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Can Open Education Work for Associations (Part III)

By jtcobb on Sep 11, 2008 in Open Education

In this final installment of the Can Open Education Work for Association series, I take a look at potential business models for associations seeking to incorporate open educational models into the overall educational offerings. You can find the first two posts, in which I consider benefits and challenges at:

As I wind up this series, I should note – particularly for those who may be visiting Mission to Learn for the first time – that these three installments on open education represent a more formal level of writing than I usually engage in here at Mission to Learn. Given the role that associations play in ongoing education for so many people though, this just seemed like a topic that deserved some extended, formal treatment.

The Value of Open

While one of the defining characteristics of open educational resources is that they are generally offered free of charge, “open” and “free” are not equivalent. Open goes beyond free in making content available for re-use and, in most cases, re-mixing. As such, open content may present more challenges than free content, but it also creates significantly richer opportunities for distribution, innovation, and ultimately, return on the value of the content.

Assuming associations exists for more than a quid pro quo of member fee paid paid/member benefit received – that is, that they also serve some broader public good – this is a critical point. The “free” movement, sparked by Wired editor Chris Anderson and others, is beginning to get some play in association conversations. “Open,” in my opinion, greatly enhances the potential social value of “free.”

Initial Investment

How will the initial investment be funded and/or recouped, and how will the ongoing offering be sustained? These are the two business questions that loom largest when open education is considered.

The initial investment question is one that has, for many years, restricted what most associations have been willing to attempt with online educational resources in general, much less ones that are freely and openly available. For smaller organizations, the costs have been perceived as simply too high. And for larger organizations that have made heavy investments, the tendency has been to protect the intellectual property created and charge as much as the market will bear in order to recoup investment costs.

The sea change in content development and distribution options that has occurred over the past several years is only beginning, in my opinion, to be felt in association education circles. The rise of rapid e-learning approaches – and an increasing array of affordable tools to support them – open source solutions, and social media-driven approaches to learning has radically altered the initial cost equation for content development and distribution.

I won’t attempt to detail here the full scope of the change in development and distribution options, but I have included some example open source solutions on the Open Learning for Associations Wiki, and for more detail on social media options, I encourage you to read my free Learning 2.0 for Associations eBook. In general, the barriers to initial investment are nowhere near what they once were. Even smaller associations may consider the development of high quality online learning and knowledge assets to be well within their reach. The question then becomes more about recouping the initial investment and sustaining the initiative over the long term.

Sustainability

Stephen Downes, who has written extensively about open education, characterizes sustainability as follows:

…by sustainable we must mean “‘has long-term viability for all concerned’ - meets provider objectives for scale, quality, production cost, margins and return on investment.” This is significant: for after all, if the consumer of a resource obtains the resource for free, then the provision of the resource must be sustainable (whatever that means) from a provider perspective, no matter what the benefit to the consumer. [Models for Sustainable Open Educational Resources]

Downes, Richard Baraniuk, and others have detailed various approaches to sustainability for open education. The following are the approaches that I feel are most relevant in the association sector.

Value Added Model

This is similar to what Chris Anderson calls a cross subsidy. Dholakia, King, and Baraniuk refer to it as the segmentation model and Downes calls it the conversion model. The idea is that, while a given set of educational resources may be free, an organization might charge for any number of related products or services – such as mentoring and consulting, support services, study aids, or print versions of materials. Payment for a credential or some other form of validation would also fall in this camp. Indeed, many medical societies already follow this model when they offer access to journal articles or case studies for free, but then charge for actually awarding continuing medical education credit.

Freemium

The “freemium” model, at least as it was originally described falls within the value-added model above. I use it here, however, in the way it seems to be used by Chris Anderson – namely that it involves restricting some part of the core educational resource to those who are willing to pay. In other words, there is a premium version of the resource that is not free. This strikes me as somewhat different from paying for related, but separate products and services.

Sponsorship Model

Under this model, an organization might find one or more corporate members or possibly a government agency to sponsor production and maintenance of particular resources in exchange for visibility or simply because it represents an efficient way of publishing and distributing industry-specific content. This is the classic public television, public radio approach. I would also expect that advertising, to the extent that it is a viable model for associations, would fall under this model more often than not. In other words, rather than attempting to sell advertising based upon high site traffic, associations might agree to publish ads as a part of the overall visibility a resource sponsor receives.

Producer-Side Payment Model

This last one may, on the surface, seem the least plausible of the group, but I think it may actually have a great deal of potential, particularly for larger associations. The best current example is the Public Library of Science (PLoS), where authors pay to submit their works for inclusion.

PLoS provides authors with “a swift, high-volume, efficient, and economical system for the publication of peer-reviewed research in all areas of science and medicine, with innovative user tools for pos-publication commenting, rating, and discussion.” In return, the authors get a level of validation, distribution, and intellectual community around their work that they may have never enjoyed otherwise.

I don’t find it too much of a stretch to imagine a platform that enables paid content contributions by industry experts, consultant, trainers, and others who have strong incentives for connecting with a membership base. Technically, it is not a stretch at all. The challenge lies in associations identifying and articulating the value they can offer these content producers.

Conclusion

The question that underlies this series – Can open education work for associations? – is not intended to be purely rhetorical. Part of my goal in posing it and then writing a series of posts in response was to help clarify my own thinking on the topic and decide whether I think it can, in fact, work. At this point, it seems clear to me that open education could be a very valuable and vibrant part of association educational offerings. Given the role that associations play in ongoing professional and trade education for so many people, the opportunities for a new level of vision and leadership seem tremendous.

But then, I don’t run an association, or even an association education program. I welcome comments, questions, and opposing views from those who do and anyone else has a perspective to share on the question: Can open education work for associations?

Jeff Cobb
Mission to Learn