Page:The battle for open.pdf/94

 service gathers the resources around standards and also offers a Learning Management System and an API for other systems to integrate with the resources. The educational publisher Pearson has launched OpenClass, an online learning platform that is free to use and allows educators to create their own courses by using OERs (either their own or from elsewhere). In this model the provision of OERs is a route through which a learning platform can be marketed.

The OpenClass initiative is interesting because its announcement was met with a good deal of scepticism. Pearson isn’t well known for giving content away or being part of the open ­movement. So a number of commentators wondered what was in it for Pearson to offer a free LMS (learning management system). Kim (2011) suggested they should be ‘brutally honest about the threats to a publisher of the shift from paper textbooks to digital content and the need for publishers to not lose control of the sales channel’. While Watters (2011) cautioned that we ‘need to question its usage of adjectives like “free” and “open”’. These responses indicate the wariness around commercial providers adopting open approaches, as the suspicion is that this form of open is being used to tie users into their paid for services at a later date or to try and establish a monopoly (although Pearson have stressed that they do not intend to ­up-​­sell further content to the OpenClass users).

However, commercial providers offering OERs is not necessarily to the detriment of the OER movement; in many respects it is a welcome and necessary addition to the larger pool of resources. It is only an issue if, as with the case of the green movement, it begins to undermine the core value of openness.

The issues facing OERs are perhaps best encapsulated by a report released in 2014. The National Association of College Stores examined the use of open textbooks created by the Open Course