringing down the Cost of Education with OER: How Open Education Resources Unlock the Door to Free Learning. Center for American Progress. Available at: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED535639.pdf [Accessed 9 Dec. 2014].
Wings.Like.Eagles 
Hi Simon! Interesting post you have written here, I’m especially amused by your thoughts on the possibilities of Stanford to enforce a certain idea across the globe (sounds like a world domination plan! Haha~) To me I think this area won’t be so worrying (as yet, probably) because Coursera is generally seen as additional platform for knowledge, not a compulsory prerequisite education (such as our primary school and high school). In addition, the Internet is such an open platform that anyone can voice out any thoughts when some ideas don’t seem to agree with each other. The following link may not necessarily touch on the influence of ideology, but it shows that if one has a different way of thinking or would like to give a feedback, they can just do so freely in their own online platform, as the Internet gives such freedom of speech..
http://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/2013/02/01/how-not-to-design-a-mooc-the-disaster-at-coursera-and-how-to-fix-it/
Anyway, Coursera’s innovative approach by charging the course students only after completing their courses seems like a promising approach which can be similarly applied to other Open Access materials which may be a potential answer to your logistic concerns. To what extend do you think such approach can be successful when applied to other scholar articles online? Keep up the good post! 🙂
xoxo,
/ novina ✿ ladyskorpios /
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Hello Novina 🙂 Thank you for that interesting link and for your kind and informative reply. I think to some extent, this model of only charging students if they wish to complete a certain course or want to obtain a certificate of completion (as what you have highlighted in your post) does solve some sustainability issues with regards to the long term financing and upkeeping of such Open Access resources.
However, I don’t think it is a one-size-fits-all model. As more OER platforms are likely to emerge and offer more varieties to differentiate themselves, such a model may not work across all platforms. I don’t have a concrete example to illustrate here because OER is still at its infancy stage, I think content producers may want to monitor the progress of the current OERs before launching their very own.
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Hi simon,
I must say It was a good read and we shared similar content on coursera on both of our posts. I would certainly like to discuss along the point of consumers having to bear certain costs down the road. My argument would be, does this cost have to be monetary?
We could promote free content with a similar method as how popular social media site youtube does it? As if you think about it, Youtube is providing a huge base of content to anyone on the internet for free but the cost the consumer pays is time. When i say time I refer to the fact that before watching or receiving the content they desire they have to view a commercial.
Do you believe these online journals might adapt a similar strategy to make their articles profitable? Do you believe this could be a potential way free content would be more easily available for academic and research purposes?
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Hello Ebrahim. Thank you for your comment. I’m glad you shared some similar thoughts with me on Coursera. I think you highlighted a good point about us paying with our time! The youtube model you brought up was such a good reminder. Will online journals adapt a similar strategy? Perhaps so. You rightly pointed out that advertising revenue could also be one way OER producers can defray their costs moving forward.
If that happens though, one possibility I can imagine is perhaps a split between free and paid courses where the free ones would contain all the advertisements whereas the paid ones will be advertisement free. Similar to how the mobile apps on our phones work. But that’s just one possibility I think can take place, it may not turn out that way either, depending on how dynamic and interactive the platforms may be.
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