As an institution we have a new project running called the OER project (Open Educational Resources) and this has started some interesting conversations and thoughts over the university. As part of this a senior lecturer started talking to me about it on the train. They had a recent experience where learners had rebelled against the new forms of teaching in their award and requested a move back to the traditional lecture approach. As part of this the tutor has created an online paper, rather than getting them to research content to discuss.
They were interested in the value it would bring to the university and how we look at charging learners for their university experience, rather than just content. This has a clear link to the post, http://www.paulgraham.com/publishing.html which talks about how society willingly pays for media but not the content of the media (such as a set cost for a paperback regardless as to the content of the paperback, are all authors considered equal?). We talked about how the value was in the contact with the tutors, that it was going to become a personal experience, and the assessment to achieve an award, so it appears to be all the wrappers around the content (like the CD and its packaging).
I just wanted to get this thought down to see where it took me, and at the moment the project has a lot of questions to ask at Staffordshire University and externally to its value and cost.