This meant that while OERs were largely overlooked by the mass media, the overnight revolution of MOOCs offered a more palatable story. But given the investment required to transform education, it is debatable whether many companies with venture capitalist backing will be able to wait ten years for their impact to be realised. In his critical analysis of Tim O’Reilly, Morozov (2013) makes a point about the different time scales of the free and open source movements we saw in Chapter 2, which have relevance here:
Stallman the social reformer could wait for decades until his ethical argument for free software prevailed in the public debate. O’Reilly the savvy businessman had a much shorter timeline: a quick embrace of open source software by the business community guaranteed steady demand for O’Reilly books and events, especially at a time when some analysts were beginning to worry
If one replaces ‘free software’ with OERs and ‘open source software’ with MOOCs in Morozov’s analysis then a similar pattern is apparent. OERs, largely conceived of as a social good allied to the roles of the university, can afford to take their time to realise their goal, and indeed understand that such change does take time. MOOCs, particularly those with venture capital funding, are under pressure to realise more rapid and more dramatic impact. In Chapter 1 one of the reasons for positing the issues in open education as a battle was that of narrative. This need for rapid results to realise commercial targets creates a context where narratives of revolution and disruption are not only desirable, but essential. This is a topic that will be explored in more detail in Chapter 6, but for now it is worth noting the timescale, investment and hard work required by the OER community to realise their long-term goals.
