5.1 Wikieducator: memoirs, myths, misrepresentations and the magic  (Page 19/21)

Hey - you’ve really got me thinking this morning. Thanks Ken.

13. richardwyles - april 9th, 2007 at 9:40 pm

Hi Ken and Wayne,

Thanks Ken for the table, interesting! I agree with Wayne’s comments. The NC restriction severely reduces the multiplier effect which is a key benefit of OERs. I’ve never understood the logic anyhow and put it down to the ubiquitous politics prevalent in large educational institutions plus general fear of the unknown. As Wayne points out, derivative works must also be free so even if a company were to commercialise an OER there’s extraordinary downward pressure on price because it’s share-alike. Commercialisation can really benefit the user - e.g. I might be very happy to pay a company for quality type-setting, binding and a hardcover or simply for having edited it or extended it so that it is fit for purpose for my needs. But the commercial entity can hardly exploit that opportunity as I’d simply commission someone else to do the editing and binding. Here’s an example, we’ve created an OER course on employment law. It’s designed for 100 hours of learning in a tertiary education environment. 100 hours of learning is not what a company wants their employees to have, more like 2-6 hrs. I’m more than happy that a private firm distills the OER package we created so that it is fit for purpose and that they receive a fee for their time. More people have access to the learning and the multiplier effect kicks in - i.e. the economy benefits.

Reuse is one of the fundamental reasons behind OERS so any barriers to reuse must be minimised.

14. wayne mackintosh - 9th, 2007 at 11:20 pm

Hi Richard,

You have raised key issues. On the one hand commercial publishing has done a sterling job of improving the quality and peer review of published texts not to mention widening the distribution channels for academic texts where Universities are not geared up to support this value-add to the model.

Why would we want to constrain new economic models that could widen access and distribution channels of free content? After all the user can decide whether they want to purchase a hard cover bound text when the source version is freely available?

I won't go down the MDG route - but one of our prime objectives is to reduce poverty. What rights do we have as authors of OERs to deny a small entrepreneur in the developing world the right to earn a living from free content? Opponents to this argument would cite the CC developing world license in defense, which I would argue is discrimination ;-)

You’re absolutely right - the multiplier effect is the sustainability model for free content!

Cheers

15. opencontent - april 11th, 2007 at 8:58 am

David Wiley from Utah State University here. I’ve enjoyed this thread immensely and have posted (what started out as a long reply) on my own blog at (External Link) - I hope you will find time to give it a quick read.

16. ken udas - april 11th, 2007 at 9:16 am

David, Thank you very much for linking to your thoughts on the dialog that is developing in the comments above. I think that the focus of your comment is really spot-on. Any new concept and activity will evolve and hopefully improve in concept and execution as we learn from experience and dialog critically. That said, the move forward will be more rapid, thoughtful, inclusive, and sustainable if we are embracing in our questioning and critique and appreciative of each other’s contributions. This is a building process. I hope that our dialog is developing in that spirit. There is no question that we are all building on the efforts of the institutions that took early steps. Because of the diversity of licenses that are being used in a number of successful OCW projects, we have the opportunity to test our notions about the impact of the NC license feature.