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 An email exchange (Rory McGreal & Neil Butcher, South Africa)

Neil,
I agree and disagree with your points. I prefer a pragmatic even eclectic approach rather than a principled one. If people can make money by delivering quality learning to large numbers of learners that want it, then that is better that a principled open offering that is unsustainable and ineffective. What is the goal? To stick to your principle of openness or to deliver quality education to the world?  My guess is that there will be many approaches as they are developing now. The for-profit way (even personal profit) may not be the best way, then again maybe it will.

Let's not be fetishistic about "openness". I am for openness because I believe that it will be a primary contributor to achieve the goal of universal mass education. Openness will be part of the solution. However, if someone can do so using closed materials good luck to him or her. The road to hell is paved with principles and much good can and does arise from people seeking profit. Look at all the idealistic writers who cannot sell their works and others like Dostoevky write classics for the money!

If the money goes to the prof, the money is going back into the system. As you suggest, the money will incenitivise the prof to continue volunteering his time and energy to the program. Isn't that going into the system? Perhaps a splitting of the funds can be arranged. Some to the prof and some to the program. There are many possibilities, some better incentives than others.

Yes, the model is potentially problematic as are all of our open models. Problematic in different ways. But I have no problem with profs becoming rich through mass education. Better them than "evil" companies.

All the best.
Rory

Thanks Rory

 

I agree with most of this – but there is also an issue of principle, and the point at which the compromise made moves us fundamentally away from underlying principles of openness. As Abel discovered in his experience, another lecturer is promoting a $90 textbook, so affordability is not always valid. And the point here is that none of the income comes directly back into the Coursera system to make it sustainable. At best, it incentivizes the lecturers to participate because it may increase sales of their non-open textbooks. And as the numbers are large (36,000 students on the course I was looking at), even sales to 20% is reasonably significant as the book was already written. Is this the right incentive mechanism?

 

More importantly, though, what does this mean for monetizing models of ‘free’ education that become a front for sale of all-rights reserved copyrighted materials? At what point does it become like many of the models of gaming apps. Download the app for free, but find the experience underwhelming until you purchase the in-game items? Obviously, this course does not go this far (the book is just optional), but it does drift in a particular direction that strikes me as being potentially problematic.

 

Regards

 

Neil

 

From: rory [mailto:rory@athabascau.ca]
Sent: 26 September 2012 10:15 AM
To: Open Educational Resources - an online discussion forum
Cc: Neil Butcher; oer-university@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [OER] Interested in people's thoughts on the ethics of promoting purchases through free courses

 

Neil,
Selling the print version of open textbooks, in my opinion, is not unethical even if it is your own. The prof below does not hide the fact that it is his book. If teachers create their own courses and have a textbook that is cheaper than alternatives then there is a justification if not an obligation to announce it. At $9.99 shipped anywhere in the world, this is not unreasonable. They will not get rich from this model. On the other hand, you are quite right. He could also create a pdf version for free download and self-promotion is distasteful to Canadians also, although shouldn't we make allowances for different cultures (even American!).

AUPress at our university sells the print books and uses those funds to help support the open press. The books are free online and it does allow them to be downloaded as pdfs, for free. This is a model being used by some for-profit publishers in the USA.

All the best.
Rory

On 12-09-25 7:39 PM, Neil Butcher wrote:

Hi everyone,

 

I came across an interesting example of monetizing ‘free’ courses, and have been pondering its implications. I am not sure what I think of it, so would be interested to hear the views of others.

 

A colleague of mine recently enrolled in the ‘Introduction to Mathematical Thinking’ on Coursera, as she was keen to do some further studies and had not done well in mathematics in her education much earlier in life. In various introductory mails from the Course Instructor, she received notices along the following lines:

 

“If you want to do some preliminary reading, or are one of those students who likes to have a print textbook on hand, the textbook for the course is my own, newly published Introduction to Mathematical Thinking, available from Amazon as a cheap paperback for $9.99 in the US. The textbook is not required for the course. If you want to avoid paying postage, the UK-based bookseller the Book Depository promises to deliver it anywhere in the world for free. Incidentally, there is no e-book version. I tried using Amazon’s Kindle convertor and the result was unreadable. Commercial e-book technology cannot yet handle mathematics”.

 

There are various issues arising from this:

1. The textbook is not prescribed, so one can presumably take the course without buying it. But one is not sure whether this will prejudice your chances of success, particularly as it is the instructor’s own textbook.
2. Although presenting an e-book in .mobi will surely not work well for mathematics, as the instructor notes, it is unclear why a PDF version is not available.
3. After a few emails in which the instructor promoted himself and his textbook, my colleague dropped out of the course, finding this self-promotion distasteful.

 

I am not sure what I think of this. On the one hand, making available additional materials seems practical and useful. And the instructor is presumably entitled to find ways to monetize his IP if he chooses to. But then using an OER framework to encourage students to buy one’s own material and effectively using a MOOC as a marketing platform for one’s own proprietary materials seems jarring (and certainly came across that way to my colleague, who shared this experience with me ‘out of the blue’ so to speak – i.e. we were not having a prior conversation about OER).

 

I’d be interested to hear what list members make of this. Is it acceptable practice? OR it is ethically problematic? And, in both instances, why?