Jumping Right In

Re: Three-tiered funding model for OER

by Irwin DeVries -
Number of replies: 1
I would like to highlight Jacky's third point. Course/OER content can have an extremely limited shelf life and if we do not have a reasonably well-understood OER/course lifecycle model in mind at the outset, within 1-2 years the system will start to deteriorate. That means thinking beyond startup and into a steady state scenario. Perhaps it need be incumbent upon each contributing university to commit to a level of maintenance - and/or alongside have an ongoing quality assessment of OER such that the stale ones can be identified and dealt with.
In reply to Irwin DeVries

Re: Three-tiered funding model for OER

by Wayne Mackintosh -

Irwin DeVries wrote,

content can have an extremely limited shelf life and if we do not have a reasonably well-understood OER/course lifecycle model in mind at the outset, within 1-2 years the system will start to deteriorate. That means thinking beyond startup and into a steady state scenario.

Clearly you have experience in the planning and design of asynchronous learning models ;-)

I agree -- the OERu must plan for the maintenance aspects of the system, how it can scale and how we assign organisational responsibilities for course maintenance in the future using an increasingly mass-collaboration model.

I also have a suspicion that "new" pedagogical models enabled by networked learning in an OER context will have an impact on the life-cycle of courses. Stephen Downes mentioned in an earlier post that "Over time I have come to think of OERs less like static products produced once and then copies and more like dynamic products produced frequently and then discarded."

This is a complex topic - -but I hope we will have a chance to brainstorm a few ideas about open and digital pedagogies in a world where knowledge is accessible on the web and how this might impact on the design and implementation of OERu.

In short - -yes, we must think beyond startup.