Tom Caswell

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  • Consortia as far as the eye can see! But why pay the fee?

    It seems every time I turn around a new consortium has popped up somewhere on the Open Education landscape. While I see the value of like-minded folks coming together to compare notes, discuss interoperability, etc, I have to wonder if many of them couldn’t operate just as well as chapters or SIGs of an existing consortium. This would offer many of the same advantages, including 501c3 US non-profit status, without all overhead of being a completely separate entity. If one of the reasons for forming a consortium is advocacy won’t fewer, larger consortia tend to wield a greater influence on legislators and policy makers? It might also allow for lower membership fees, if fees are necessary.

    The question of membership fees is a tricky one. The Connexions Consortium and the OCW Consortium are still working on how to add value for members. Some newer members have suggested that discounts on consulting services would make membership fees worthwhile, and some even indicated being willing to pay 10x the current fee in this case.

    Since non-members can attend the same conferences as members, what motivates newcomers to pay for joining a consortium? Voting rights? Bragging rights? It was different when it was free, but now there has to be something more. If we can’t think of a better way to attract paid consortium memberships, perhaps the membership fees should be required to attend conferences. This is standard practice for many academic conferences, but no one wants to alienate anyone in the Open Education space — a space defined by its openness, after all.

  • Free Samples – USU OpenCourseWare is a Virtual Visitor’s Center: Part 2

    David Wiley left a comment on my last post about USU OpenCourseWare sustainability that sparked a new post.

    David’s comment:

    I think the problem of the moment is that every person on campus is asking, with regard to their specific program, “how do you justify NOT paying for it?” And yet things are being cut left and right. In a climate where serious conversations are being had about laying off faculty, I worry that you can’t argue for a program on any merits other than “in addition to be useful, it brings in additional dollars.” But I’d love to be wrong.

    My reply:

    … I don’t want to stray too far from the context of my letter, which was directed at a marketing and PR committee. My point is that we have not made a strong enough case to these people. Marketing a university costs money, and the return on this investment is measured in eyeballs, visitors, or hits — not dollars. An established OpenCourseWare like USU OCW should be a marketing line item because it provides more marketing bang for every buck. Smart organizations like Talis have figured this out and are now using their marketing budgets to fund interesting projects that will enhance their reputation (http://blogs.talis.com/education/incubator/). I realize this is all stuff you know, but I’m just putting it out there for others.

    Value

    I think saying that OpenCourseWare needs to “bring in additional dollars” is looking at the problem too narrowly. Yes, every OCW needs to generate value, and that value must be recognized by the institutions decision-makers. I am not against OCWs earning money linking to paid courses, but I think USU OCW has something else to offer.

    As I studied in the Utah State University library today I noticed several groups of students being taken on a tour of the campus, 8 students at a time. Several of the students appeared to be foreign students. How did these students decide to attend Utah State University? More importantly, how will students find and choose a university in the future (assuming universities are not irrelevant at that point)?

    I am not saying Utah State University should replace its guided campus tours with OpenCourseWare; I am only suggesting that USU OpenCourseWare has incredible value as a sort of Virtual Visitor’s Center. USU OCW is essentially a “student magnet” — a site that attracts learners from near and far and showcases some of the great courses USU has to offer. It’s like the free samples at Sam’s Club.

    Free samples

    I believe USU OCW is more useful than a traditional advertisement because it draws the right target group: learners! USU OCW allows them a sample of some great course content available at Utah State University. And just like the free samples they give away at your local membership warehouse, it gets people interested. Of course when it comes to course content in an OpenCourseWare, you can give away all the samples you want and you haven’t lost anything. Students will still have to pay for the degree.

    This is valuable stuff. How valuable? To put things into perspective I will compare it to something much less useful: a Google Ad. Google Ads for popular university keywords range from 76 cents to $1.80. At a conservative 76 cents per click, an ad campaign for a university would cost $380,000 for 500,000 clicks. At its peak, USU OCW had an annual operating cost of $120,000 and had over 550,000 visits last year. That’s 1.5 million clicks from people interested in learning something. If you are a marketing committee, that’s worth something.

    A well-developed OpenCourseWare site is valuable in so many ways. Please understand that by focusing on the marketing potential of OCW I do not mean to reduce it to merely a marketing tool. My point is that something doesn’t have to turn a profit to be sustainable. It can “earn its keep” in other ways — like marketing.

    So what is your school doing with its marketing dollars? Why not create a virtual visitor’s center with OpenCourseWare? Why not give out “free samples” to thousands of prospective students? They will still come to you for the credentials. And there will be more of them.

