Open Michigan vs Saylor Academy

Open Michigan is a University of Michigan initiative for sharing research, teaching and creative work beyond campus. It offers services and expertise in open educational resources, open data and open publications, and lets visitors search for material from within and outside the university for teaching and research. Its collection includes course materials, videos, lectures, student work and other educational resources from U-M faculty, students, staff and partner institutions. Nearly all of its educational resources are openly licensed for reuse under Creative Commons. The initiative can help publish syllabi, courses and learning modules, promote educational resources, and make data publicly available. It describes open data as publicly available for use, reuse and distribution, and open access scholarship as available to read online for free. Open Michigan is a partnership of the University Library and Health Information Technology and Services, and began in 2007. It notes that older resources may not work well with screen readers and many videos lack sufficient captions; remediation is underway. Hosted content published after January 1, 2017 receives accessibility reviews, with a goal of WCAG 2.0 AA compliance.

Saylor University offers self-paced online courses, skill development programs, and graduate degrees. Its catalog lists 164 free courses spanning professional skills and college-level subjects. Materials are curated from free and open online resources by expert educators, and learners can earn free digital certificates by passing course exams. Some courses have ACE credit recommendations, but earning credit requires a proctored credit exam; optional proctoring costs $5 USD per exam session. The organization serves people pursuing personal or professional development, college credit, and graduate degrees. Learners can access courses on the web or use the Saylor University or Moodle mobile app on iOS and Android. Some activities can be downloaded for offline use, though some site features and settings are unavailable in the apps. Sign-in supports Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Microsoft. Saylor says it collects account and usage information and does not sell personal information. Its privacy policy describes administrative, physical, and technical safeguards while noting that absolute security cannot be guaranteed. Saylor University is the primary initiative of the Constitution Foundation, a nonprofit founded by Michael J. Saylor.