Amsterdam, 22 November 2011

The Free Technology Academy will stop its current activity in January 2012 to restart in a new form. Instead of following a fixed study programme, learners can join a group of peers with similar interests and demand courses to be organised in the way they'd like most. This bottom-up, community based approach is expected to be more in line with the current demand.

The FTA Consortium, formed by the Open University of The Netherlands (OUNL), the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) and the Free Knowledge Institute (FKI), has decided to discontinue the FTA Programme, cancelling courses scheduled for 2012. This difficult decision was taken after it became apparent that the FTA Programme is not financially viable with the current tuition fees and number of enroled learners.

The FTA was initially started as a master-level programme on Free Software and Open Standards with the financial support of the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Commission. Since January 2011 the FTA Programme has been run relying only on tuition fees and the resources invested by the members of the FTA Consortium. During 2011 all Consortium members have taken losses, and the prospects for 2012 are not good enough to make the FTA sustainable.

This situation can also be taken as an opportunity to reorganise the FTA and focus on those activities that are of most interest to the community. In its short lifetime, the FTA has built an online campus, prepared ten courses modules with accompanying course books, and gathered together a global partner network and several thousand followers and campus users. These are strong foundations to start building an exciting future.

The FKI has agreed to mainain the FTA Campus and related infrastructure while alternative sustainability models are developed together with several partners and the community of learners. At the same time, the FTA Associate Partner network will keep working on the joint development of educational materials and other related activities. Of special interest are the plans to develop a joint Master Degree in Free Technologies, a process that was already started as part of the FTA [1].

The FTA Consortium wants to thank all the persons who have participated in this first phase of the FTA, and especially the learners who have followed FTA courses. We hope to work with all of you to build a stronger FTA!

If you want to participate in the discussions about the future of the FTA, please join the working group in the FTA Community Portal [2]. We're very interested in knowing your ideas and wishes for the FTA. You can also help us by filling out an anonymous survey [3]. If you want to take part in any particular course at the FTA, don't hesitate to express your plans and interests in this space [4] and form groups with other peer learners.

References

[1] http://ftacademy.org/masters/drafting-a-joint-degree
[2] http://campus.ftacademy.org/community/pg/groups/5741/fta-sustainability-...
[3] http://campus.ftacademy.org/mod/feedback/view.php?id=1058&username=guest
[4] http://campus.ftacademy.org/community/pg/groups/5739/courses