Please post any thoughts you have about sustainability models here. Your new ideas are more than welcome!
Hi Mary, hi everybody
I've been reading over the Sustainability document provided... some intriguing models here & I think whoever came up with these certainly did a thoughtful job. After thinking about these models, I have a few comments/reactions:
Model 1: Funded Centralized Coordination - I like this one & feel it could provide a pretty high-quality textbook. But I don't hold much hope for it. We have been participating for almost 10 years with the OPDF projects & yet it's my suspicion that cross-institutional adoption of the OERs produced has been very low.
Model 2: Centralized/Decentralized Hybrid - this one's a bit fuzzy & vague. Also the mention that 'BCcampus will provide technical support' sounds a bit scary. I'm thinking these texts should be EASY to update; any technical support required should be minimal.
Model 3: Cost Recovery - I'm sure as heck not morally opposed to this one but I think it would result in a shaky basis for sustainability. Depending on how this model was applied, texts with a small subscription would never get enough funding to merit attention. And I'm guessing that over time students will be less & less likely to 'need' a print-based copy.
Model 4: Sponsorship - Again; I don't see any ethical problems with this one & I've seen how this *can* work... although I have no idea how much funding can be generated this way.
Model 5: Institutional Sponsorship - not very likely! It's been my experience that smaller ('sending') institutions tend to adopt the texts supported by the bigger ('receiving') institutions. I agree with the original author's observation that 'sufficient resources may not be dedicated to produce high quality texts' & 'If the initiative were not prioritized, it could die on the vine.'
Model 6: Subject matter Group Ownership -- this one I feel has the best chance for survival. If an articulation committee 'owns' the resource, members are more likely to buy in to the project & adopt the text. Articulation committees have a history of getting together to agree on curriculum; I think agreeing on text content would not be so conceptually different a task. Doing the actual WORK of maintaining the text would probably still require an input of funds; perhaps equivalent to what we historically have been getting via OPDF? (or is this overly optimistic?)
Gina
Thanks so much for this thoughtful post Gina, I really appreciate the feedback. When I put the models down on "paper" I was thinking ultimately we'd end up with some kind of blend, but in the intial stages, I do think we need some pretty heavy centralized coordination (3-5 years is what I had in mind) to get the resources into the hands of groups like articulation committees and help them get set up for success. Long term I see BCcampus playing a role, but not as hands on as we are now, at least not with open textbooks specifically.
I'd also like to see at some point a return to the creation of resources other than textbooks, but with a bit more focus than OPDF maybe - some kind of combo of OPDF and the way we've done OTs. I'm not sure what kind of funding would be available but like you I'd love to see the amounts we had for OPDF each year. If things progress as I hope they will, the ROI will be enormous.
Yet another sustainability model... I don't know how many of you saw this article posted in Campus Technology today. Mind you, this is kind of a special case sustainability model since it was initially funded with student money (some kind of tuition rebate). Maybe there are some lessons for us here, however: the value of involving students & the value of out-&-out rewards for faculty who make an effort towards OER adoption to replace textbooks.