What happened to OpenCourseWare?: a discussion of the open education movement’s shift from course content to textbooks

The open education movement is now more than twenty years old, if counting from the launch of MIT’s OpenCourseWare (OCW) in 2001. Though OCW was instrumental in jumpstarting higher education’s enthusiasm for open educational resources (OER), provincial funding bodies have doubled-down on open textbooks, and this focus is reflected in the language used by provincial funding bodies, as well as the impressive, and growing, number of openly licensed textbooks. The focus on textbooks is understandable given the intense interest from students. Several provincial funding bodies, including BC Campus, OpenEd Manitoba, and eCampus Ontario have saved students millions of dollars by encouraging open textbook adoption in post-secondary. Furthermore, open textbooks (and other learning objects) are arguably easier to host and distribute than entire courses. The tradeoff is that this lopsided focus on open textbooks means that a few institutions (most notably MIT, TU Delft and others) dominate the OCW space. In this presentation, the author will argue the reasons why OCW investment is inconsistent and highlight the challenges that face OCW creation and adoption. The author will also argue that refocusing on OCW investment has the potential to bolster institutional reputation and satisfy a public that is hungry for high-quality open content.