Scale
1 min read
Adopting openly licensed resources is arguably the most complicated part of the process.
With this in mind, I get the sense that, when we talk about scale, we are getting it wrong. In general, conversations about using OER at scale focus more on high levels of adoption of a relatively smaller set of resources. In this context, "scale" means hundreds of thousands or millions of adoptions of hundreds of resources.
This is attributable in part to the work required to adopt a text, and the semi-porous silos used to author and distribute this work. If we did a better job stripping down openly licensed materials to their component parts, we could rethink our conceptions of scale. Reducing the amount of work required to adopt OER would allow for more flexible remixes from more varied sources.
If we could rethink and redefine "scale" as tens of thousands of adoptions of tens of thousands of resources, we could create an open ecosystem that met people where they are at, and provided them the content they needed, when the needed it, in the format they required.