Cost effectiveness
Ed. Policy, Ed. Tech. February 20th, 2008
In the evaluation work I do, I’m occasionally asked to study/assess the cost effectiveness of a “product.” This makes some sense where the product is hardware or some kind of proprietary digital object. And, there, COSN’s work on Total Cost of Ownership is exemplary. But, when it comes to many software programs, even comprehensive programs, things have changed. In the day and age of Moodle and other free, open-source programs, cost effectiveness is moot. I’m not tapped in to the open source in education community, but I’d love to know what prevents open source from making a bigger impact in education. At a time when the economy is slow and budgets are tight, how do schools/districts continue to justify ed. tech. expenditures where equally good and free alternatives exist?
Tags: budgets, cost effectiveness, education, evaluation
Jon, thanks for your thoughts and positive reference to the CoSN-Gartner TCO tool. As CoSN’s TCO and Value of Investment Project Director, I also have thoughts on open source software and its use in education. TCO is a holistic approach for evaluating all of the costs of the current technology infrastructure (including software) and allows a comparative analysis of alternatives (such as implementation of open source applications), including hardware/software costs, support costs and end user productivity issues.
Of interest also is the value of a new project with open source vs proprietary software, such as Moodle vs. Blackboard. While the products may be similar in concept, one or the other may generate more benefits than another alternative. This evaluation is at the heart of CoSN’s VOI Leadership Initiative (www.edtechvoi.org).
Finally, I agree that educators are not moving agressively enough into open source, but then how many corporate enterprises have replaced Microsoft’s costly Office with Open Office? A great website for more info on K-12 open source software and K-12 open technologies in general is http://k12opentech.org/k12ot/
Thanks, Richard, and I know we’ve crossed paths in the Cybernether before.
I’m particularly interested in the Moodle Case as I’m currently involved in evaluating the benefits of a (not free) VLE. There are data that suggest that the ease of use of this system (particularly, I suppose, compared to something like Moodle) saves teachers lots of time. So, my question is, how do we translate time saved into ($$) benefits?