Plan E for Education is my proposal that a proportion of the educational resources generated in publicly funded universities be made freely available for sharing and use by others. This would be the educational equivalent of initiatives that require publicly funded research to be published in open access journals or platforms, characterised as Plan S.
The initiative for research findings to be made available came from the funders of research, who wanted the results of research to be freely available to those who could put the results into practice. They could not see why the research that they had funded should be hidden behind the paywalls of publishers.
A parallel initiative would allow educational materials to be used widely rather than being hidden behind the paywalls of publicly funded universities.
There is a global initiative towards open publishing of educational materials, which are termed Open Educational Resources (OER) and are supported by enabling infrastructure termed Open Educational Practices. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was an early leader in the field, and now publish all their courses online. As early as 2003 they reported more than 11,000 visitors to the site per day of whom half were self-learners. There is also precedent in the US where some government funded educational materials are required to be made freely available online.
