Science final published smith 2009 1

Opening Education
Marshall S. Smith, et al.
Science 323, 89 (2009);
DOI: 10.1126/science.1168018

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to online learning. Similar initiatives have arisen 8. J. Fjermestad, S. Hiltz, Y. Zhang, in Learning Together Online, institutional quality, and that approval is a requirement
in the community college sector in several other S. Hiltz and R. Goldman, Eds. (Lawrence Erlbaum, NY, 2005), for institutional participation in the federal student
pp. 39–80 financial aid programs.
countries and regions such as England, Wales, 9. R. Ragan, J. Kleoppel, J. Asynchronous Learn. Networks 8, 18. See (16), section 495, paragraph 1.
Bavaria, and Norway. So, although many U.S. 15 (2008). 19. Dow Lohnes; www.dowlohnes.com/postsecondary/
providers are looking beyond the border and 10. National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of accreditation.
seeing very little competition, the global situation Education Statistics, 2007; http://nces.ed.gov/programs/ 20. P. Bacsich, Lessons to be learned from the failure of the
digest/d07. UK e-University (2005); www.odlaa.org/events/2005conf/
is likely to get considerably tougher in years to 11. A. Finder, “Adjuncts outnumber tenured faculty on ref/ODLAA2005bacsich.pdf.
come, when competition for online students who U.S. campuses,” International Herald Tribune, 20 21. Megatrends in e-learning provision: E-learning
live anywhere becomes as fierce as it is for tra- November 2007; www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/20/ initiatives which were discontinued because they
ditional campus students. america/college.php. failed to reach targeted goal: The Scottish
12. A. Pickett, Faculty Development Process, Sloan-C Interactive University (2002); http://nettskolen.nki.no/
Effective Practice; http://sloanconsortium.org/node/347. in_english/megatrends/Discontinued/.
References and Notes 13. E. Kashy, M. Thoennessen, Y. Tsai, G. Albertelli II, Discontinued_ScottishInteractiveUniversity.pdf
1. E. M. Noam, Science 270, 247 (1995). J. Asynchronous Learn. Networks 4, 231 (2000). 22. See www.du.nl for a cryptic closure message (in Dutch).
2. See, e.g.; http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/ 14. P. Shea, J. Asynchronous Learn. Networks 11, 73 (2007). 23. D. McLeod, “NHS University axed,” The Guardian, 30
index.htm. 15. NASULGC-Sloan National Commission on Online November 2004; www.guardian.co.uk/education/2004/
3. See, e.g.; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Learning, Benchmarking Study: Preliminary Findings nov/30/highereducation.uk3.
Learning_management_system. (2008); available at www.sloanconsortium.org/ 24. I. E. Allen, J. Seaman, Staying the Course: Online

4. Second Life; http://secondlife.com. publications/survey/nasgulc-prelim. Education in the United States, 2008 (Sloan Consortium,
5. See www.sloanconsortium.org/publications/survey/index.asp. 16. Higher Education Opportunity Act, P.L. 110-315, 14 Needham, MA, 2008); www.sloanconsortium.org/
6. C. Dziuban, P. Moskal, Educause Q. 24, 60 (2001). August 2008. publications/survey/pdf/staying_the_course.pdf.
7. J. Hartman, C. Dziuban, P. Moskal, in Online Education: 17. Accrediting commissions are nongovernmental 25. The authors are grateful for helpful critiques from
Proceedings of the Sloan Summer Workshop on agencies that conduct independent assessments of C. Dziuban at University of Central Florida and
Asynchronous Learning Networks, J. R. Bourne, institutional quality and integrity. Certain accrediting M. Goldstein of Dow Lohnes PLLC.
J. C. Moore, Eds. (Sloan Consortium, Needham, commissions have sought and are recognized by the U.S.
MA, 1999), pp. 155–179. Secretary of Education as being “reliable” arbiters of 10.1126/science.1168874

