Quest 0.5 - Sustainability in Open Education

"Carefully review at least 50 pages of information on issues relating to the sustainability of the open education movement. Write a post describing the nature and level of success of sustainability work in the field."

Success is doing what you set out to do or, in other words, achieving your goals. And this really is what sustainability is all about. This is why Wiley (2007, p.5) defines sustainability as "an open educational resource project's ongoing ability to meet its goals."

So, to discuss the "nature and level of success of sustainability work in the field," we really need first to talk about what our goals actually are. Stated more generally, to talk about sustainability in the context of one's own OER project, one must first understand what the project's goal's are (Wiley, 2007, p. 19). For right now, let's talk about overall goals for the field of open educational resources in general, leaving aside for the moment any discussion about institutional OER projects.