Developing sustainable business models for institutions’ provision of open educational resources: Learning from OpenLearn users

Editor's Notes

• #2: Leigh-Anne introduces presentation
• #3: Leigh-Anne: Good morning everyone. The focus of this presentation can be summed up in this quote from Sir John Daniel…   Sir John Daniel is highlighting the fact that while altruism may be a key driver for higher education institutions’ production and sharing of open educational resources, in line with the broader aims of the open education movement, universities still need to make money. Indeed, several commentators have noted that while many open educational resources initiatives have, in the past, relied upon external funding, this has become more difficult in recent years for both political and economic reasons.   In this context, it becomes yet more important to develop sustainable OER business models, allowing openness to be self-sufficient.. 1 min, 18 sec
• #4: Leigh-Anne: For some years writers on open education have been discussing the need to develop sustainable and profitable business models around the production and release of OER.   The influential 2007 OECD report on OER detailed six possible motivations for institutions developing and sharing OER:   1)The altruism argument: that ‘sharing knowledge is a good thing to do’ 2)The leveraging taxpayers’ money argument: that resources developed by publicly funded institutions should be freely shared and reused; 3)The efficiency argument: that ‘by sharing and reusing, the costs for content development can be cut’ 4)The showcase argument: that OER initiatives are ‘good for public relations and...can attract new students’ 5)The taster argument: that ‘new students...may be more likely to enrol on paid-for courses when they have had a free taste of the learning on offer. 6)The internal development argument: that ‘open sharing will speed up the development of new learning resources and stimulate innovation’ 1 min, 10 sec
• #5: Leigh-Anne: Debate around sustainable business models for OER has continued apace, often focused around these six arguments and a more recent overview of possible benefits of institutional OER provision can be found in Paul Stacey’s blog post ‘The Economics of Open’ where he points out that:   ‘OER accelerate learning by providing educational resources for just-in-time, direct informal use by both students and self-directed learners’.   Stacey explains that ‘Using OER as a means to market reputation and institutional prowess can convince students to enroll… [and] …can lead to faster learning, greater learner success, or reduce drop outs.’   This broader view of the potential impact of openness and OER on institutions goes some way to countering those detractors of OER who question whether they are in competition with formal education.
• #6: Leigh-Anne: The relationship between OER and formal learning, and its significance for the sustainability of institutional OER projects, is the focus of this paper, which reports on research conducted by the UK Open University’s (OU’s) OER Research Hub (OERRH), in collaboration with the Open University’s Open Media Unit (OMU). The OER Research Hub is exploring 11 key hypotheses (see http://oerresearchhub.org/collaborative-research/hypotheses/). This paper covers research around the hypothesis ‘open education acts as a bridge to formal education, and is complementary, not competitive, with it’ and takes as its focus the UK Open University’s web-based platform for free educational resources - OpenLearn.
• #7: Leigh-Anne OpenLearn is a free online resources repository hosted by the Open University. It was launched in 2006 and was initially funded by the Hewlett Foundation. It hosts hundreds of online courses and videos, many of which are openly licensed. Since its launch OpenLearn has received 27 million unique visitors and has developed from being a platform that hosts units from decommissioned undergraduate and postgraduate courses to one which hosts course extracts and a range of other informal materials. Together these are visited by over 5 million people each year, over 10% of whom click through to the ‘Study with the OU’ web page.
• #8: Leigh-Anne For our research on OpenLearn we conducted an online survey... The data collected give an insight into the typical user base of OpenLearn. For example, the majority of survey respondents were aged between 25 and 64 and 19% of respondents declared a disability. This graph shows that many OpenLearn users completing the survey are well-educated, highly qualified people in full-time employment. In fact, 16% of respondents indicated that they are practising educators. 8% of respondents indicated that they are full-time students and 6% that they are part-time students. 87% indicated that they are not currently involved in formal study and can be seen as purely informal learners.
