A caution about “new eras”
Phrases such as “a new era” are common in writing about education, and they overstate how sudden change usually is. Colleges have long shared knowledge: libraries, lending of lecture notes, and published textbooks all predate the internet. What changed in recent decades was the cost of copying and distributing material, and the legal tools for permitting reuse. This article follows how those changes altered expectations on campuses, without claiming that universities were transformed overnight.
Phase one: the web makes publishing cheap
By the 1990s, universities were putting information on the web: prospectuses, staff pages, and sometimes lecture notes. Individual lecturers posted materials for their own students, often with unclear rights. The web made sharing technically easy, but there was no common understanding of whether material could be reused.
Phase two: licenses and the idea of open resources
In the early 2000s, two developments gave the idea a shape. Standardized public licenses, such as the Creative Commons family, offered creators a way to say in advance what others could do with their work. Around the same time, an international forum convened by UNESCO in 2002 popularized the term “open educational resources”. Some universities began publishing course materials online for free public use, which was a notable idea at the time. Over the following years the larger open education movement grew around the notion that teaching materials could be shared as freely as some research.
For the longer story, the movement history is covered elsewhere on this site. Here the point is narrower: once institutions had published openly, staff and students began to ask why not everything was available in this way.
Phase three: massive open courses and public attention
Around 2012, free online courses with very large enrollments drew press attention and, for a time, large predictions about the end of the traditional campus. Those predictions mostly did not come true, and completion rates for many such courses were low. But the episode changed expectations. Prospective students could now sample teaching from several institutions before applying, and leaders began to treat online presence as something to plan, not an afterthought.
Phase four: cost and access come to the fore
In recent years, discussion on many campuses has shifted from novelty to practicalities. Textbook costs became a recurring topic in student and policy debates in several countries, and open textbooks were offered as one response. Libraries took on a larger role in helping staff find, adapt and license material. Funders and governments in some places began to encourage or require open access to publicly funded research, which in turn prompted questions about teaching materials.
The pandemic years, beginning in 2020, forced nearly all institutions to teach remotely. Many staff were suddenly looking for materials they could legally share with students online. This raised awareness of licensing, though it is difficult to say how lasting the effects were.
How expectations actually shifted
It helps to separate several shifts that are sometimes lumped together.
| Expectation | Before | Increasingly |
|---|---|---|
| Access to course information | Mostly for enrolled students | Often visible to the public |
| Materials | Bought each term | Sometimes free or adaptable |
| Sharing by staff | Informal, rights unclear | More often governed by policy |
| Research outputs | Behind subscriptions | Often expected to be openly available |
| Online teaching | Optional extra | Part of ordinary planning |
These are tendencies, not universal facts. Practices differ widely between countries, subjects and institutions, and some campuses have changed very little.
What did not change
Several things stayed stable. Degrees remain largely tied to formal enrollment and assessment; an openly available course does not award a recognized qualification by itself. Fees, admissions and staffing structures at most institutions are much as they were. And the day-to-day tasks of teaching, such as designing assessments and supporting students, still require staff time that open content does not replace.
Reading claims about the era
Be wary of confident statements such as “universities have been revolutionized”. A useful test is to ask which expectation changed, for whom, and how that was measured. Surveys of staff attitudes, library records of open textbook use, and policy documents are better evidence than slogans. Even these have limits: a survey reflects the people who answered, and usage figures do not show whether anyone learned from the material.
Where this leaves the present
The most defensible summary is that openness raised the baseline of what is thinkable on a campus: sharing teaching materials publicly is now an ordinary option, not a curiosity. Whether a particular college uses that option, and with what results, remains a local decision shaped by money, staff time and priorities.