OER and ZTC

This week's reading inspired me a lot and I was impressed by several of them. David mentioned in his article, Where Michael sees three groups with different goals, I see four groups who are trying to use OER to solve closely related – but ultimately very different – problems: 

1. The negative impact on access to education caused by the high price of traditional learning materials
2. The negative impact on student success caused by limitations in the traditional publishing model
3. The negative impact on pedagogy caused by copyright-related constraints inherent in traditional learning materials
4. The negative impact on students caused by a wide range of behaviors related to the business models of traditional publishers

I really like David's next sentence, "If you use OER and don't see yourself in one of these groups, what problem are you trying to solve by using OER?" Yes, we use OER to solve the problem of low flexibility and the high cost of traditional teaching materials. To solve these two big problems, some people have focused on reducing costs, while others have focused on increasing flexibility. They all have different priorities. This brings us to another concept David mentioned in his article, which is OER and ZTC.

"During the second decade, advocates who were primarily focused on cost developed a new language to talk about their work: Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC)". Yes, the ZTC mentioned in the article came into being because of those who focus on solving the cost problem. ZTC has some differences from OER:

• OER licensed by Creative Commons can be a type of ZTC.
• Some copyrighted resources in the library or internet can be ZTC but not OER.

It is necessary to know ZTC and OER, but we should not be too obsessed with them. We don't have to compare which is more flexible and which is more cost-efficient. Just like the opinion that David mentioned in his article (I particularly like this passage), "Our primary priority should neither be minimizing cost nor maximizing pedagogical flexibility. Our primary priority should be increasing student learning, and our efforts to reduce costs and increase pedagogical flexibility must always be subservient to that end. When we fail to put student learning first, we can become zealots who confuse the means with the ends. This makes it possible for us to pursue cost reduction at any price to student learning. It also makes it possible for us to pursue pedagogical flexibility regardless of the cost to student learning. If we want to provide viable course materials options for all faculty and for all courses, we're going to need to get a lot smarter about how we legally and effectively compile, revise, and remix these different kinds of materials". 

Oh my! I like this passage so much! Right! We can't forget why we're doing all this:  it's all for student learning!