OER in schools

It was felt that the creation of five alternative models would sufficiently populate the various subsectors of formal education. The models have to be “archetypal” in the sense of being easy and quick to describe, memorable, repeatable to others without distortion, and translatable into other languages. In practical terms they should also be generalisable, scalable, sustainable, deployable without further research, and deliverable in most high-income economies.

For each model the features, the advantages and the disadvantages are outlined, followed by the policy shifts (if any) necessary to facilitate their development.

The models described are an ICT-rich primary school, a virtual supplementary school for specialist subjects (e.g. science), a college model based on OER for trade skills, the Multeversity (a 21st century reconceptualisation of the 20th century polytechnic/university of applied science) and a support/network model for research intensive elite universities.