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Environmental
Scan of Pricing Models for Online Content
Report II
Business Models for Object Repositories
Prepared by Albert W. Darimont
http://www.darimont.ca
OnDisC Project
April 2002© OnDisC 2002
0. Executive Summary
1. Background
2. Learning
Object Repositories
3.
Business Models - Value chain
4. Funding
Models
5. Discussion
6. Conclusions
7. Bibliography
8. Web
Site References (Webliography)
Executive Summary
This report investigates Canadian and other initiatives
in developing e-content stores or repositories with
special interest paid to their business and revenue
models for background in determining a suitable
sustainable business/revenue model for the OnDisC
Alliance.
There is significant activity worldwide in the research
and development of repositories of Learning Objects
(LO) -- modular chunks of content that are combined
and reused to form larger aggregations of education
content such as lesson, units, and courses. The
rationale for developing repositories of LOs is
to reduce the significant cost of developing and
customizing educational material. There is activity
in developing LO repositories in both the public
sector and the private sector. MERLOT is a large
public and free LO repository co-operative. Some
private firms developing LO repositories and the
tools to create and use them include NetG, SmartForce
and LearningWay. In addition to LO repositories
there are many Learning Resource Gateways (LRG)
which offer both free and non-free educational material
of many levels of object "granularity".
Additionally, organizations are emerging which are
acting as learning resource brokerages or networks,
such as UNIVERSAL in Europe and AEShareNet in Australia.
There are insights and possible future business
relationships for OnDisC to be realized in all of
the above educational content delivery organizations.
A universal issue among public LO repositories and
LSG is how to acquire funding/revenue to sustain
the organization beyond initial project status.
Most of them are following a sponsorship model where
operating and development funds are received from
government and/or other supporting organizations
and individual educators provide content free. Their
business/revenue model follows from a consideration
that they are providing a public good which can/must
be supported by third parties. OnDisC may be able
to operate under a similar business model for similar
public goods markets. Additionally, OnDisC may be
able to provide LO content to commercial content
developers either directly, or through future online
educational material brokerage sites/marketplaces.
A valuable tool for helping to formulate business
and revenue models is a value chain assessment in
which all significant value added processes or functions
and determined and assigned to the different players
or organizations involved in the value chain. Once
value added assessments are made, appropriate revenue
streams can be modeled. A relevant and useful value
chain assessment to consider for OnDisC's situation
is that of the traditional publisher-library book/journal
distribution system.
A significant source of risk for the providers of
digital content to a store or repository is the
high cost associated with digitizing the material
into a format suitable for distribution and use.
A possible compromise between risk and service is
to provide just-in-time digitization for material
that has been chosen as desirable by an end user.
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