The Quest for Sustainability in Open Courseware

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Quest for Sustainability in Open Courseware
I want to be sympathetic, because the author is working with limited information (specifically, his Oxford background, Chris Anderson's book on the long tail, and a podcast on OpenCourseWare). So I'm supporting of his working through the ideas that might lead to something like sustainable open educational resources. But I fear a paradigm shift might be in order. He writes, "the professor is the academic authority who should drive the decision-making subject to the authorisation of the institution." We already know what happens if we allow the professors to drive the decision-making: nothing. That's why Open Access advocates like Peter Suber and Stevan Harnad argue for open access mandates. More...