Topic 5: Open Access – A Digital World

"In today’s digital age, monetization of online material is a viable prospect in order to benefit from the use of content. The ethics of charging for certain online content can often be questioned, which could rationalize why websites such as Twitter are so conscious of how they make money from the hundreds of millions of users they garner each month (Gadkari, 2013). There are looming fears that a rapidly increasing number of media companies will use paywalls to guard their online content from being used for free (Lepitak, 2016).

In light of this, I feel that educational resources should be immune from these issues. Some would argue that we pay for education, and since state schools can ask for contributions of some form, it is only fair that material online should be monetized. However, the initiatives that are being set up, such as by edX to provide online educational resources in community schools in the US (Coughlan, 2012), can educate people who may feel as though they could not learn any other way. Open access has the potential to open the door to providing the education that everyone deserves."