cause of firewalls, passwords, or proprietary rights;
REVIEW
(ii) use the content by downloading, duplicating,
and distributing it with or without restrictions;
Opening Education and (iii) reuse the content by translating or other-
wise modifying it to accommodate local context
Marshall S. Smith and by combining it with other material and
distributing the altered content, with or without
Spurred by the publication of Massachusetts Institute of Technology OpenCourseWare in restrictions.
2002, the open educational resources (OER) movement, which has rapidly expanded and captured Although OER are controversial, the affor-
the imagination and energy of millions of creators and users throughout the world, now faces dances of the Web, together with growing interest
many opportunities and substantial challenges as it moves to become an integral part of the and use of OER, make possible a leveling of
world’s educational environment. The confluence of the Web and a spirit of sharing intellectual access to knowledge and information around the
property have fueled a worldwide movement to make knowledge and education materials open to world, as well as provide the potential for dra-
all for use. OER are content (courses, books, lesson plans, articles, etc.), tools (virtual laboratories, matic transformations of education practice. Stu-
simulations, and games), and software that support learning and educational practice. OER dents everywhere, enrolled or not, have free
are free on the Web, and most have licenses that allow copyright holders to retain ownership access to content and interactive instruction, as
while providing specified rights for use in original and modified forms. At the least, OER have well as to networks of people with similar in-
helped to level the distribution of knowledge across the world. A second promise of OER is terests, enabling them to collaborate in the
to help transform educational practices. This article explores the history of and promises and construction of knowledge and to learn at their
challenges for OER. own pace. The act of modifying an OER to meet
language, cultural, or readiness requirements
teacher in a Kenyan secondary school These are examples of open educational re- increases useful access and may be a creative

A uses a free Web-based interactive simula-
tion designed by a Nobel Prize–winning
physicist (1). In a university in Xian, China, a
sources (OER). OER include lesson plans, courses,
textbooks, videos, podcasts, library collections,
games, research journals and articles (often called
learning endeavor. Open high-quality content
and instruction can set standards of practice
and, because of their quality, transparency, and
student having trouble learning linear algebra goes open access), encyclopedias, dictionaries, simu- availability, help improve the practice of teaching
for free help to a translated Web-based collection lations, and assessments and the open software and learning throughout the world.
of course lectures from Massachusetts Institute of that support their creation, hosting, and dissem-
Technology (MIT) (2). And, in the United States, ination. Most OER are covered by flexible li- A Short History of OER
thousands of students go to a Web site that pro- censes that allow copyright holders to retain OER have been around almost as long as the
vides free homework help aligned with their state ownership of the materials while permitting users Web, although not by name. During the mid-
standards for most secondary school academic certain rights (4). 1990s, U.S. government libraries and museums
courses (3) (Fig. 1). The power of OER comes from three rights posted examples of OER. Later in the decade, the
fundamental to openness and sharing (5). OER U.S. Department of Education, the California
users may be granted by the copyright holder of State University, and European SchoolNet all
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching,
the resource some or all of the rights to (i) free provided substantial amounts of educational ma-
Stanford, CA 94305, USA. E-mail: mike.marshallsmith@ access anytime, anywhere, to content or software terials for free on the Web. In 1998, David Wiley,
gmail.com that often has been available to only some be- then a student at Brigham Young University,

www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 323 2 JANUARY 2009 89

Education & Technology
created the first license for content that provided such applications and platforms, the rights to use dent learning and enhances information sharing,
authors a way to maintain ownership of content and reuse are restricted to those able to afford participative behavior, collaboration, and possi-
while giving others the right to use it. Examples proprietary tools. To facilitate full adaptation to bly even creativity. This (Fig. 2) is the world in
of open source software tools for creating and new contexts and the addition of new functional- which our children are growing up.
using open content appeared on the Web. ity, open educational platforms and software In this complex environment, our education
MIT faculty and administration decided in should be modular and extensible (11). In addi- institutions have mixed incentives for opening
2000 to make available on the Web the core content tion, depending on its use, the success of OER access to knowledge. Some university presidents
of all MIT courses (6). Named OpenCourseWare may require additional standards and best practice see OCW and its transparency as a mechanism
(OCW), it includes syllabi, reading lists, lecture models that establish criteria for quality and for for improving the quality of courses and teach-
notes, assessments, and video lectures: by 2007, meeting its promise of accessibility to everyone. ing. Professors who are comfortable with their
1800 MIT courses open on the Web were being For example, best practice protocols for making course content post their material openly and are
accessed yearly by millions of students, teachers, content openly accessible to the physically hand- motivated by a desire to share, to further establish
and the general public. icapped would be particularly useful. The field their reputation with their peers all over the
MIT’s commitment to “openness” sparked the also will need to become comfortable with meth- world, and to improve their students’ experi-
imagination of people around the world, helping odologies for evaluating materials and setting ences. University or department policies to make
to spur dozens of other universities to post their standards ranging from formal peer reviews and research articles openly available are viewed as

