Wayne Mackintosh

Maria wrote:

Wayne, will partner institutions be paid for their participation, out of the money OERu makes to sustain itself? If so, it can be a major point for them, not during the pilot stage, but in the future. The OERu model is infinitely scaleable, and it does not compete with their existing customer base - it's for the next billion, etc. 

Correct, the OERu model is scalable and fiscally sustainable. This is how it works:

1. OERu partners pay a nominal membership fee to the OER Foundation which covers the cost of the central shared infrastructure to support free learning. We only need 10 new members for a fiscally self-sustaining model without reliance on 3rd party donor funding.
2. Recurrent cost for providing summative assessment services is guaranteed because partners provide this on a fee for service basis.
3. We are not competing with existing institutional markets -- as you say its for the next billion who don't currently have access to affordable tertiary education. 
4. Staffing is scalable because each partner contributes a 0.2 full-time equivalent staff member to assemble and maintain their course contribution to the network. Most OERu partners are allocating normal development time as part of normal operations, so no new money is required.
5. The OER Foundation is a non-profit which means all additional revenue must be used for charitable activities. We will be able to allocate surplus revenue for commissioning the paid development of new OERu courses for the benifit of the network. 

It's smart philanthropy -- we can achieve our goals sooner depending on the rate of recruiting the remaing 10 partners. So if any insitutions on the list are interested in joining to become anchor partners (a status membership tier for institutions who join before the official launch on 1 November 2013) -- the should email me offline at wayne@oerfoundation.org.

Hi Haydn,

You can rest assured that none of the OERu partners will compromise their brand by working with partners that don't meet rigorous standards. The guarantee that the OERu network provides is a powerful one -- namely that OERu partners retain decision-making autonomy over which courses they would consider for local credit transfer.  

Speaking to quality assurance experts, they have advised that we consider a to two tier approach for the OERu which aligns well with your thoughts:

1. Work with organisations recognised by appropriate governmental body -- which is a necessary requirement, but not sufficient to guarantee quality.

2. Have the OERu network quality assure courses and processes (which we can scale within the network -- perhaps thinking about OERu "certified" courses & processes.)

As a network, we haven't discussed the detail of what an "OERu certified courses and processes" might mean and I think this is something which the 2nd meeting of partners should begin to discuss drawing on their own expertise.

On one end of the spectrum is how our network should deal with organisations which may not meet generally accepted or agreed quality standards. On the other end of the spectrum is the possible reticence of high quality organisations working in countries which are bombarded with offshore provision from questionable providers in joining our network for fear of what the local QA agency might think of them joining our OERu network. Here the idea of “certified” OERu courses may assist in this regard.

At this stage of our OERu journey all our members are of high standing – but as a network we will need to consider appropriate mechanisms of how we manage this in the future to retain the quality of the “OERu brand”. 

Hi Ken,

That's very relevant to our discussions -- the quality issues extend to a broad range of instuttional operations of our partners which the OERu collaboration must incorporate into our deliberations as we find solutions for the future.  

Steve wrote:

I suppose for our purposes there's little practical difference in whether we're officially a member or not. 

So this raises a legitimate question for our anchor partners: Apart from building open education ecosystems and social inclusion, what then are the benefits of being part of the OERu network and how does transparent planning contribute to our future success?

I think there are a number of distinct advantages taking into account that once your institution achieves accreditation you will also be free to join our network :-):

1. While I dislike industrial analogies for education, the OERu network is very similar to the notion of co-opetition where we agree to collaborate on components of our systems in order to “compete” better. Consider for example, the collaboration between Toyota, Peugeot and Citroen who share design, component parts and a jointly owned manufacturing plant to produce competing city cars. In the OERu we get to share “production plant” for the benefit of individual partners, eg central infrastructure for hosting OERu courses plus shared quality assurance models.

2. Our transparent and open planning systems build trust for prospective partners without compromising our network advantage. Prospective partners can “try before they buy” without the need for a big marketing budget. As a non-profit open collaboration, we don't have hidden business secrets. On the contrary, that's our business secret: the more partners who join, the more effective our network becomes increasing the return on investment for individual members. It's in our interests to openly share our business models and practices. We have a proven and trusted track record of openness dating back to 2006 – we've been in this game for a while. The open internet is a place where its easy to discredit the “brand value” of a collaboration irrespective of the media flavour of the month. The establishment of the OERu network pre-dates the Coursera's, Udacity's, edX's and FutureLearn's of this world.

3. The major leverage point of the OERu network, is that the individual institutional contribution to open is minimal – restricted to assembling and maintaining two courses. We are nearing the threshold where we can reduce the agreed course contribution while having access to the equivalent of a full set of courses for degree study. That's hard to replicate using single institution models when the OERu network is able to resolve the complex challenges of course articulation. When institutions use our courses, they're obligated to attribute the OERu source - -that's free advertising for us ;-). 

It's smart philanthropy and I look forward to the day when you can announce your own accreditation and consider joining the OERu. At least with the OERu family, you will have both prior and inside knowledge of who you would be dealing with ;-). 

Hi Hemlata,

Great to read your contribution and thanks for posting from a non-partner perspective. 

You're absolutely right, quality assurance is essential and is a challenging task. The advantage of our networked OERu model is that we can share the load for quality assurance, thus generating efficiencies which are hard to replicate with single institution models.

I can assure you that the quality thresholds of developing open courses with open design approaches are an order of magnitude higher than closed courses because we can't hide poor quality behind password access ;-).

Another opportunity for the OERu network is to think about "OERu certified" courses where our network specifies the minumum thresholds for quality -- but this is something the partners will need to discuss.