I had been holding off reporting on the OECD meeting on Open Educational Resources in Malmo last week until I has the time to write something longer and coherent. But given that an interesting debate has broken out by email on the subject of Open Content this afternoon - in the context of the forthcoming Open Culture workshop in Italy in June - i thought I would post my email reply in the hope of opening out the debate.

"There was a lively session at the workshop on the sustainability of Open Educational Resources.

Paul Dholakia from the Connexions project presented a number of different models for sustainability. Stephen Downes contested that all these models - at the end of the day - rested on scarcity. he proposed that for fundamental change we needed to break down the divider between producers and consumers in order - in my words to develop an ecology of production.

There was also some discussion on quality. One quality measure was branding - seen as a marketing and sustainability factor by larger institutions. The Hewlett Foundation are promoting this approach. there was some opposition to this from some of us who saw the large institutions as trying to claim ownership of the idea of Open Educational Resources.

There was also a discussion as to whether or not peer review processes - prior to publication were effective as a measure of quality. OER's are contextuialised through use. Quality can then only truly be measured within context of use. Quality could better be measured by developing a meta data trail on the use of resources - rather than previewing prior to their use."

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