own course materials freely on the Web and to statistical trials to user judgments such as those speeding the transmission of knowledge and
form the OCW Consortium (7). In 2002, the used by Amazon.com and eBay.com. facilitating greater opportunities for knowledge
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cul- Adaptive: social, cultural, political, and legal. aggregation and partnerships. Many teachers
tural Organization (UNESCO) proposed the name Making intellectual property open on the Web have a thirst for seeing others’ lesson plans and
open educational resources, and in 2007 the Organi- often requires a major adaptive shift in the at- strategies and for sharing their own.
zation for Economic Cooperation and Development titudes, norms, incentives, and legal orientation Working against OER, however, are financial
(OECD) published a study of the use and prevalence of organizations, groups, and individuals. Sharing concerns, authors’ fears of exposing mediocre
of OER in the developed world, concluding that “An is difficult in a society where competition and content, the weight of traditional practice, and
apparently extraordinary trend has emerged” (8). private enterprise are dominant. legitimate reasons for protecting intellectual
OER advocates believe that it will become a Yet, even though the dominant values may property. Course materials, such as books and
vibrant part of the educational and social fabric of weigh against OER, there are substantial social, videos, cost time, energy, and money to create,
the world. Lawrence Lessig, a professor of law at cultural, and political movements in the devel- and authors may rightly expect compensation.
Stanford University, argues for the Web to be an oped and developing worlds that value openness Open content challenges conventional modes of
open commons; if some people are restricted and transparency, particularly in public trans- publishing and distributing academic content.
from knowledge while others are not, creativity actions (12). Openness can be a way of organiz- Some publishers and professional academic orga-
will be constrained and inequalities heightened ing social activities that favors universal over nizations believe they have a lot to lose as OER
(9). However, there are questions often asked: restricted access, participatory over restricted become more popular. These are trying problems
How can OER survive if it gives away its pro- decision-making, and collaborative over central- that may sort themselves out over time. Instruc-
ducts for free? Can the current momentum for ized production (13). Aspects of the Web, such as tors are becoming more comfortable with trans-
OER be maintained and self-sustained? After all, social networks, video sharing, wikis, and blogs parency and sharing, and publishers and academic
the OER movement must survive in an envi- facilitate an environment that supports indepen- organizations are testing different economic,
ronment that has a robust infrastructure to protect
the private ownership of property and the max-
imization of financial return. For a movement
with a very different ideology to coexist and grow,
it, too, must have a supportive infrastructure.

Toward an Infrastructure for OER
An infrastructure provides an organizing and
facilitating framework for the system it serves; in
this case, the worldwide network of people and
organizations that create and use OER. In recent
years, a variety of studies and articles have been
written about technology infrastructure issues
(10). Most take a broad perspective, including
not only pipes, standards, and software but also
social, economic, and legal issues.
Technical. Effective use of technology and,
therefore of OER, relies on a stable general tech-
nical infrastructure. This includes hardware, soft-
ware, standards, and protocols. The rights to use
and reuse content, however, may require software
design characteristics different from those of
software programs that operate in an environ-
ment without those rights. The need for open Fig. 1. This is a picture of an open interactive simulation of a Circuit Construction Kit that is used
software tools for creating, recreating, and sharing in classrooms from middle school to graduate school to teach basic electricity relationships. See (1)
the many forms of content is an example; without for Web site information.

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SPECIALSECTION
service, and instructional models. But for now, Financial. The dilemma of creating a sustain- The most powerful sustainability models,
tensions abide in many settings. able organization or movement when the product however, may not be rooted in financial rewards.
OER may have legal implications in a variety is given freely is obvious. One sustainable model Over time I expect to see multiple examples of
of areas, but the most obvious concerns are about followed by some universities is to view OER as models where groups of individuals and possibly
intellectual property rights. Most works created a part of its brand and the cost as a necessary part organizations create virtual networks that are
after 1923 are under copyright and, although few of its overhead. Many governments see opening committed to creating, maintaining, and upgrad-
people realize it, since 1989 in the United States their education content as a public good and ing examples of OER. For example, many people
copyrighted is the default condition for any creative responsibility. Other organizations look to private and organizations are interested in ways to con-
work. A copyrighted item on the Web cannot be philanthropy or to government for help. tribute to the public good. Engineers, such as those
legally downloaded, printed, altered, or used in any A few business models have been developed. who have worked at night on Linux, or retired
fashion other than being read off the screen— Bloomsbury Academic, a new imprint of J. K. teachers and open universities in different nations
unless permission is specifically granted by a li- Rowlings’s British publisher, will post its titles on are prime candidates for membership in such
cense or statement of terms of use, or the item fits the Web, downloadable and free, using Creative virtual organizations. Connexions, an OER com-
under an exclusion such as the “fair use” pro- Commons licenses. It will sell print-on-demand mons and development platform created at Rice
visions that hold for educational institutions. books, as well as use normal channels. Other University, has a variety of open courses, some
In 2001, building on Wiley’s earlier work, publishers, including National Academies Press, maintained by small communities of experts (18).

