Four jobs a university can do in the open
Universities have traditionally combined several activities under one roof: they teach students, produce research, award qualifications and act as a local and national institution. Open education pulls these apart a little. A university can share some of what it does freely while still charging for or restricting other parts. It helps to think of four broad jobs: teaching, publishing, certifying and partnering. Each can be done more openly or less openly, and most institutions mix the two.
This overview describes the jobs and the trade-offs. It is general information, not advice for any particular institution, and the picture differs a great deal between countries and between individual universities.
Teaching
The most visible way for a university to take part is to share teaching materials under open licenses, so that anyone can read, reuse and adapt them. That might be lecture notes, problem sets, slide decks or whole courses. Some universities also run free online courses open to anyone, sometimes called massive open courses, though the details of access, support and certificates vary.
Closer to home, many universities encourage their own staff to adopt open textbooks in place of commercial ones. The motive is often cost: when students do not have to buy a required book, the barrier to taking the course is lower. Whether this changes results is a question the evidence addresses only partly, and readers should treat confident claims in either direction with care.
Teaching in the open also changes how lecturers work. Preparing material that strangers will read means checking sources and permissions more carefully, and keeping the material up to date. Some staff find that rewarding; others find it adds to an already full workload. A university that wants openness to last usually has to recognize that effort in workloads and promotion criteria.
Publishing
Research is the second area. Universities produce papers, data and teaching resources, and they decide, directly or through their staff, where these appear. A growing number of institutions run repositories where staff can deposit their work so that it can be read without a subscription. Others have university presses that publish open access books or journals.
Publishing also covers the reuse of what a university already owns. Photographs, recordings and archives held by a university can be released with clear licenses. The related idea of open access journals is covered elsewhere on this site, but the key point here is that the university is often both a producer and a buyer of scholarly content, so its choices influence what is available to everyone else.
There are real tensions. Staff may worry about quality, credit and the cost of publishing fees. Institutions may worry about income. A sensible approach is usually to set out a clear policy, explain it to staff and revisit it after a few years.
Certifying
Certification is the job that is hardest to open up, and it is where universities hold a special position. Anyone can read an open textbook or watch a recorded lecture, but a degree certificate carries weight because an institution has checked the learner’s work against a standard. That checking costs money, which is why open content and paid credentials often sit side by side.
Universities have experimented with several approaches. Some offer certificates of completion for open courses, often for a fee. Others let learners earn smaller awards such as micro-credentials, which can sometimes be counted toward a full degree. Digital badges, covered in our discussion of open badges, are another way to record a smaller achievement. How far employers or other institutions accept these awards differs from place to place, and a learner should check before assuming a particular credential will be recognized.
Certification also depends on assessment, and assessment online raises its own questions about identity checks, fairness and academic integrity. A university that certifies open learning has to decide how much of that checking it will do, and who pays for it.
Partnering
The fourth job is working with others. Universities partner with each other to share courses or credits, with libraries and museums to make collections available, with local employers to design training, and with governments or funders to support projects. Many join networks that exist to share open resources, which is part of the wider partners and providers picture of how open education fits together.
Partnerships can extend a university’s reach, but they also create obligations. Agreements need clear terms about who owns materials, who can reuse them and what happens when funding ends. Partnerships with companies, in particular, deserve a careful look at whether the arrangement serves learners or mainly the partner.
Choosing what to open
Because the four jobs differ so much, there is no single correct level of openness. A few questions tend to help.
- Who is the audience: current students, alumni, the local community or the wider world?
- What would be gained by opening this particular material, and what would be lost?
- Who will maintain it, and for how long?
- Does the staff member who created it agree and feel credited?
- Is there a policy that explains the rules, so each decision does not start from scratch?
The last point connects to open education policy, which many universities develop so that licensing, ownership and staff time are handled consistently.
Limits and honest uncertainty
It is easy to overstate what open education can do for a university. Open resources can lower costs for students and widen the audience for good teaching, but they do not remove the need for teachers, support staff or quality checks. Outcomes vary by subject, by student group and by how well the materials are used. Claims that open approaches reliably raise grades, completion or earnings go further than the evidence usually allows, and readers should look for the methods and limitations behind any figure they are shown.
What can be said with more confidence is that universities remain important in open education because they hold three things few other bodies combine: subject expertise, the authority to award recognized qualifications, and the capacity to run long-term projects. How they choose to use those strengths, and how openly, will keep changing as funding, technology and student expectations shift.