The document advocates for Open Educational Resources (OER) as a solution to rising education costs, highlighting the need for freely accessible materials to improve student success. It presents a strong business and policy case for governments and educators to adopt openly licensed content, emphasizing the benefits of cost savings and enhanced educational experiences. The vision outlined is for all students to have free digital access to educational materials from day one.

1. Open Education: The Business
and
Policy Case for OER
Dr. Cable Green
Director of Global Learning
cable@creativecommons.org
@cgreen

2. Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

3. Children Reading Pratham Books and Akshara By Ryan Lobo http://www.flickr.com/photos/prathambooks/3291CC BY

4. “Nearly one-third of the world’s
population (29.3%) is under
15. Today there are 158 million
people enrolled in tertiary
education1. Projections
suggest that that participation
will peak at 263 million2 in
2025. Accommodating the
additional 105 million students
would require more than four
major universities (30,000
students) to open every week
for the next fifteen years.1 ISCED levels 5 & 6 UNESCO Institute of Statistics figures
2 British Council and IDP Australia projections
By: COL
http://www.col.org/SiteCollectio
s/JohnDaniel_2008_3x5.jpg

5. Dreaming Girls Head By: Elfleda http://www.flickr.com/photos/carolinespics/1531CC BY-NC-ND

6. http://www.capetowndeclaration.org

7. By: UNESCO: http://www.moveoneinc.com/blog/wp-

9. A simple, standardized
way to grant copyright
permissions to your
creative work.

10. Step 1: Choose Conditions
Attribution
ShareAlike
NonCommercial
NoDerivatives

11. Step 2: Receive a License

12. most free
least free

15. http://creativecommons.org/choose/
http://youtu.be/iHDYenuFFtA

16. Over 500 million items

18. Our vision is nothing less than realizing the full potential of the Internet – universal access to research,
education, & full participation in culture, driving a new era of development, growth, & productivity.
Develops, supports, & stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, & innovation.

20. Over 77,000 contributors
working on over 22 million
articles in 285 languages

21. 175+ Million CC Licensed Photos on Flickr
2

22. Higher Ed

23. By: MIT OCW: http://conferences.ocwconsortium.org/2011/cambridge/images/logo-ocwc-

24. Primary

25. Open Educational Resources (OER)

26. OER are
teaching, learning, and
research materials in any
medium that reside in the
public domain or have been
released under an open
license that permits their free
use and re-purposing by

27. Education grant making

28. Search & Discovery

29. Translations & Accessibility

30. Customization & Affordability

31. What is the
Business / Policy
Case for OER?

32. vs.
Rivalrous vs. Non-Rivalrous
Resources

33. BY SA: By Harvey Barrison http://www.flickr.com/photos/hbarrison/6920142558/

34. Cost of “Copy”
For one 250 page book:
• Copy by hand - $1,000
• Copy by print on demand - $4.90
• Copy by computer - $0.00084
CC BY: David Wiley, BYU

35. Cost of “Distribute”
For one 250 page book:
• Distribute by mail - $5.20
• $0 with print-on-demand (2000+ copies)
• Distribute by internet - $0.00072
CC BY: David Wiley, BYU

36. Copy and Distribute are “Free”
This changes everything
CC BY: David Wiley, BYU

37. Movies, TV Shows, Songs, and
Textbooks
Movies and TV Shows:
• Amazon Prime – $6.59/month
($79/year) for access to 10,000 movies
and TV shows
• Netflix – $7.99/month for access to
20,000 movies and TV shows
• Hulu Plus – $7.99/month for access to
45,000 movies and TV shows
CC BY: David Wiley: http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/2348

38. Movies, TV Shows, Songs, and
Textbooks
Music:
• Spotify – $9.99/month for access to 15
million songs
• Rhapsody – $14.99/month for access
to 14 million songs
CC BY: David Wiley: http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/2348

39. CC BY ND / Delta Initiative / http://tinyurl.com/bw3ztnt

40. When the Marginal Cost of Sharing is $0…
- educators have an ethical obligation to share
- governments need to get maximum ROI by
requiring publicly funded resources be openly
licensed resources
- governments and educators need openly
licensed content: (a) so you can revise & remix
(b) buying and maintaining is cheaper than
leasing (w/time bombs)