Lessig started Creative Commons, an organiza- use a similar mixed model (16, 17). Another Various Wiki applications, especially Wikipedia,
tion focused on designing easy-to-use licenses for approach, used when the traffic to an OER site are well-known examples.
individuals and institutions that allow them to is high, is to post advertisements to create a Sustaining individual examples of OER is
maintain ownership of open content while provid- flow of income. A third model adds value to one challenge. Sustaining a viable OER move-
ing users selected rights (14). Creative Commons’ the OER by providing services to enhance the ment is another. Two indicators are important to
licenses change the copyright terms, allowing a use of the OER. The Monterey Institute for watch. First, networks of people and/or organi-
range from no rights reserved—open sharing, Technology in Education (MITE), for example, zations pursuing common goals amplify social
reusing, and remixing—to some rights reserved. takes open courses and adds value to them by change, and the Web greatly facilitates the de-
Creative Commons has provided legal and effec- charging for facilitating or providing installa- velopment of such networks. A rapidly growing
tive ways of making creative products open for tion, as well as for supporting communities of number of networks of people and organizations
others to use and reuse that, with Lessig’s writing users and developers. Each of these financial actively support OER. The networks are local,
and advocacy, have given energy and credibility models requires a substantial number of users national, and multinational, and they are located
to an open content movement (15). who value the content. all over the world.

Fig. 2. Students are comfortable in turning to the Web for help. Open high-quality material from a trusted source is useful for students who need
supplemental support outside of the classroom. This is a frame from a secondary school environmental sciences course at HippoCampus. See (3) for
more information.


Education & Technology
The second indicator stems from the fact that Another powerful application of OER lies in courses. The courses would have multimedia,
there are as yet few well-documented examples empowering users in the developing world to interactive simulations, and cooperative learn-
of powerful OER utility. OER will begin to come participate and, in a short time, control the ing opportunities, and they would incorporate
of age when there are multiple examples of its creation and dissemination of important learning AI-supported feedback loops to personalize the
ability to improve the lives of substantial num- materials. The Commonwealth of Learning instruction. They would also be modular and
bers of users—by increasing the flow of useful sponsors the Virtual University for Small States extensible.
information, producing opportunities for collab- of the Commonwealth, in which representatives of Carnegie Mellon University’s (CMU) 11 Open
oration and creativity, and enhancing teaching 30 countries collaborate to produce vocational Learning Initiative (OLI) courses most closely
and learning. and academic content for learning inside and conform to the model suggested here. The courses
outside of education institutions (19). With use intelligent tutoring systems, simulations, and
Powerful Examples of OER assistance from the Open University of the United corrective feedback loops and contain the same
The Internet will change dramatically over the Kingdom, the Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan content as regular CMU lecture courses.
next decade as it incorporates such emerging Africa network—16 public tertiary institutions in In the fall of 2007, OLI undertook an im-
technologies as geo- and semantic mapping, speech eight countries—develops and disseminates open portant randomized trial (22). Students in CMU’s
recognition, artificial intelligence (AI), data teacher training materials to support public school beginning statistics course were asked to choose
mining, and techniques that immerse learners in teachers. As yet, we lack data about the effect of whether they wanted to take the semester-long

