OER Funding Models Based on Partnerships and Exchanges

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Description

"Though perhaps not thought of as a funding or financing model, partnerships and exchanges nonetheless play an important role, or potential role, in the development of OER networks. Partnerships depend not so much on exchanges of funding as on exchanges of resources, where the output of the exchange is an OER. For example, at a recent UNESCO conference an Open Source Congress was proposed, which "would be a voluntary, collaborative effort by interested higher education institutions to lend their expertise - both technical and functional - to begin the high-level design and planning for what will become the next-generation, open source, administrative systems." (UNESCO, 2002) Such partnerships are often more or less ad hoc and bilateral; examples include that between Memorial University of Newfoundland and The Federal University of Ceará UFC in Brazil (Barreira, 2002) and even the International Fellowships at the Open University. (OU, 2006) (http://www.downes.ca/files/FreeLearning.pdf)