Business Models for Open Courseware - Version 2

This week on Yammer there has been a debate about opencourseware (OCW). The major contributors to the debate have been my colleagues James Neill, Michael de Percy, Keith Lyons and Alan Arnold. Some of the issues considered in the debate were:

• What copyright protection to apply: copyright, creative commons (and which version), public domain or some other system
• What should be included
• How to host it: hardware and software
  
• Philosophy of openness opposed to financial reality: how to make money from OCW

As the accountant in the mix, the last issue is that one that interests me. It is pointless for a University to provide OCW if it sends itself bankrupt in the process. So to start a debate, I am putting forward a number of different models of how to make money from OCW. These ideas are not necessarily my own but I cannot remember from where I have sourced the ideas so I have not referenced them. The list is not intended to be comprehensive, just a start for a conversation. Finally, the models are not mutually exclusive - more than one of them can be used at the same time. I have not conducted any analysis about the financial feasibility of these models.

The Models

The Advertising Model

Sell advertising space on OCW material. It is possible to use services like Google or Yahoo to manage this or to use more traditional advertising providers.

The Winetasting Model

Users can get a taste of the OCW material for free but have to pay if they want sufficient access to undertake a course. This is achieved by having all users register and restricting the free access for each user (for example, 5 free accesses per month). More intensive access will require payment. For this to work, materials need to be interactive otherwise a group of students will get together and download a portion of the materials each, using their free allowance, and then share the material.

The Pay to Go To Class Model

All the material is free but students must pay if they want to attend classes. This really puts pressure on academics to make sure that students see paying to attend classes as value for money.

The Pay for Assessment Model

All the material is free but students must pay if they want to submit assessment items and receive a grade.

The Pay for Accreditation Model

All the material is free but students must pay to submit a portfolio showing achievement of the learning outcomes and to have that portfolio assessed - this is similar to what is done with RPL and RCC processes.

The Consulting Model

This idea was contributed by James Neill - my apologies if I have misrepresented his views. The OCW material serves as a "loss leader" to attract consulting contracts to the University. The OCW material serves to establish the University's expertise in a particular field.

The key issue for Universities is not whether they want to participate in OCW, but how they are going to participate. MIT and OU-UK have already shown that big universities can move in this direction. Commercial (non-university) enterprises are also moving in this direction but have not got the free courseware idea adopted yet. Small universities which try and ignore the move to OCW will go the way of the dodo.

E-Portfolios: Playing with Mahara

I have been attending some training programs over the last few months on developing a teaching portfolio. While the I found the ideas covered in the programs to be of great value, the technology which was being used to manage them was archaic - Noah would have rejected it. Some were keeping their portfolios on paper and storing them in lever-arch folders - ugh! The most up-to-date technology I saw was putting it all in an MS Word file - at least this was electronic and searchable but it is like putting a square peg in a round hole. It was not going to fit no matter how big a hammer you used.

To digress a little, for those not familiar with portfolios in general and teaching portfolios in particular, they are collections of documents, photos, certificates, letters and other artefacts which serve as evidence for any claims you may make. The reason I started looking at them was that they are becoming necessary when applying for jobs and grants and I had seen a couple of colleagues use them.

Back to my problem - I was convinced I needed a teaching portfolio but I was not satisfied with the methods used to manage them. I was convinced that paper was not the method I was going to use. I could shove everything into a folder on my hard disk but that would not help with managing the information. I needed a tool that would help me manage the information. I started thinking about the management functions I would need. These were:

1. Store multiple file types - doc, pdf, jpg, mp3, and others
2. Multiple and flexible retrieval mechanisms
3. Shareable
4. Web accessible
   
5. Secure storage
6. Minimal cost

Given my biases, Web 2.0 philosophy and FOSS were also desirable characteristics. I have not done a detailed search for all the options but I think I have found a winner anyway. It is called Mahara. It is from New Zealand which just shows they can do more than play rugby.

Mahara is FOSS and Web 2.0. You can get a trial account from http://mahara.org/ which gives you 50Mb of storage - way too little for a permanent solution but enough for a trial. If you go to Mahara, do not click on the "download" or "demo" links - click on the "Register" link to create a trial account - the "Register" link is extremely small and well camouflaged but you can find it with a bit of perseverence. Once you have your account you can start uploading and playing.

The only problem I have with Mahara from my brief experimentation is the teeny-weeny 50Mb storage. All I need to do now is to find a hosting service which will give me multi Gb of storage for a handful of shiny beads.

Bibliographic Software for Collaborative Research

In the dark ages of academia, researchers maintained an index card file of all their references. These 15cm by 10cm pieces of lined cardboard were the basic working tool for a researcher and the final stage of writing any paper was going through the paper and confirming the reference details against the index cards. Fortunately life has changed. A little over a decade ago, bibliographic software appeared on the market which replaced these boxes of index cards. Overtime, the functionality of bibliographic software has improved to allow simplified data capture from databases and catalogues, integration with word processors and customisation to meet the referencing idiosyncrasies of a variety of journals. But this generation of bibliographic software contains a significant remaining weakness - it does not facilitate collaboration among authors at different institutions.

Web 2.0 systems have opened imaginations to a brave new world of social collaboration. Bibliographic software has been slow to adopt the philosophy of Web 2.0. My image of a Web 2.0 bibliographic solution would have the following features:

1. Single-click data capture from databases, catalogues and websites
2. Able to record all research sources - paper and electronic
   
3. Integration with word processors
4. Customisable referencing styles
5. Secure storage
   
6. Standards compliant
   
7. Accessible through any computer connected to the web
8. Platform independent
9. Free or very low cost for users
10. Shareable at the user's discretion
11. Use of folksonomies
12. Facilitate creation of communities of scholars
    

Some of these features are available in some Web 2.0 systems. Delicious, CiteULike, LibraryThing, and similar systems all meet the bottom six requirements. Traditional bibliographic systems like Endnote meet the top six requirements. I have not been able to find a single system which meets all 12 requirements.

There are some systems which are moving in this direction. Endnote and RefWorks are traditional bibliographic systems which have expanded to be web based. However, both systems require an expensive licence and are cumbersome to use across institutions. Some of the journal publishers are providing systems free of charge but these systems lack the wordprocessor integration of the bibliographic software and do not work as easily with material published by other companies.

The system which comes closest to meeting the requirements is Zotero 1.5. Zotero is open source software but only works with the Firefox web browser. It provides downloadable addins for Microsoft Word and OpenOffice Writer. The libraries in Zotero are shareable at the user's discretion and this facilitates creation of scholarly communities. To see how these communities can work, click on the Zotero icon in the right-hand side panel of this post. Most references can be captured by a single-click on an icon in the website's address bar. The downside of Zotero is that the only version with all these features is still in beta release so may not be secure and reliable and that it is dependent on Firefox. I have not investigated the use of Zotero on Macs or Linux machines. Zotero is also currently involved in litigation with the owners of Endnote over claims of infringement of intellectual property rights.

Zotero promises to be the next leap forward in bibliographic systems and it can lead to great efficiencies in cross-institutional research collaboration.