There’s a great conversation happening on The Chronicle of Higher Education blog, in the comment thread of the article entitled “Publishers Criticize Federal Investment in Open Educational Resources.”I want to capture some of it here, particularly the exchange I shared with someone named RWEJD. Feel free to add you comments to the main discussion, but I want to try to isolate some of these arguments here so I can think about them more.
From the comments:
RWEJD 19 hours ago
The $2B grant from government is a great idea for students, instructors, taxpayers, and society *if* the content and courseware created gets *used*, and matches the quality produced by professional, commercial publishers. To date, that is not even nearly the case.
Over the last decade The Hewlett Foundation (primarily, with others, like Gates) has spent well over $100M to create open content, and courseware. What’s the outcome of that investment? How much of that content was developed in a way that guarantees quality, interoperability, currency, etc. What plans are in place that make the many Open content repositories fiscally sustainable over the long term? How could this much money be spent with so little in the way of positive results? (more…)