U.S. Government Funding For Open Education Materials a "Game Changer"
Michael Geist's column
"Last month, the U.S. government announced its own game changer, though it attracted far less attention than iTunes or Gmail. Led by the Departments of Labor and Education, it committed US$2 billion toward a new program to create free online teaching and course materials for post-secondary programs of two years or less.
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From a Canadian perspective, there are genuine risks that domestic materials will be forgotten as schools gravitate toward the U.S. funded free alternatives. In fact, a recent study commissioned by the Department of Canadian Heritage on the academic publishing industry acknowledged that the availability of alternative and digital resources represented a substantial risk to the publishing industry.
For Canadian educators, the challenge will be to supplement the freely available materials with Canadian context. Some Canadian universities have already jumped on the bandwagon: Athabasca University in Alberta is aiming to replace many of its course materials with open educational resources, while the BCcampus initiative brings together 25 post-secondary institutions to contribute and share open educational resources. "