Business and Organisational Models of Open Education

The aim of this course is to give students the overview of the business models and plans development as well as the correponding organisational models in OE, and to empower them to develop appropriate models in a particular OE context.

Students will gain the following competences:

• Knowledge about the basics of business models, organisational structures of the OE organisations and some of the existing OE ecosystems;

• Knowledge about market trends, developments in OE, actors, processes and organisational models in detail;

• Competences to develop and implement business models and propose corresponding organisational structures in the context of OE and OL;

• Ability to develop appropriate added value models and oragnizational models, taking into account advanced technology solutions for open education.

There are no prerequisits.

The aim of this course is to give students the overview of the business models and plans development as well as the correponding organisational models in OE.

During the course, students will be learning about business and organisational models in education in general. They will be exploring these in the context of openness which include open access, open data, open source software and open education. They will get familiar with various existing business models and mecha-nisms and approaches to the operation.

In particular, they will be learning the way and procedures for business model development, business plan development and the develop-ment of the corresponding organisational mod-els and structures. These will include different approaches and mechanisms that are used in traditional business model and plan develop-ment. In addition, these will be explained through the traditional business model as-sessment approaches and demonstrated through some of the successful and effective models in operation.

The introduction part will be followed by gain-ing deep insight into dominant organisational and financial models and frameworks for OE on national and international level. The Business Model Canvas (BMC) as framework will provide them with a tool to use when implementing OE strategies.

Students will be learning how to assess the existing approaches and to adopt them to their needs.

Students will combine online lectures and self-learning to get a more detailed and specific knowledge about business models in OE and OL.

After completion of the course the student:

• Knows about the basics of business models, organisational structures of the OE organisations and some of the existing OE ecosystems;

• is able to develop and implement business models and propose corresponding organisational structures in the context of OE;

• has knowledge and skills to critically evaluate existing models, and understands the value and risks of their implementation.

Basic:

• Bregar, L., Zagmajster, M., & Radovan, M. (2023). E-Learning for a Digital Society. University of Nova Gorica Press. https://www.ung.si/en/publisher/ E-version
• Downes, S. (2007). Models for Sustainable Open Educational Resources. Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects, 2007(3). 29-44. E-version
• Huttner, N., Green, L., & Cowher, R. (2018). Seeking a sustainable OER ecosystem. Redstone. E-version
• Orr, D., Luebcke, M., Schmidt, J. P., Ebner, M., Wannemacher, K., Ebner, M., & Dohmen, D. (2020). Higher education landscape 2030: A trend analysis based on the AHEAD international horizon scanning. Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44897-4 E-version
• Orr, D., Weller, M., & Farrow, R. (2018). Models for online, open, flexible and technology-enhanced higher education across the globe – a comparative analysis. International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE). Oslo, Norway. Available from E-version
• Osterwalder, A. & Pigneur, Y. (2010). Business Model Generation. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. ISBN: 978-0470-87641-1. Catalogue E-version
• Sanderse, J., De Langen, F., & Perez Salgado, F. (2020). Proposing a business model framework for nonprofit organizations. Journal of Applied Economics and Business Research, 10(1), 40-53. E-version
• Sheets, R., Crawford, S., & Soares, L. (2012). Rethinking Higher Education Business Models. Center for American Progress. E-version
• Stacey, P., & Pearson, S. H. (2017). Made with Creative Commons. Creative Commons. E-version
• Tlili, A., Nascimbeni, F., Burgos, D., Zhang, X., Huang, R., & Chang, T. (2020). The evolution of sustainability models for Open Educational Resources: insights from the literature and experts. Interactive Learning Environments. https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2020.1839507
• Wiley, D. (2007). On the Sustainability of Open Educational Resource Initiatives in Higher Education. OECD/CERI. E-version

Additional:

• Bacsich, P. (2016). Business Models for Opening Up Education. Sero Consulting Ltd, for D-TRANSFORM. http://www.dtransform.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/O1-A2Business-models-edition-1-final.pdf E-version
• Hodgkinson-Williams, C. (2019, November). The Warp and Weft of Open Education and Social Justice [Conference session]. Open Education Global 2019, Milan, Italy, 26-28 November. E-version
• Hodgkinson-Williams, C. A., & Trotter, H. (2018). A Social Justice Framework for Understanding Open Educational Resources and Practices in the Global South. Journal of Learning for Development, 5(3), 204-224. E-version
• Kalman, Y. M. (2014). A race to the bottom: MOOCs and higher education business models. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 29(1), 5-14. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680513.2014.922410
• Miao, F., Mishra, S., Orr, D., & Janssen, B. (2019). Guidelines on the development of open educational resources policies. UNESCO Publishing. E-version
• Mulder, F. & Janssen, B. (2013). Opening Up Education. In: Jacobi, R. Jelgerhuis, H. & van der Woert, N. (eds). Trend Report Open Educational Resources. SURF, The Netherlands. E-version
• Obrist, M. & Jansen, D. (2017). Existing MOOC business models. Discussion Paper. http://bizmooc.eu/papers/business-models/ E-version
• Schuwer, R., & Janssen, B. (2021, May 28). The value of and issues surrounding open educational resources. Open Education – All kinds of Information. E-version
• Stacey, P. (2015, October 23). UPTEC open business models workshop. (SlideShare. E-version

