The Open University is making its educational resources available free on the net for anyone in the world to use. It aims to make 5,000 hours' worth of material available by April 2008 - not only for learners, but for educators to adapt and use for their own purposes.
The £5.65m OpenLearn project is backed by a US charitable foundation....The website will initially have some 900 hours of study in a variety of topics - from access to postgraduate level - using the Moodle "virtual learning environment".
The OU says it is the first British higher education institution to make its educational resources freely available online on this scale, although there are other similar "open courseware" projects, notably in the US and Japan....
The OU's thinking is that, despite the efforts of governments and other agencies, there remain significant differences in the access people have to educational opportunities across the world.
"These disparities are stark in countries such as the UK and the US, and are even more pronounced between developed and less-developed countries," it said in its successful application to the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Even within the UK, research showed that significant barriers still existed for certain social and economic groups.
"Open content provides the opportunity for access to high-quality learning materials which would not otherwise be available and affordable to many groups within both the developed and developing worlds."
Open University pro-vice-chancellor Professor David Vincent said its mission had always been to be open to people, places, methods and ideas...."The philosophy of open access and sharing knowledge - a cornerstone of this project - matches the founding principles of the Open University."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/23/2006 10:04:00 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.
