Network communication and Internet have expanded the way in which education can be delivered to the learners of today. Today's networking technologies provide a valuable opportunity to the practice of learning techniques. Educators are discovering that computer networks and multibased educational tools are facilitating learning and enhancing social interaction. Network based telecommunications can offer enormous instructional opportunities, and the educators will need to adapt current lesson plan to incorporate this new medium into all their classes.management, educational resources

Alexandru Stefan

Camelia Stefanescu

Stelian Pânzaru

English

Research Papers in Economics

  47 
 
 
OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT (OERM) 
 
Adj. Prof. Ph.D.  Alexandru Ştefan 
Assistant Director for International Programs, Bloomfield College, S.U.A. 
E-mail: alexscan@gmail.com 
Prof. Ph.D. Camelia Ştefănescu 
„Spiru Haret” University, Faculty of Management, Braşov, Romania 
E-mail: stefanescucamelia@ymail.com 
Prof. Ph.D. Stelian Pânzaru 
„Spiru Haret” University, Faculty of Management, Braşov, Romania 
E-mail: panzarus@gmail.com 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Keywords: management, educational resources.  
 
1.  Introduction 
 
Network communication and Internet have expanded the way in which education can be 
delivered  to  the  learners  of  today.  Today's  networking  technologies  provide  a  valuable 
opportunity to the practice of learning techniques. Educators are discovering that computer 
networks  and  multi-based  educational  tools  are  facilitating  learning  and  enhancing  social 
interaction.  Network  based  telecommunications  can  offer  enormous  instructional 
opportunities, and the educators will need to adapt current lesson plan to incorporate this new 
medium into all their classes.  
Free  Software  Movement,  where  "free"  is  interpreted  in  the  political,  not  in  the 
commercial  sense,  has gained  a  considerable  momentum  since  its  origins.  In  the  face  of 
quickly changing technological development, and the very high cost of proprietary software 
Abstract 
Network  communication  and  Internet  have  expanded  the  way  in  which  education  can  be 
delivered to the learners of today. Today's networking technologies provide a valuable opportunity to 
the practice of learning techniques. Educators are discovering that computer networks and multi-
based educational tools are facilitating learning and enhancing social interaction. Network based 
telecommunications can offer enormous instructional opportunities, and the educators will need to 
adapt current lesson plan to incorporate this new medium into all their classes.    48 
solutions, the attempting to participate in Information and Communications Technologies, for 
development of the open source software becomes a solution. There is a global trend toward 
open source software, which has become viable, cost effective and sustainable options. Most 
of the world's population lives in developing countries, where many key political, economic 
and cultural institutions are not strong enough to help people meet their basic health and 
educational  needs.  It  is  from  this  dimension  that  the  Free  Software  and  Open  Source 
Foundations were formed. Together with the Free Software and Open Source Foundations a 
new movement to support education generates the Open Educational Resources Management 
(OERM) offering learning materials freely available in the public domain.  
 
2.  Open Educational Resources (OER ) 
 
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation was the first organization who define and 
offer the OER solution as: "OER are teaching, learning and research resources that reside in 
the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits 
their free use or re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, 
course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, 
materials or techniques used to support access to knowledge".  
Some benefits of OER include: 
• fosters pedagogical innovation and relevance that avoids teaching from the textbook;  
• broadens use of alternatives to textbooks while maintaining instructional quality; 
• lowers costs of course materials for students;  
• implementation of the Educational Resource Logical Model.  
Some disadvantages of OER are: 
• quality of available OER materials inconsistent;  
• materials  may  not  meet  SCORM  requirements  and  must  be  modify  to  bring  into 
compliance;  
• no common standard for review of OER accuracy and quality;   
• need to check accuracy of content;  
• customization  necessary  to  match  departmental  and/or  college  curriculum 
requirements;  
• technical requirements to access vary;  
• technological determinism created by the delivery tool.  
A theme and implicit goal of this model is to build a community so that the emerging 
OER management movement, stimulated by the Hewlett Foundation, will create incentives   49 
for  a  diverse  set  of  institutional  stakeholders  to  enlarge  and  sustain  this  new  culture  of 
contribution.   
 
