Value Proposition/CCBYSA

Work in progress, expect frequent changes. Help and feedback is welcome. See discussion page.

Value Proposition for Migrating to CC-BY-SA

OERs vs. Traditional Educational Resources - Tradoffs

	WikiEducator (OERs)	Traditional Education Resources
Use	Multiple	Single
Formats	Multiple	Single
Software Used	Open Source	Closed/Proprietary
Requires permission to re-use	Embedded	Yes
Licensing	CC-BY-SA, or CC-BY	All Rights Reserved
Peer Review/Quality Assurance	Yes	Yes
Resources Required for Compliance	-	> OER
Cost of Production	<50% of Traditional	100%
Time to Market	Rapid	Delayed
Ease of Updating & Distribution	High	Low(requires new text, curricula)
Printing-on-Demand (cost)	-	Very Expensive
Scalability	High	Low
Sustainability	High	Low
Value-Added Opportunities	Yes	No

In the new collaborative OER development and publishing model, lower costs of production enable high margins, yet the end-user price will be lower. This lower price, will enable a published OER to be more affordable in new markets around the globe.

The Tradeoff

By migrating from “All Rights Reserved” to CC-BY-SA, an educator-author gains access to significant economies of scale (even for small, customised production runs) - and a very attractive development-to-price ratio. (i.e., if you could make 50% more – even though a text might sell for <50% of the original price, would you like to know more?)

We do understand your 'fear' that someone will take your work and make money off it.

However, chances are, it hasn't been updated for awhile, which in turn reduces its value. Moreover, a Canadian or British text in an African context is also of limited value. The opportunities for making more money using WikiEducator as a development and publishing platform are high - with direct and indirect opportunities. We often quote an example from the high tech industry, which understands that it makes financial sense to pursue 10% of a $100 million pie vs. 100% of a $1 million pie.

What are Your Assumptions?

We invite you to consider that your assumptions may be based on a traditional educational paradigm vs. a Web 3.0 educational paradigm that leverages the Internet. For example,

• If you could publish your content, at a cost 50% lower than your nearest competitor, and <50% of the time that it takes him/her to get it to market - would that be interesting to you? Why/Why not?
• What is the likelihood that you would sell your text or course in Ghana, Malaysia, or Japan?
• What is the likelihood that learners in Africa could actually afford your text, as it is currently priced?
• What are the the distribution costs to physically get your content to remote areas?
• How much time and energy does it take for you to actually market your texts? How good are you at marketing?
• How do you currently police compliance of "All Rights Reserved"?
• What value-added opportunities are you interested in?
  • world leadership
  • teaching / facilitation
  • workshops
  • project work / contracts
  • etc.

Features

• Rapid Instructional Design -Content can be developed iteratively and collaboratively in response to learner and situational feedback - for immediate deployment