Open Eye: The Net benefits of open access for all
A new resource will help tackle educational disadvantages worldwide
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Your support makes all the difference.In an ambitious £5.6m pledge of support for the growing open content movement, the Open University has made a substantial amount of its teaching material freely available on the internet.
The move, called OpenLearn, is being compared to the OU's pioneering of open access to higher education in the late Sixties and Seventies. "Our mission has always been to be open to people, places, methods and ideas," said university spokesman Professor David Vincent. "OpenLearn allows us to extend these values into the 21st century."
The OpenLearn website, which went live on 25 October, offers 900 hours of study material in 11 subject areas, from arts and history to business and management, modern languages, science and nature. It is planned to increase the study range to more than 5,000 hours by April 2008.
The website is designed to support self-learners who can draw on discussion forums and other tools such as "learning journals".
Professional educators can download teaching material and are also encouraged to experiment with it and to add and reorganise materials to suit their own needs.
However, while users of the website can complete courses of study and therefore expand their knowledge, they do not sit exams or gain Open University qualifications.
Professor Andy Lane, director of OpenLearn, said: "We are encouraging learners to become self-reliant but also to use online communities to support their learning. We are making it possible for educators to download and adapt our materials for their own purposes. All this will teach us a huge amount about how people can learn and teach online."
The OpenLearn website is available worldwide and is aimed at widening access to hard-to-reach groups and tackling educational disadvantage. It is supported with a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
MP Bill Rammell, the Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education, said OpenLearn has "enormous potential" in helping to bring sustainable economic development and prosperity to the developing world through higher education.
Speaking at an event in London to mark the OpenLearn launch he said: "This is a superb initiative that not only helps take the OU forward but meets some of the development needs of some of the poorest people in the poorest parts of the world."
OpenLearn is at http:// openlearn.open.ac.uk/
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