Plan E for Education: open access to educational materials created in publicly funded universities

Abstract

Plan E for Education is my proposal that a proportion of the educational resources generated in publicly funded universities be made freely available for sharing and use by others. Thus, high quality education, produced through public funding, could be made available to other universities and individual autodidacts and for the development of innovative educational delivery methods. This would be the educational equivalent of initiatives that require publicly funded research to be published in open access journals or platforms. Available educational resources would involve whole or sections of courses including assessments, not just isolated resources.

Plan E would require the establishment and curation of open repositories and might consider a peer review system for educational materials to mirror that already used for research publications. Academic credit could then flow to those who publish and review educational resources and extend to other academic input such as updating the work and creating instructional materials.

There is considerable expertise and enthusiasm for, as well as successful examples of, open access education globally, but this is unevenly spread, and its adoption is hindered by factors at institutional and individual educator levels. Most university-generated educational material is still kept behind institutional paywalls. If we accept the need for change so that, as for research outputs, educational resources become open to access, Plan E might provide the global impetus for such change and make a contribution to reducing inequality in access to higher education.