3.  Open Participatory Learning Infrastructure (OPLI) 
 
The  OERM  initiative  has  been  a  vehicle  for  building  a  culture  of  sharing.  A  new 
proposal or a new step for e-learning 2.0/ OER was developed within a broader initiative – an 
international  Open  Participatory  Learning  Infrastructure  (OPLI)  initiative  for  building  a 
culture of learning. 
The  key  OPLI  framework  elements  enablers,  transformative  initiatives,  international 
grand challenges are parts of a possible perfect storm of innovation in discovery and learning. 
The key enablers, proposed for the next step in e-learning 2.0/OERM are: 
• open  source  code,  open  multimedia  content  and  the  community  or  institutional 
structures that produce or enable them; 
• the growth of participatory systems architecture; 
• the continuing improvement in performance and access to the e-learning technology; 
• increasing availability and use of rich media, virtual environments;  
• the  emerging  deeper  basic  insights  into  human  learning  (both  individual  and 
community) that can informed and validated by pilot e-learning 2.0/ OER projects and OER-
based research. 
The proposed OPLI enables are interconnecting with other transformative initiatives, 
developed by common Web 2.0/e-learning 2.0 enablers like: 
•  the worldwide e-science movement, or cyber infrastructure (CI)-enabled science; 
•  the less developed and funded, but potentially high-impact  enhanced humanities. 
These initiatives are all in service of meeting international, strategic social networking 
grand challenges: 
1. to significantly transform effectiveness of and participation in scientific discovery and 
e-learning;  
2. to enable engaged world universities, meta universities, and a huge global increase in 
access to high-quality education;   
3. to create cultures of learning for supporting people to thrive in a rapidly evolving 
knowledge-based world. 
 
 
 
 
   50 
4.  WEB 2.0/ e-Learning 2.0 Management Technologies Map 
 
WEB 2.0/e-Learning 2.0 continues to grow at a tremendous rate. E-Learning 2.0/ OPLI 
management strategists predict that by the year 2010, more than half of all training may be 
online and under OER or OPLI initiatives. WEB 2.0 / e-Learning companies are springing up 
everywhere. It seems as though you can’t pick up a business or training magazine without 
seeing articles about the benefits or the problems that are a result of e-learning. The field is 
growing at an amazing rate and its standards have yet to be developed or even agreed upon. 
So how in the world does a training department go about implementing an e-learning 2.0 
program  in  an  organization?  Or  how  does  an  educational  department  go  for  e-learning 
implementation with regarding the OERM logical model? One way is to develop a strategy 
for creating e-learning 2.0 / OERM courses that can serve as a guide or road map as you are 
working your way through the chaos. It is essential to link e-learning 2.0 goals to business 
goals or special programs goals to ensure the ultimate success of the entire e-learning / OERM 
program. The concept of Web 2.0 /e-learning is still evolving, although the term is in wide 
use (96.6 million hits on the term “Web 2.0” in Google). A good overview is available at the 
O’Reilly website, from that article I’we have borrowed Figure 1 to give the reader a general 
flavor of the attributes of Web 2.0. 
 
Fig. 1.  Attributes of Web 2.0 
(from http:/www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/whats-is-web-20.html)   51 
E - Learning 2.0 / OPLI Strategy Goals Analyze.  To achieve the Web 2.0/ e-learning 
2.0 strategy goals in developing OER  courses together with the developing of the Contend 
Management System, I used the grid gold analyze system. 
 
          NO                                    DO YOU HAVE IT?                    YES 
 
ACHIEVE 
•   E-Learning/ OPLI training packages with 
three levels of tuition:  
￿ free-No support; 
￿ tutoring: +10% support; 
￿ tutoring & Labs + 20% support. 
•  Develop  EOR/OPLI  training  packages 
focus on e-learning 2.0 study-pilot;  
•  Customize  portal  training  package  for 
EOR/OPLI: 
￿ design new e-learning courses; 
￿ custom Online Course Authoring; 
￿ customized secure customer page. 
•  Create  special plans for each OER/OPLI 
tool: 
￿ business version for our online training 
site; 
￿ attract revenue by adds and sponsors; 
￿ use online special supporting tools. 
•  Advertise customize EOR/OPLI courses to 
local universities, open source organization; 
•  WEB 2.0  Base Training Solution Provider. 
PRESERVE 
•  Creativity,  experience  and  enthusiasm  of 
the current staff; 
•  Opportunities  to  inform  and  involved 
customers in online open support strategy;  
•  Improving  online  response  time  and 
effectiveness; 
•  Positive image of the organization; 
•  Diversification  of  services:  online  
activities; 
•  Flexibility to respond to different needs; 
•  Updating open courses  with regarding the 
market; 
•  Define target customers; 
•  Develop international market by localizing 
the business; 
•  International projects and affiliation under 
open international universities. 
 
AVOID 
•  Being seen as only courses provider; 
•  Stagnation in opening new course; 
•  Poor public perception and misperceptions;   
•  Instability of operation; 
•  Unproductive faculty involvement.  
ELIMINATE 
•  Lower operating costs; 
•  Barriers to progress; 
•  The  barriers  to  EOR/OPLI  degree 
programs;  
•  Faculty involvement. 
 
