LON-CAPA Sustainability: Issues and Discussion

Cheri Speier Michigan State University

2003 LON-CAPA Conference

Sustainability Issues

• Financial sustainability• Ongoing system

development• Building user base

Synergistic and inter-related issues!!

Financial Sustainability

• Component of NSF grant proposal

– Create non-profit entity to administer system

– Need to be financially self-sufficient and not rely on MSU to provide ongoing $$ support

Where does $$ come from currently?

• MSU support ~ $225K/year– Centralized IT– College and departmental

resources

• Is used to– Pay for ongoing system

development– Pay for support resources

And, what’s the problem?

• Existing $$ not enough to support development and support needs

• Overall economy presents a more uncertain funding environment

• Non-MSU user base growing making it more difficult to “sell” MSU on providing LC resources

So, what are the options?

• System is open source—LC system is and will continue to be free

• Service Provisions– Installation– Ongoing support– Training– Consortium membership– Content

Installation and Support

• Free support through– LON-CAPA mailing lists: http://mail.lon-

capa.org/– FAQ: http://help.lon-capa.org/– Enhancement Requests/Defect Reports:

http://bugs.lon-capa.org/

• Additional support provided by LC personnel

– Remote installation support: $550– On-site installation support: $850/day +

lodging and travel– Remote upgrade support: $300

Consortium Membership

• Bronze membership– Inclusion in LON-CAPA distributed content resource

pool– Personal email and phone incident support– $550 year per institution

• Silver membership– All of the above +– Free upgrade support– 2 conference and 2 workshop registrations per year– $950 year per institution

• Gold membership– All of the above +– Remote maintenance of LC server– 5 conference and 5 workshop registrations per year– $1650 year per institution

• Membership fees can be waived in recognition of significant contributions to the code base or content pool of LON-CAPA.

Content

• Content Creation– Public domain content– Faculty adopting Lon-Capa– Faculty not adopting Lon-Capa– Publishers

• Royalty/Payment Alternatives• Other funding alternatives

Public Domain Content Creation

• National STEM NSDL Digital Library initiative

Faculty-Oriented Content Creation

• NSF CCLI grants for high quality content development in academic disciplines where LC has strengths

• Allocated resources to support content conversion from CAPA to LC to facilitate adoption

Electronic Coursepack

ConceptFaculty select content (problems

and/or “content”) from LC repositories

Students pay for electronic access via “key”

Revenues pay for development, support and royalty to content creator

“Web Assign” model (similar)

Royalty Models

• Discussions with faculty suggest broad array of options:

– Pay faculty for desirable content– Make content available and

receive royalties on a per use/quality of material basis

– Make content available and receive recognition (based on usage/quality)

Publishers as Content Providers

• Struggling with what “ancillary materials” are value-added to support book adoption and in which formats (e.g., Lon-Capa, Blackboard, WebCT, etc.) to provide…

– What does it cost to create format?

– What is usage rate of these materials in each format?

– How does this help support textbook adoption and retention?

Royalty Models for Publisher

Content• Publisher pays for LC coding

and makes content available to any adopter, content resides on adopter’s server

• Publisher pays for LC coding and maintains control of content by hosting content on their own server

Ongoing System Development

• Linux distributed development concept….

doesn’t seem to be working effectively for developing LC.

Reality Check?

• Linux users are typically organizational IT employees who actively use Linux in the workplace on a day-to-day basis

• LC users are faculty who have teaching, research and service commitments….may not have development skill set, let alone interest

So, we are back to $$

• If development enhancements don’t come from the user base, how do we continue to fund (preferably fund more) developers

– Desired features– Bugs– Usability

Building User Base

• The proverbial Catch-22– The bigger the user base, the

more worthy of resources, publisher attention, etc.

– The bigger the user base, the greater the likelihood of survival

– The bigger the user base, the more the support and development crew is spread thin and unable to meet demand

Questions? Comments?