Open Educational Resources

Yesterday's post was about the reasons why corporations embrace open source. Today's is about the reasons why educational institutions choose to give away their "product" (courses, knowledge, and research) for free.

Jan Hylen provides some answers in the appropriately named article
Why Give Knowledge Away for Free? The Case for Open Educational Resources. His article highlights the findings from a study carried out by the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation and discusses the reasons for producing open content as well as the associated problems of licensing and sustainability. For further research into these problems, see the conference report on Open Education 2007 and Jordan Hatcher's article on the Open Data Commons Project.