commercial success, but it is also true that an open or part-open model can be an effective business model. The freemium approach works this way, where a service is open to a large extent, but some users pay for additional services, with services such as Flickr being an example. If this is the goal, then openness works by creating a significant demand for the product. For universities, this may equate to increased students on formal courses.
- Increased participation – It may be necessary to gather input from an audience without paying to access them. This could be crowdsourcing in research or getting feedback on a book or research proposal. Being open allows others to access it and then provide the input required.
To demonstrate how these different motivations would influence the nature of openness, let us take an imaginary scenario: a university wants to create a MOOC and approaches their educational technologist to come up with a proposal. The university senior management have heard about MOOCs and think they need to be active in this area. They seek the advice of our educational technologist, who consults with a range of different stakeholders and asks them, ‘What is the aim of the MOOC? What do you want from it?’
The person from marketing says he wants to increase the university’s online profile and reputation. From this perspective the proposed MOOC focuses on a popular subject, featuring a well-known academic. The subject will be ‘Life on Mars’. It will be expensive with high-quality production, acting as a showcase for the university and getting it in the press.
When the Dean of the Science faculty is consulted, she says they are concerned about student recruitment on postgraduate courses. They want the MOOC to bring in high-fee paying students from