To demonstrate competency in this course, students need to complete all of the following pieces of assessment to a satisfactory standard: • Attendance of F2F and virtual meeting and active in-class participation in discussions (by means of written weekly discussion notes): 20% • Team based business model assignment and presentation: 40% (case report 30%, presentation 5% and discussion 5%) • Final assessment to test the theoretical klnowledge as well the ability to use the concepts and models to existing business models: 40%

Robert Schuwer is Lector (Professor) in Open Educational Resources at Fontys University of Applied Sciences, School of ICT in Eindhoven. He is an expert in the use of open learning materials and other forms of open and online education, such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC). He has been responsible for initiating Open Educational Practices and research around this. In September 2016 he became UNESCO Chair on Open Educational Resources and promotes OER adoption by Teachers, Learners and Institutions. He obtained his Master degrees in 1980 in mathematics at the Catholic University Nijmegen and in Computer Science in 1989 at Eindhoven University of Technology. He obtained his PhD at Eindhoven University of Technology in 1993 with a thesis on the value of Knowledge Base Systems. His specialization includes data and process modeling for system development. He has experience with teaching Management Science and Computer Science, and also experience as CTO at a software development company, project leader and independant consultant for solving information problems. He also worked as a project leader of OpenER project at the Open University Netherlands from 2006 until 2008. He was also leading a project of “Content at the national program Wikiwijs” from 2009 until 2013. Robert Schuwer has held a position of chairman of the Special Interest Group Open Education - SURF (since 2010) and as Captain of the subprogram Towards (open) digital educational resources in the Dutch Acceleration agenda for Innovation of Higher Education using Technology (since 2018).

More detailed information available at: https://www.robertschuwer.nl/?page_id=306
and https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertschuwer/

Selected bibliography:

Bregar, L., Zagmajster, M., & Radovan, M. (2023). E-Learning for a Digital Society. University of Nova Gorica Press. https://www.ung.si/en/publisher/

Downes, S. (2007). Models for Sustainable Open Educational Resources. Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects, 2007(3). 29-44. http://www.ijklo.org/Volume3/IJKLOv3p029-044Downes.pdf

Huttner, N., Green, L., & Cowher, R. (2018). Seeking a sustainable OER ecosystem. Redstone. https://www.redstonestrategy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Seeking-a-sustainable-OER-ecosystem.pdf

Orr, D., Luebcke, M., Schmidt, J. P., Ebner, M., Wannemacher, K., Ebner, M., & Dohmen, D. (2020). Higher education landscape 2030: A trend analysis based on the AHEAD international horizon scanning. Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44897-4

Orr, D., Weller, M., & Farrow, R. (2018). Models for online, open, flexible and technology-enhanced higher education across the globe – a comparative analysis. International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE). Oslo, Norway. Available from https://oofat.oerhub.net/OOFAT/

Osterwalder, A. & Pigneur, Y. (2010). Business Model Generation. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. ISBN: 978-0470-87641-1.

Sanderse, J., De Langen, F., & Perez Salgado, F. (2020). Proposing a business model framework for nonprofit organizations. Journal of Applied Economics and Business Research, 10(1), 40-53. http://www.aebrjournal.org/uploads/6/6/2/2/6622240/joaebrmarch2020_40_53.pdf

Sheets, R., Crawford, S., & Soares, L. (2012). Rethinking Higher Education Business Models. Center for American Progress. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/rethinking-higher-education-business-models/

Stacey, P., & Pearson, S. H. (2017). Made with Creative Commons. Creative Commons. https://creativecommons.org/use-remix/made-with-cc/

Tlili, A., Nascimbeni, F., Burgos, D., Zhang, X., Huang, R., & Chang, T. (2020). The evolution of sustainability models for Open Educational Resources: insights from the literature and experts. Interactive Learning Environments. https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2020.1839507

Wiley, D. (2007). On the Sustainability of Open Educational Resource Initiatives in Higher Education. OECD/CERI. https://www.oecd.org/education/ceri/38645447.pdf