  • USU OpenCourseWare is a Virtual Visitor’s Center

    I’ve been talking to several schools about how they fund their OpenCourseWare programs. The more I do, the more I see that most OCWs are simply not going to make money. That is not their aim. So what does it mean to be sustainable or self-sustaining? Does it always involve making money? Gary Matkin, Dean of Continuing Education at UC Irvine, argues that a program like OCW can be self-sustaining as long as it provides enough value to justify its own existence at that institution. That  value can be seen in terms of outreach, marketing, but it has to be recognized and valued as such. So I wrote a letter to the USU Board of Trustees Marketing and Public Relations Committee, which I haven’t sent (yet). Let me know what you think.
    Dear USU Board of Trustees Marketing and Public Relations Committee,
    If you could build a university visitor’s center that would attract over a million different visitors in the first four years of operation — a center your could run maintain with just one or two employees that would draw thousands of learners from all over the world — If you could create such a place, how much would that be worth to you? Guess what? You already have it. It’s called USU OpenCourseWare, and it’s already paid for. So how much would you be willing to pay to keep this virtual visitor’s center working for you? Would it be worth $10,000 per month to attract 43,000 monthly visitors (not just random visitors, but people actively seeking educational content) to a USU website, ready to learn? That’s what it would cost to continue to develop USU’s OpenCourseWare site, adding new courses to the showcase each semester. Of course this site is more than a marketing effort. There is value for existing students and faculty to be able to access this course content as well — especially during Blackboard outages. OpenCourseWare courses are available without a password for anyone to use. And they are definitely being noticed. In fact, USU has an international reputation as one of the best OCWs in the world, especially for its agriculture course materials. USU OpenCourseWare is listed alongside MIT, Notre Dame, and Yale OCWs. So how do we justify paying $120,000 each year for an OpenCourseWare program? I would ask how we justify NOT paying for it.
    In the past USU has advertised to random travelers in an airline magazine. Surely it must be worth more to attract an audience of learners to a USU website filled with high quality courses for them to examine. Which do you think will attract more prospective students and faculty, a site filled with course materials or an airline ad? So, now that the outside funding is gone, what is a site like USU OpenCourseWare worth in terms of marketing and PR? Is a USU site that consistently attracts 250,000 unique visitors each year worth keeping? Will USU spend its marketing budget on airline ads instead? Please support USU OpenCourseWare so it can continue to showcase content from scores of great USU courses to tens of thousands of interested visitors every month. Many of those virtual visitors will be seeking a degree sooner than you think.

  • The (even more) Fun Side of TwHistory

    First I want to share one more article about the Twitter History project I’m involved with that came out in this morning’s local newspaper:  http://hjnews.townnews.com/articles/2010/01/13/news/news05-01-13-10.prt. Journalist Arie Kirk did a nice job describing the project. Best-selling author Annette Lyon also wrote about her involvement in TwHistory here on her blog, and it’s a great read.

    But there’s always more to the story, which is one of the things I love about history. Here’s a little glimpse of what’s been going on behind the scenes as volunteer authors gear up for the Mormon Overland Trail reenactment using a Google groups page:

    Laurie: Does anyone understand the concept behind the ten-mile stakes, as in “Put up the fifth ten miles stake.” Do they count these per week?

    Annette: I have no idea how often they did these, but it sounds like they’re putting up markers every ten miles for those who come behind. Someone–I can’t remember who–built a pretty sophisticated odometer to track the miles.

    Marion: That was Appleton Harmon who created the odometer, I believe. I think he got tired of counting the rag tied to wagon wheel. I’m not sure what they mean by the fifth. They wouldn’t have done that in one day, so maybe they were tracking by week?

    Josi: I think they meant a fifth of whiskey; that’s about what I would need about every 10 miles to get from Winter Quarters to Salt Lake.

    Marion: LOL

    Rob: I think we might be surprised to see how often that was the case.  🙂 There’s a story from Robert Gardner, one of my ancestors, while working on the temple.  He had a big gash cut in his leg from a log coming down a chute up in the mountains.  Porter Rockwell was helping him out and gave him some whiskey.  Rob told that he started pouring it on his leg to clean the wound, and Porter told him that it was for him to drink, so he did both.

    If you would like to join in on the fun please contact us via the TwHistory.org site or leave me a comment. What would you like to reenact next?

  • TwHistory.org Fund Raising with Kickstarter.com

    Sometimes it’s frustrating not having a PhD yet. It certainly makes getting funding for projects a lot harder. Occasionally there are opportunities like the Talis Incubator for Open Education that don’t require a PhD for the application process, but those are pretty rare, and I have to wonder how many “independents” actually get funded.

    Enter Kickstarter.com. A beautifully simple way to raise money for projects of all kinds. Check out Kickstarter’s blog for examples of some really creative projects that have been funded so far. From Detroit real estate investing by the inch to pre-paid book writing (ahem, Marion), the list goes on. (more…)