ability to modify the textbook, become of interest later. For example OpenStax report that of 1,245 resources, 419 have been modified. This suggests that modifying a textbook is still something of an alien practice for many educators, but one that is growing. This is likely to take time to alter, but the open textbooks example illustrates how starting from a well understood practice can lead to successful OER adoption, and from that initial exposure to openness, other practices will follow.
Issues for OERs
One of the issues that is often raised for OER projects is that of sustainability. Many OER projects have received funding from bodies such as the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Producing OER and maintaining large projects with associated staff is not a zero cost activity, and so questions arise about maintaining such projects when the original funding ends.
In a report for OECD in 2007, David Wiley defined sustainability as ‘an open educational resource project’s ongoing ability to meet its goals’ (Wiley 2007b p. 5). Wiley proposed three models of sustainability, which he labelled according to the universities that had deployed them:
- the MIT model – OERs are created and released by a dedicated, centralised, paid project team.
- the USU (Utah State University) model – OERs are created by a hybrid of a centralised team and decentralised staff.
- the Rice model – This is a decentralised model based around a community of contributors.
Economic viability of OERs is significant, because the same questions are now being asked of MOOCs and other open approaches.
