December 4, 2024 | By Rebecca Griffiths
Researchers seeking to scale the impact of educational interventions or products often choose to release them free of charge with open licenses to maximize adoption. One common motivation is to ensure equitable access to those products in under-resourced communities. The growth of open educational resources (OER) such as OpenStax textbooks has transformed the postsecondary textbook industry, saving students millions of dollars and ensuring all students have access to required course materials from day one.1 OER curriculum providers such as Imagine Learning and OpenSciEd are also changing the playing field in the K–12 space.
Despite the clear benefits of OER, providers have learned over the past couple of decades that making something freely available online in no way guarantees its widespread use. Further, sustaining OER requires ongoing resources for content maintenance and updates, technical infrastructure, and other operations. In fact, committing to an open license can complicate the pathway to sustainability and scaling.
Why is that? Consider these factors:
- Educators care about the convenience, performance, and reliability of a solution as well as its cost. Making a product free and openly licensed may only address one consideration for adoption.
- For an intervention or product that’s complicated to implement, educators want to know the provider is stable and will be around for a few years before they commit their own time, energy, and resources to the product. They may lack confidence that OER will come with support services and will be maintained and regularly updated.
- When direct beneficiaries aren’t asked to pay for access to content, OER providers need to find other sources of ongoing funding to pay for maintenance, updates, marketing, promotion, and additional needs. These other funding sources may benefit indirectly from supporting the OER, such as advancing a shared mission (philanthropy and federal grants) or association with a respected OER brand (corporate partners). Satisfying the needs of these indirect beneficiaries likely entails additional costs and effort.2
OER providers hope users discover their content in multiple ways, including when they search online for educational materials. Because most people don’t look beyond the first page of search results, ranking is important. Search engines rank results based on complex algorithms that take into account content relevance, quality, authority, and backlinks (other sites that link to the provider’s site). Another important factor is content freshness – search engine results will downgrade resources that have been sitting static. If a resource is not maintained, its discoverability could decline.
OER providers have pursued several paths to sustain and scale their impact. Here are a few models along with their advantages, challenges, and organizational demands, as well as some example providers.
| Model | Description | Advantages & Challenges | Required Organizational Capacities | Example Providers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Philanthropic support | Provider seeks grant funding to support existing products & services and develop new innovations | + Grant-funded research feeds product pipeline and creates opportunities for partnerships + A portion of grants can contribute to core operating costs – Uncertainty and stress for leadership due to ongoing need to find and write grant proposals – Many foundations and public grant programs do not offer core operating or marketing grants, and overhead contributions are sometimes capped |
|
Field Day OpenSciEd OpenStax PhET |
| Freemium / Premium services | Provider makes content available for free and charges for premium services such as customization, tech support, professional development, printing, and credentialing | + Generates operating revenue + Marketing is targeted to direct beneficiaries and may advance effective implementation – Services must be priced to cover the cost of providing them plus some surplus to contribute to content development and core operations – Some services (such as professional development) tend to be one-off events (whereas content licensing is ongoing), requiring more marketing activities to bring in new customers |
|
EL Education OpenSciEd PALS STARI |
| Strategic licensing and sponsorship | Corporate partners pay license fee for use of brand and/or content | + Generates ongoing revenue stream + Can amplify impact when OER content is integrated into other products – Revenue streams may be modest |
|
PhET |
| Direct-to-consumer products | Consumer-facing products (such as iPhone apps) targeted to learners or caregivers Merchandise |
+ Apps can generate monthly operating income with minimal marginal cost (once developed) – Building a consumer audience is costly – Kids quickly outgrow some types of offerings, so these customers continually need to be replenished |
|
EL Education PhET Pictoword |
When weighing what model makes sense for your project, consider these factors:
- Predictability of revenue sources: Models that lead to a recurring revenue stream offer more predictability and ability to plan, while models that require continual generation of new customers or grant writing place a heavy burden on project leaders.
- Cost to generate revenue: Each of these models requires allocating resources towards building capacity to generate revenue. Potential revenue from these sources should be weighed against the organizational costs to consider the net revenue generated to support core operations and content development.
- Trade-offs of diversified funding streams: Some projects (like PhET) have succeeded in establishing multiple revenue streams from different models. These projects benefit from reduced dependence on individual streams but must build capacity for multiple, different forms of business development and marketing.
- Organizational setting: Some projects have built sustainable operations within university settings, providing products and interventions reaching millions of students (PhET, Field Day, OpenStax). Others have set up independent organizations to gain flexibility and align incentive structures. Consider which direction is a better fit for the ambitions of your team.
2 Guthrie, K. M., Griffiths, R. J., & Maron, N. L. (2008). Sustainability and revenue models for online academic resources. Ithaka. https://doi.org/10.18665/sr.22349
Tags: Access and equity Education technology Innovation Procurement