Stephen Downes provides a comprehensive review of funding models for open educational resources, with the emphasis on sustainability. I particularly appreciate his concluding thought: "... the functions of production and consumption need to be collapsed, ... the distinction between producers and consumers need to be collapsed. The use of a learning resource, through adaptation and repurposing, becomes the production of another resource. Though there is a steady stream of new resources input into the network by volunteers, this represents, not the result of an OER sustainability project, but the beginning of it." ____JH
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Models for Sustainable Open Educational Resources. Though there is great temptation to depict the sustainability of OERs in terms of funding models, technical models or even content models - and no shortage of recommendations regarding how each of these should proceed - it seems evident that any number of such models can be successful. But at the same time, it also seems clear that the sustainability of OERs - in a fashion that renders then at once both affordable and usable - requires that we think of OERs as only part of a larger picture, one that includes volunteers and incentives, community and partnerships, co-production and sharing, distributed management and control. MS-Word version. [Comment] [Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ OLDaily RSS 0.91]
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