Ariel Diaz from boundless learning spoke on open business models. Boundless is pretty controversial in reverse engineering learning materials and is engaged in big lawsuits.
The Boundless website has students type in the name of their expensive textbook and it aligns each chapter of that book with open sources that say basically the same thing,allowing students to learn really well without buying the text. It looks lovely and has a nice, mobile friendly interface. If creates flash cards and overview quizzes and allows aggregation of notes to make study guides. They also have smart notes that summarize the top issues from each chapter - sort of a cliff's notes for each topic and chapter.
They currently have 8 subjects and have the top 3 or 4 books in each subject. It is free now, but eventually it will be a student pay model.
They are doing some internal studies to see if student learning is similar with the OER.
Unfortunately, he never actually got to the part about open business models. However, I got to talk to him during lunch. He said that what he hinted at during the talk, the student pay model, is the way they hope to make it happen. However, he thought there were lots of differnt models out there, some which have not even been thought about yet.
Boundless.com
Openstax.com
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