• #9: Leigh-Anne Analysis of the survey data indicates that OpenLearn acts as a bridge between informal and formal learning in three ways: - as a showcase for the OU’s provision, attracting new students and promoting its profile. - as a bridge between informal and informal learning in offering a taster of the OU’s paid-for courses, to both new and existing students. - and in helping informal learners and existing formal students to develop and improve their study skills and to build confidence, this also having an impact on student retention
• #10: Leigh-Anne Starting with the ‘showcase’ argument, a number of survey respondents explicitly mentioned that using OpenLearn had led to their studying with the OU or their friends doing so, as shown in the comments here. At first glance, the quantitative data might suggest that OpenLearn is competitive with formal education, in that 85% of survey respondents said they were more likely to take a further free course or study OER after using OpenLearn. However, in actual fact only 12% of survey respondents indicated that they were less likely to take a paid for course after using OpenLearn. In addition, 48% of the OpenLearn-using formal students, and 35% of informal learners completing the survey indicated that they were more likely to take a paid-for course after using OpenLearn. A final consideration in respect of the showcase argument is the fact that 53% of all survey respondents suggested that when choosing OER and other free content their selection of resources is influenced by the resource being created by a reputable and trusted institution or person.
• #11: Leigh-Anne Moving on to the ‘taster’ argument, there was evidence of OpenLearn working as a taster for formal educational provision for both students new to higher education study and for existing formal students. For example, 42% of all survey respondents indicated that they had used OpenLearn to try out university-level content before signing up for a paid-for course. Of those respondents indicating that they were currently engaged in formal study 26% indicated that using OpenLearn had influenced their decision to register for their current paid-for course and 24% that they had actually studied their chosen subject via OpenLearn before registering on a paid-for course. The two quotes here give a flavour of typical comments that explicitly link use of OpenLearn with study of OU modules.   A further consideration is worth noting, related to the current funding context of higher education in England where in the past year or so tuition fees have risen considerably, making higher education prohibitively expensive for some people. The OU has some of the lowest fees in the sector but even so it is likely that in the context of fee rises many people will be particularly risk-averse and so the opportunity to have a taster of paid-for content via OpenLearn may be especially appealing.
• #12: Leigh-Anne Moving to the study skills and accelerating learning argument the evidence here applies to both formal students and informal learners completing the OpenLearn survey. Firstly, it’s worth noting that 49% of informal learners and 58% of formal students said their motivation to use OpenLearn was to improve their study skills.   Formal students were asked a set of questions about the possible impact of OpenLearn on their formal studies. I’ll pick out a few pertinent examples. Meta-level study-related traits such as confidence and independence were covered by the questions and as the graph shows, 37% of formal students indicated that using OpenLearn had led to their gaining confidence and 39% that they had become more independent and self-reliant as a result of using OpenLearn. In addition, 42% of respondents indicated that their use of OpenLearn had resulted in their increased experimentation with new ways of learning. Each of these findings add to a picture of OpenLearn, and informal study of OER more generally, being complementary with formal education, in that students who have developed generic study skills and qualities may be more likely to perform well in their formal studies and, indeed, less likely to withdraw from a module - a big concern in UK higher education and a priority area for HE funders in the UK. Indeed, the OpenLearn-using formal students were actually asked whether they felt they were more likely to complete their current course of study as a result of studying OpenLearn and 29% of survey respondents indicated that this was the case. Related to student retention, the results also indicate that studying with OpenLearn resources leads to increased enthusiasm for future study - 55% of respondents suggesting that this was the case. Students were more reticent, however, about seeing a link between OpenLearn use and improved grades - with only 14% indicating that this applied for them.
• #13: Leigh-Anne We also asked survey respondents about the barriers they faced in using open educational resources. TALK THROUGH SLIDE
• #14: Leigh-Anne – The OER Research Hub made a number of recommendations to the Open Media Unit based on the survey findings. The two main recommendations were to Increase awareness of the platform and discoverability of OpenLearn resources, especially for people outside higher education and to make the content even more engaging for learners. I’ll now hand over to Patrina Law from the Open Media Unit and she’ll outline some developments taking place on the basis of these recommendations.
• #15: ANDREW: SYNDICATION
• #16: ANDREW: social recommendation
• #17: ANDREW These badges can (see slide) Viral reference is the idea that the badges will/can show up on several sites including facebook – Badging will be used on OpenLearn and FutureLearn early next year.