41. There is a direct relationship between
textbook costs and student success






60%+ do not purchase textbooks
at some point due to cost
35% take fewer courses due
to textbook cost
31% choose not to register for
a course due to textbook cost
23% regularly go without
textbooks due to cost
14% have dropped a
course due to textbook cost
10% have withdrawn from a
course due to textbook cost
Source: 2012 student survey
by Florida Virtual Campus
www.projectkaleidoscope.org

42. The Vision

100% of students have
100% free, digital access to all materials on day
1
Drive student success by
designing, adopting, measuring and
improving OER-based courses
www.projectkaleidoscop

43. Student ratings of quality of open texts
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Better quality
Same quality
Worse quality
Number of Students
• “It was very concise and aligned with exactly what we were
working on in the class.”
• “Having the textbook catered to us by our teacher was
perfect.”
3%
56%
41%
Source: Bliss, Hilton, Wiley, Thanos (2012

44. Student preference for Kaleidoscope
courses
0 20 40 60 80 100
Prefer Kscope
Prefer traditional
No preference
Number of Students
• “I enjoy having online texts provided for me because I'm
poor. I spend the money I have left after rent on school, so
having free online texts provided for me benefits me very
much.”
• “GREAT WAY TO DO ONLINE CLASSES!!!!”
13%
13%
73%
Source: Bliss, Hilton, Wiley, Thanos (2012

45. Partner with Governments
who care about:
(a) efficient use of national /
state tax dollars;
(b) saving students money;
increasing access to publicly
funded research and data;
(c) increasing access to

46. CC-BY licensed textbooks
for 110 university courses

47. $500 million – Round 2
($2 billion over four years)

48. “as a condition of the receipt of a TAACCCT
grant, the grantee will be required to license to
the public (not including the Federal
Government) all work created with the support
of the grant (Work) under a Creative Commons
Attribution 3.0 (CC BY) license. Work that
must be licensed under the CCBY includes
both new content created with the grant funds
and modifications made to pre-existing,
grantee-owned content using grant funds.”
SGA, Round 2 (p. 8 / Section I.D.5 )

51. White House issues directive supporting
public access to publicly funded research

52. Publicly funded
resources should be
openly licensed
resources.

53. The Opportunity

54. English Composition I
• 55,000+ enrollments / year
• x $175 textbook
• = $9.6+ Million every year

55. English Composition I
• 55,000+ enrollments / year
• x $175 textbook
• = $9.6+ Million every year

56. http://opencourselibrary.org

57. Does it make any sense WA State and
K-12 Districts together spend
$130M/year
on textbooks and the results are:
• Books are (on average) 7-10 years out of
date
• Paper only / no digital versions.
• Students can’t write / highlight in books
• Students can’t keep books at end of
year
• All rights reserved… teachers can’t

58. massive change By: sookieCC BY

59. U.S. House Appropriations Committee draft FY2012
Labor, Health and Human Services funding bill
SEC. 124. None of the funds made available by this Act
for the Department of Labor may be used to develop
new courses, modules, learning materials, or projects in
carrying out education or career job training grant
programs unless the Secretary of Labor
certifies, after a comprehensive market-based
analysis, that such courses, modules, learning
materials, or projects are not otherwise available for
purchase or licensing in the marketplace or under
development for students who require them to
participate in such education or career job training grant
programs.
http://appropriations.house.gov/UploadedFiles/FY_2012_Final_LHHSE.pdf

60. U.S. House Appropriations Committee draft FY2012
Labor, Health and Human Services funding bill
SEC. 124. None of the funds made available by this Act
for the Department of Labor may be used to develop
new courses, modules, learning materials, or projects in
carrying out education or career job training grant
programs unless the Secretary of Labor
certifies, after a comprehensive market-based
analysis, that such courses, modules, learning
materials, or projects are not otherwise available for
purchase or licensing in the marketplace or under
development for students who require them to
participate in such education or career job training grant
programs.
http://appropriations.house.gov/UploadedFiles/FY_2012_Final_LHHSE.pdf

61. CC BY-NC-ND
046: Rule #2: See Rule #1 By: William Couch
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wcouch/226861055

62. ByMichaelGwyther-Jones
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12587661@N06/
7906811250/
CC BY

63. • Efficient use of public funds to
increase student success and
access to quality educational
materials.
• Everything else (including all
existing business models) is
secondary.
Only ONE thing Matters:

65. the opposite of open isn’t “closed”

66. the opposite of open is “broken”
Attribution: John Wilbanks

67. Dr. Cable Green
Director of Global Learning
cable@creativecommons.org
twitter: cgreen