Lessons for sale

CC0 Public domain on Maxpixel

Although open educational resources have still not really gained mainstream status around the world there is a vast amount of quality resources available in numerous repositories with Creative Commons licenses allowing reuse and adaptation. I was therefore surprised to read an article in Education Week Teacher describing how teachers are making considerable amounts of money by selling their resources, Million-Dollar Teachers: Cashing In by Selling Their Lessons.

At sites like Teachers pay teachers, Teachwise and Teacher's notebook you can browse a wide range of lesson plans and resources and buy the ones you like the look of. Evidently the members of Teacher pay teachers have earned over $100 million and several have become millionaires from selling their teaching resources. Most of the resources cost very little and I assume most people only earn small amounts each year but some teachers have become major players offering an extensive range of resources as lesson or course packages.

Despite worries from some educators, such online marketplaces are booming, driven by rising standards and the willingness of teachers to pay out of their own pockets for classroom-tested materials.

What amazes me is that so many teachers are willing to pay to get resources that are probably comparable to those available completely free in OER repositories like OER Commons or Sophia.org. This raises many questions that would be interesting to investigate. How do users of these commercial sites judge the quality of the resources and how does that differ from how they judge the quality of open resources? Many teachers are wary of OER simply because they find it hard to believe that something of value can be free and indeed one of the most commonly raised objections to openness is a perceived lack of quality assurance (even when it is present). Many international initiatives have been launched to define quality criteria for OER and there are several excellent reports available (eg State of the Art Review of Quality Issues related to Open Educational Resources, Quality Assurance Guidelines for Open Educational Resources). Does payment somehow create a sense of quality and credibility? Certainly the incentive to earn a little extra from your work is attractive and maybe some kind of micro-payment system could entice more teachers to share resources. However as soon as a price tag is added you create a competitive market and barriers go up between teachers who are more focused on selling than sharing.

But Bob Farrace, spokesman for the National Association of Secondary School Principals, says taking "proprietary rights over ideas and lessons" could disrupt the traditional collaborative atmosphere of schools. "You want teachers to collaborate and share ideas freely."

The article also raises the issue of whether teachers should be able to monetize their resources since in many countries the school, as employer, has copyright on material developed during working hours. Even in institutions that recognise the teachers as copyright holders it still seems strange that they can profit from selling material that they have developed as paid (and often public) employees.

I believe that education should be for the public good and as such should be open to all and not turned into a commercial market. Teaching should be about creating context, inspiring, challenging, questioning and mentoring, not simply producing content. We need to work harder to encourage open sharing of ideas and resources so that they benefit all levels of education and the whole spectrum of society. Sharing can lead to better use of resources, minimising the need to reinvent the wheel every day, and foster a community of practice among all teachers. This commercial development may be because so many teachers are completely unaware of the abundance of OER available but it could also be a sad backlash against openness. I hope it is not the latter.