Merchant Quests

Quest 1
Carefully review three papers on the sustainability of open education projects. Write a substantive summary article with references on the models of sustaining open education projects.

Quest 2
Gather data from a variety of sources (e.g., FAQs, publications, email or phone interviews, &c.) to understand the structure of the long-term sustainability models of the following projects, and why they chose the model they chose. Write a substantive post with references on why these sites chose the sustainability models they use and how the models work.

Quest 3
Given open content’s close philosophical ties to open source software, many people believe that the same economic models that sustain institutions that provide open source software can sustain institutions that provide open educational resources.

Review the sources below and find and review additional resources as you feel necessary. Write a substantive post with references in which you describe what changes if any must be made to open source business models in order to support open educational resources, and make an argument in support of your position.

Quest 4
Compare and contrast the sustainability models selected by the organizations you studied in Quest 2 with the open source business models and strategies described in Quest 3. Write a substantive post with references in which you recommend specific improvements to each sustainability model with supporting arguments. Communicate these recommendations to representatives of the projects.

Quest 5
Many BYU faculty already openly share their syllabi and other course materials on personal websites, through iTunesU, and through other mechanisms. But what are the costs (both real costs and opportunity costs) to the university when they do this?

Review BYU’s Technology Transfer policies (http://techtransfer.byu.edu/). How does the idea of open education interact with these policies? How does the university make the decision to commercialize faculty work or not to commercialize the work? Based on your experiences in previous quests, could the university benefit by taking additional elements into consideration when making this determination? To what extent do attitudes toward commercialization of faculty work support those who want to experiment with open education? What changes could encourage more experimentation by faculty?

Work with the Monk in your Guild (who is reviewing university Intellectual Property policy) to understand the potential financial impacts on the university of changes to the IP or TT policies. Write a joint, substantive post with references in which you describe the extent to which the current policy supports open education, the changes you recommend to the policy, and the financial impact of such changes on the university.

Quest 6
Much of the open education movement resides in higher education. Work with the other members of your Guild to locate and organize a sufficient number of open educational resources to teach a semester-long high school course. Discuss the course you have selected with the game master before beginning this quest. Use the State of Utah Core Curriculum Standards as your guide to what needs to be included in the course. Present the course design and structure, materials you’ve aggregated, necessary adaptations, IP problems, and an estimate of time and effort spent (emphasizing how you would sustain this kind of work over the long-term) to a meeting of the Guilds. We will record your presentation and post it online.