Panel is:
- Peter McDonald (PM)
- Marianne Talbot (MT)
- David Robertson (DR)
- Andy Lane (AL)
- Fred Mednick (FM)
Q: Did you have hopes/thoughts about reuse when you did a podcast?
MT: No! But since been approached by a US company interested in doing some lectures for them – so definitely a way of self promotion
DR: Hoped to see use on iTunesU to compare with high quality content from US sites
PM: Public good – I’m publicly funded, and feel it is right to do it
Q: Business models related to Open Content? (e.g. micropayments)
AL: No different to other industries – e.g. Music industry – ‘freely available’ content (whether legal or not) but still need to generate income. May be option for micropayments for ‘value added’ – e.g. provided printed, bound, version of content. At the moment the OU is looking at how much they can afford to spend on the content and how it is classified – is it ‘outreach’, ‘marketing’, ‘recruitment’, ‘teaching’ etc? OER may provide cost savings – not just about income. If OER is an ‘add-on’ or ‘nice to have’ it will fail – has to be a central part of institution.
PM: Personal perspective. Could be part of institutional model to get funding for research etc. – make an OER output a requirement on funding
DR: Would like this type of activity embedded more. e.g. it was discovered that certain ‘reading lists’ were available outside the university Intranet – some academics horrified – DR says he sees his lectures as the property of ‘the world’ (without wanting to be pretentious) – not just for those in Oxford
MT: Perhaps add a request for donations at the end of each podcasts [this makes me think if This American Life and Public radio in the US]
AL: No reason shouldn’t charge for some things – but understanding what people will pay for and who your audience is
Comment from Sarah from Strategic Content Alliance: Have to understand both your audience and your costs – need to get this clear before you think about a revenue model
Q: What is the single greatest challenge for OER?
FM: The plethora of organisations – would be nice if we had interoperable organisations!
AL: Will have succeeded when we stop talking about Open Educational Resources and start talking about Education – OERs are just a means to an end.
PM: How to change thinking. We end up ‘translating’ between the old way and new way of doing things – rather than changing the way we think to deal with the new way of doing things.
MT: Not about challenges – but a worry – will opportunities for new lecturers be curtailed as institutions reuse captured content instead – why have a new lecture when you can re-run an old one?
Q: Publishers don’t know if you use diagrams in lectures – but if you do it on camera you have to clear copyright. Can we get agreement from publishers for non-profit reuse?
AL: Very good point. Early days for publishers as much as it is for HEIs. Some work done – e.g. MIT have agreement with Elsevier that they can include up to 3 diagrams from Elsevier content in a piece of OCW (think I got this right).
Comment from Marion Manton (MM) MOSAIC project (Oxford reuse one, not Library data one): Teachers continually find stuff on the web which they use in their teaching – until OERs are part of this landscape we won’t have success. If you can’t find it via Google, most academics won’t find it – no good locked away in repositories. Are OERs really very different to using books, articles, etc.? Just because it’s a podcast, why should we think about this any differently?
DR: Quality and provenance problems with things on the open web
MM: Yes – but skills to assess quality and provenance of material doesn’t change – and these are skills we need to be fostering anyway
AL: This [OERs, reuse, Open Education] is going to take 10-20 years to shakeout – it isn’t going to happen quickly
FM: Nice story – rewarding attending ‘Learning Ambassador’ course in Nigeria by agreement with driving licensing organisation to issue (for small fee) a personalised licence plate – which made crossing borders etc. easier – there are ways of making this stuff sustainable.