    NO                                        DO YOU HAVE IT?                     YES 
 
 
5.  Funding Models for Open Educational Resources 
 
It  is  often  confusing  to  people  to  learn  that  an  open  source  company  may  give  its 
products away for free or for a minimal cost. How do open source companies make money?  
The open source business model relies on shifting the commercial value away from the 
actual products and generating revenue from the “Product Features”, or ancillary services like 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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   52 
systems integration, support, tutorials and documentation. This focus on the product features 
is rooted in the firm understanding that in the real-world, the value of software lies in the 
value-added services of the product features and not in the product or any intellectual property 
that the product represents.  A final strength of the open source business model lies in its 
ability to market itself. Because open source products are typically released for free, open 
source companies that can produce quality products features and generate a good reputation 
can  almost  immediately  grab  huge  shares  of  any  market  based  on  the  complex  and  far-
reaching global referral networks generated by users.  
By using the open source technology model, we can create a superior product feature, 
which  immediately  has  a  competitive  advantage,  and  which  generates  multiple  scalable 
revenue streams while being freely available throughout the community.  
Regardless of the OER production model, review of the various funding models by 
international research can be categorized the OER business in three overall types:  
• cost/benefit models;  
•  third-party funding models; 
•  value-added models. 
Cost/benefit models – These are based on institutional self-funding in order to receive 
other benefits. Benefits could include cost savings by replacing proprietary resources with 
OER for production and delivery; brand building benefits of publishing OER; and student 
services by enhancing the student experience with access to online resources.   
Third-party  models  –  Funding  can  come  from  many  sources  including  government 
funding,  foundation  support,  voluntary  donations  by  users,  creating  an  endowment,  and 
membership fees for users. Third party funding is often used to start up a new OER initiative. 
Many current OER initiatives are funded by third parties such as the Hewlett Foundation.   
Value-added models – These provide value-added services to specific user segments 
such as University of California-Irvine providing the self-study version of a course as OER, 
and charging a service fee for instructor support. Another example is the Monterey Institute of 
Technology and Education which runs the National Repository of Online Courses (NROC) 
for high school, advanced placement and higher education. NROC uses a consortium model 
where member institutions contribute to and use the courses in the repository. The courses are 
also available for free to students through the Hippo Campus initiative. 
OER funding models deeper analyze can be presented as: 
Endowment  Model  –  on  this  model,  the  project  obtains  base  funding.  A  fund 
administrator manages the base funding and the project is sustained from interest earned on 
that fund.     53 
Membership Model – on this model, a coalition of interested organizations is invited to 
contribute a certain sum, either as seed only or as an annual contribution or subscription; this 
fund generates operating revenues for the OER service.   
Donations Model – on this model, a project deemed worthy of support by the wider 
community requests and receives donations. Donations are in turn managed by a non-profit 
foundation, which may apply them to operating expenses or, if amounts are sufficient, seek to 
establish an endowment. Numerous open source and open content projects are funded in this 
manner, including Wikipedia (Foote, 2005) and the Apache Foundation (Apache, 2005).  
Conversion Model – as summarized by Sterne and Herring (2005), “In the Conversion 
model, you give something away for free and then convert the consumer of the freebie to a 
paying customer.”  This approach, they argue, is needed because “there is a natural limit to 
the amount of resources the Donation model can bring to an open source project, probably 
about $5 million per year.” Linux distributors, such as SuSe, RedHat and Ubuntu, where the 
software  is  available  for  free  under  an  open  source  license,  have  adopted  this  model. 
Subscribers receive services (such as installation and support) or advanced features.   
Contributor-Pay  Model  –  adopted  by  the  Public  Library  of  Science  (PLoS),  Doyle 
(2005) states that the “PLoS Open Access Model: One Time Author-Side Payments” consists 
of a mechanism whereby contributors pay for the cost of maintaining the contribution, and 
where the provider there after makes the contribution available for free. Interestingly, this is a 
model that has earned some support from publishers, particularly in view of foundations, such 
as the Wellcome Trust, that have begun to require that materials funded be freely available.   
Sponsorship Model – this model underlies a form of open access that is available in 
most  homes:  free  radio  and  television.  The  sponsorship  model  can  range  from  intrusive 
commercial messages, such as are found on commercial television networks, to more subtle 
‘sponsorship’ message, as are found in public broadcasting. In online educational initiatives, 
various companies have supported OER projects on a more or less explicit sponsorship basis, 
often in partnership with educational institutions.   
Governmental  Model  –  similar  to  the  institutional  model,  the  governmental  model 
represents direct funding for OER projects by government agencies, including the United 
Nations. Numerous projects sustained in this manner exist, for example, Canada’s School Net 
project. 
Partnerships and Exchanges – though perhaps not thought of as a funding or financing 
model, partnerships and exchanges nonetheless play an important role, or potential role, in the 
development of OER networks. Partnerships depend not so much on exchanges of funding as 
on exchanges of resources, where the output of the exchange is an OER.   
   54 
References 
 
Babcock, C., 2008, Open Source for Sale, Information Week  
Kelty, C. M., 2008, The Cultural Significance of Free Software, Duke University Press 
Ştefan,  A.,  Samoilă,  C., 2008, Creating  your e-learning 2.0 Strategy under  the  WEB  2.0 
Development , ICL Conference Villach, Austria  
ISECOM, 2008, Institute for Security and Open Methodologies 
ITPS-Bloomfield College, 2008, Online Training Report 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Open Source for Sale, Information Week

OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT (OERM)

http://www.managementgeneral.ro/pdf/1_2009_4.pdf

OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT (OERM)

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