Jerard Bretts, OpenLearn Programme Manager

The Open University

29 November 2007

The Impact of

Two year Project, 2006-8

Grant from William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

Launch: October 25, 2006

Concludes: April 2008

The Open University is open to people, places, methods and ideas.

It promotes educational opportunity and social justice by providing high-quality university education to all who wish to realise their ambitions and fulfil their potential.

Through academic research, pedagogic innovation and collaborative partnership it seeks to be a world leader in the design, content and delivery of supported open and distance learning.

Mission of the UK Open University

“ 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 open educational access and widening participation. The University will be developing forms of open content e-learning which will reach less experienced learners and, we hope, encourage an appetite for further learning.”

Professor Brenda GourleyVice-Chancellor of The Open University

Goals of OpenLearn

To make some of The Open University’s distance learning materials freely accessible in an international web-based open content environment and, in so doing, to advance open content delivery method technologies by:

• Deploying leading-edge learning management tools for learner support;

• Encouraging the creation of non-formal collaborative learning communities; and

• Enhancing international research-based knowledge about modern pedagogies for higher education.

Goals of OpenLearn• Utilise Moodle as the VLE platform;• Develop two complementary sites:

the LearningSpacethe LabSpace

• Have 900 learning hours in the Learning Space for initial launch in October 2006 rising to 5400 hours at the end of two years;

• Make a further 8100 hours of material available within the Lab Space at the end of two years.

• Add a range of open source collaborative learning tools to the LabSpace devised by our Knowledge Media Institute.

• Over 310 study units published• Plus 6,815 learning hours in LabSpace• 449 Audio-visual objects in units• Over 16,000 Instant Messaging users• Over 900 FlashMeetings booked• Over 2,000 Compendium downloads• Over 12,000 units printed per week

• 24/7 service• OU largest Moodle developer group in world• New e-production working methods• Rich publishing and learning environment • New functionality introduced e.g.

– RSS– My OpenLearn– More download formats

• Over 1 million unique visitors since launch• Over 20k new visitors a week• Over 34k registered users• Over 3,000 registrations on OU courses• Users from over 160 countries• 20k signed up to monthly e-newsletter• Translations into Catalan, Portuguese, Spanish,

Chinese• Use also happening through social networking sites

• Outreach initiatives e.g. – BME group at Bradford College – Staff at Barnardos & Children’s Workforce Network

• Mirror sites through DVD provision• 34 skills study units • Website areas in development for The Open University

in Scotland and British Chambers of Commerce

• Over 50 research outputs• Over 1,000 downloads of research papers• OpenLearn 2007 Conference: 37 conference sessions &

over 100 participants• 5 user trials completed• Over 5,000 feedback emails received• 5 newly-funded research projects drawn upon

availability of OpenLearn• New partnerships and alliances e.g. UNIDERP