The Open University will become the first institution in the UK to put all its course materials online later this year, giving all students and teachers free access to study notes and reading lists.
The university will select educational resources from all levels from access to postgraduate study and from a full range of subject themes, including arts and history, business and management, languages and science and nature.
The material will be free to teachers and students studying in the UK and abroad, with the project following a long partnership with the BBC, which broadcasts the university's television programs....The university's vice-chancellor, Brenda Gourley, said the project would not only benefit the students studying at the university, but also students in countries where they were unable to access text books or quality course material.
Prof Gourley said: "The philosophy of open access and sharing knowledge is a wonderful fit with the founding principles of the Open University and with the university's very strong commitment to opening up educational access and widening participation....Prof Gourley said the Open University would be the first in the UK to offer open content material on the internet, following the lead of several US institutions...."[Open courseware] is definitely a movement that is really going to change universities," Prof Gourley said....The £5.65m project will be partly funded by a US$4.45m (£2.56m) grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in the US. The Open University has more than 210,000 students studying courses this year, with around 40,000 studying outside the UK. The online project will start in October.
Update. The first edition of the Guardian story, quoted above, was in error to report that "all" OU's course materials would be part of the new project. The Guardian has since rewritten its story. Also see the OU press release. (Thanks to Marc Eisenstadt.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/10/2006 08:59:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