virtual worlds that engage multiple senses. The these efforts on teaching and learning. But the course with traditional lectures, weekly discus-
opportunities for influencing learning and teach- process of production, delivery, and use may be as sion sessions, and optional access to the statistics
ing will expand dramatically. The power of OER important as the initial measurable effects on tutor software (the control group) or the same
to increase access and to allow use and reuse traditional educational outcomes. course with the tutoring software as the in-
should both enhance and be enhanced by these The increasing number and quality of open structional medium, no lectures, two optional week-
innovations. textbooks and open textbook providers repre- ly discussion sessions, and only half as long to
For now, however, our question is what cur- sents a third application that could prove to be complete the entire course (the experimental treat-
rent OER applications might be candidates for powerful, this one directly facilitated by student ment group). The volunteers for the experimental
game changers in education. Many would con- and faculty concern over the high cost of com- treatment were randomly assigned into experi-
sider OCW a candidate. Since MIT put up its site, mercial textbooks. A fourth possibility stems from mental and control course sections. The students
more than 90 universities and colleges from 14 a growing interest in the medical community and in the control and experimental sections took the
countries around the globe have adopted OCW around developing-world users in exploiting OER same in-class exams and, before and after the
and created a consortium (OCWC) to share best for public health and medical treatment knowledge. courses, an externally developed and standardized
practices and course materials. As a result, more My fifth example is also in the formative stage. assessment of introductory statistics. The results
than 7800 courses are now available on the Web. It is possible now to create an open library of ef- were statistically similar for the two groups for the
Students and teachers across the world look to fective, high-quality, Web-based courses for second- in-class exams, whereas the experimental group
OCW to expand their understanding of courses they ary school and college students (20, 21). Experts in made significantly larger gains on the standardized
are taking or teaching, whereas nonstudents turn to content areas, teaching, Web application devel- assessment, indicating that the experimental group
OCW for self-learning (Fig. 3). opment, and cognitive science would develop the learned better and in half the time.
CMU is following up this experiment with
similar studies in other content areas and with
students from other colleges. If the findings
stand, they will challenge our conventional think-
ing. Do we need lecturers in many of our courses?
Is the lecture an efficient way of delivering high-
quality instruction? Is the semester sacrosanct, or
should we be trying to determine what kinds of
learning can be accelerated?
Now imagine a 21st century library whose
holdings would be very-high-quality software
courses built to the specifications suggested
earlier and informed by the experiences of
successful software course developers, such as
those at CMU. The cost of creating a library of 50
such secondary school courses and 50 early
college courses would be roughly $300 million,
less than 2% of California’s current budget deficit
(for 2009–2010). Another $100 million would
provide a powerful set of performance and
multiple-choice end-of-course assessments to
measure individual student success and a dozen
rigorous experiments to assess the effectiveness of
the courses. These would be fixed, one-time-only
costs. Continuing costs of $50 million a year
Fig. 3. This chart shows conservative estimates of the number of individual visits per month to OCWC would be required to maintain, update, evaluate,
sites from October 2003 to October 2008. The blue area represents visits to sites where the OCW is in the and house the courses. When completed and made
originally posted language, and the red area shows sites with translated versions of the OCW (7). available, every person and school in the world

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SPECIALSECTION
competent teachers or in application. We need research on effectiveness of
laboratories or in face- using OER materials, but, if we knew more about
to-face groups of peers. commercial technology applications’ effects on
But the project could teaching and learning, we would also know more
make a dramatic contri- about the potential of OER.
bution beyond its own
direct impact by estab- References and Notes
1. See http://phet.colorado.edu/index.php for science
lishing a standard for
simulations designed by C. Wieman of the University of
many instructional set- British Columbia and University of Colorado.
tings because of the 2. See www.ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.
quality of its content htm for G. Strang’s course, which has received over one
million visits.
and its use of strategies
3. The homework site is www.hippocampus.org/.
for providing feedback 4. For a recent more extensive treatment of OER, see
and support for students. T. Iiyoshi and M. S. Vijay Kumar, Eds., Opening Up
The capacity to quickly Education (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2008).
update a open Web- 5. Not all three rights are available on all OER. Many OER
have an attribution requirement, and rights two and

