The Chronicle of Higher Education describes the “mothballing” of USU OCW in today’s story, Utah State U.’s OpenCourseWare Closes Because of Budget Woes. I don’t know if the added attention will help Marion advance their cause on campus, but we can hope.
3 thoughts on “The Chronicle on USU “Mothballing” its OCW”
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It’s a sad, sad day.
$120K doesn’t seem like that much money. Could they put a donations link up?
How many people/how many hits does the “third most visited” web site at USU get?
They couldn’t find money anywhere hey..
I’ve been looking into the costs, savings and gains at Otago Polytechnic here in NZ. While Otago’s direction is very different in that individual teachers take it upon themselves to publish educational materials on popular sites like Youtube, the initial assessments could still be helpful.
in a convenience sample of 3 teachers publishing instructional videos to Youtube. They have produced 95 videos that have been viewed 355600 times.
Comparing these numbers to the cost of brand awareness campaigns such as a single billboard and a weekly news paper ad for a month, we found that 1 person being exposed to the Polytechnic brand is worth 5c.
5c x 355600 views = $17780 of brand awareness on Youtube. I checked this crude and far from adequate comparison between marketing and education off with the marketing department. They accept that this is significant and that international marketing is of particular interest to them.
And so, its obvious to me that at least some of the costs should be covered in marketing budgets – as uncomfortable as that may make educationalists.
Given that Otago’s direction is different to Utah’s wholesale release on its own platform – the numbers will be different. I plan to use them to argue for rewards to teachers who publish their materials.