focus on growing the ranks of this audience. An example would be a community college teacher who adopts and contributes to open textbooks.
Secondary OER usage–This group may have some awareness of OERs or open licences, but they have a pragmatic approach to them. OERs are of secondary interest to their primary task, usually teaching. OERs (and openness in general) can be seen as the substratum which allows some of their practice to flourish, but they are not aware or interested in open education itself as a topic, rather their own subject is of prime interest, and therefore OERs are only of interest to the extent that they facilitate innovation or efficiency in this. An example of this group might be a ‘flipped learning’ teacher who uses Khan academy, TED talks and some OERs in their teaching.
Tertiary OER usage–this group will use OERs amongst a mix of other media and often not differentiate between them. Awareness of licences is low and not a priority. OERs are a ‘nice to have’ option but not essential, and users are often largely consuming rather than creating and sharing. An example would be a student studying at university who uses iTunes U materials to supplement their taught material.
David Wiley (2009) has talked of Dark Reuse–that is, whether reuse is happening in places we can’t observe (analogous to dark matter) or simply isn’t happening much at all. He poses the challenge to the OER movement about its aims:
If our goal is catalyzing and facilitating significant amounts of reuse and adaptation of materials, we seem to be failing.…
If our goal is to create fantastically popular websites loaded with free content visited by millions of people