based course with new three are often restricted to noncommercial use.
knowledge or based on 6. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has
new understandings of supported OER, including MIT OCW, since 2001.
what parts of the in- See www.hewlett.org/.
7. For more about the OCW Consortium,
struction work or do not see www.ocwconsortium.org/.
work to effectively teach 8. Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open
students is another pow- Educational Resources (Organization for Economic
erful argument for imple- Co-Operation and Development. Paris, France, 2007)
p. 9; www.oecd.org/dataoecd/35/7/38654317.pdf.
Fig. 4. One way of better understanding use is to go to the potential users menting the project. 9. L. Lessig, The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in
with materials that have familiar designs and for advice about ways to a Connected World (Random House, New York, 2001).
improve the product. This photo shows Chinese students, in a middle school Building Momentum 10. See “Revolutionizing science and engineering through
just outside of Xian, China, trying out an early version of an online, game- Although there have cyberinfrastructure: A report of the National Science
Foundation blue-ribbon panel on cyberinfrastructure”
based, open learning course with cartoon characters, for teaching English to been many successes, (NSF, Arlington, VA, 2003). The panel chair was
Chinese speakers. the OER movement con- D. E. Atkins of the University of Michigan. Available
tinues to face a substan- online at www.nsf.gov/od/oci/reports/toc.jsp.
would have access to an entire repertoire of high- tial number of challenges. Two areas are important 11. See Wikipedia Web sites www.wikipedia.org/wiki/
modularity and www.wikipedia.org/wiki/extensible.
quality high school courses (including elective and to the ultimate sustainability and the impact of OER 12. D. E. Atkins, J. S. Brown, A. L. Hammond, A Review of the
vocational courses) and an equivalent coverage on teaching and learning. Both require research. Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement:
for the first 2 years of many college programs. The first has to do with the extent of use of Achievements, Challenges, and New Opportunities
Making the courses open rather than proprie- OER in the developed and developing worlds. (William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Menlo Park,
tary has several advantages. First, the courses CA, 2007). The authors argue that MIT OCW helped
Without significant use, there will not be sus-
begin a cultural change in higher education from a
would be immediately available to everyone. Sec- tainability. But we do not know what the demand proprietary position toward a culture of sharing.
ond, the open nature of the courses would give in- is for OER, how to use supply to increase de- Available online at www.oerderves.org/wp-content/
stitutions and individuals the rights to modify, adapt, mand, how to make use more probable, how best uploads/2007/03/a-review-of-the-open-educational-
and customize the courses for their purposes. Third, to measure use, or what we might consider to be resources-oer-movement_final.pdf.
13. For a more complete treatment of these ideas see
fully open materials would allow organizations to little or great amounts of use. These questions M. L. Smith et al., “Open ICT4D” 19 November 2008,
build professional services around the courses— pose complex and probably expensive design, International Development Research Center working
such as professional development—providing a fi- measurement, and analysis problems (Fig. 4). paper, www.idrc.ca/en/ev-133699-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html.
nancial source for sustainability. Lastly, for non- The other challenge concerns the question of 14. Creative Commons has become a nonprofit organization
located in San Francisco. See http://creativecommons.org.
enrolled students, a service could offer a fee-based effectiveness. One aspect of this question is easy. 15. L. Lessig, The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in
proctored assessment. If students pass the assess- OER has expanded access to knowledge both by a Connected World (Random House, New York, 2001).
ment, the same service or a local school might re- being open and by allowing adaptation to various 16. J. Howard, Chron. High. Educ. 55, A-12 (2008).
ward them with credit, thereby replacing seat time contexts, although we are not sure about the ex- 17. www.bloomsburyacademic.com
18. http://cnx.org/
with learning performance as the criterion for success. tent of the expansion. But we do not have evi- 19. www.col.org/colweb/site/pid/100
This relatively small investment could have dence, for example, about whether the act of 20. See M. S. Smith, C. M. Casserly, Change 38, 8 (2006).
immediate ramifications in a nation with a troubled modifying materials has special educational 21. C. M. Christensen, M. B. Horn, C. W. Johnson, Disrupting
economy, a retiring teacher workforce, and a great value. And, with a few exceptions, we know little Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way
the World Learns (McGraw Hill, New York, 2008).
demand for more highly skilled workers. On the about the effectiveness of individual OER appli-
22. M. Lovett, O. Meyer, C. Thille, J. Interactive Media Ed.,
other hand, successful implementation would cations in causing their users to learn. http://jime.open.ac.uk/2008/14/jime-2008-14.html (2008).
have to overcome the weight of powerful cultural To some extent the latter question reflects our 23. M.S.S. is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for
and social norms and practices. For example, lack of understanding about the effectiveness of the Advancement of Teaching. He has worked at the William
widespread use would require a significant technology applications in education. OER is an and Flora Hewlett Foundation as well as for the U.S. federal
government and three major universities. He appreciates
change in the role of some teachers from presenter enabler. An OER application by its nature is more the useful comments on earlier versions of this article from
to mentor. widely accessible and, if modified or otherwise E. Kemble, M. L. Smith, C. M. Casserly, B. Alberts, P. Hines,
This project would not be a universal solu- adapted, potentially more appropriate for a target J. O’Day, S. Tracy, and two anonymous reviewers.
tion. There are many skills and concepts that are audience than a commercial application, but other-
better learned in classrooms taught by caring and wise it is not technically different from such an 10.1126/science.1168018


Science final published smith 2009 1

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