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Open Educational Resources

Professor David Vincent

Pro Vice-Chancellor Strategy & External Affairs

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Overview

• About The OU

• OU Open Educational Resources

• The challenges

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About The OU• 150,000 undergraduate and more than 30,000 postgraduate

students - nearly all students are studying part-time• 10,000 students have disabilities• A third of UK undergraduate students have entry qualifications

lower than those normally demanded by other UK universities• 20% of new UK undergraduates live in the 20% most deprived

areas of the country• About 70% of undergraduates are in full-time employment• More than 50,000 students are sponsored by their employers• Most OU courses are available throughout Europe - some

available in many other parts of the world• More than 25,000 OU students live outside the UK• The OU is ranked among the top UK universities for the quality of

its teaching

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At the forefront in 1969…

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“Open”: 1969

People Places

Methods Ideasfo

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…

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“Open”: 1969…………… 2009

Open Source

Open Communities Open Standards

Open Economics

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At the forefront in 2009…

• The UK’s leading University delivering eLearning at scale

• Students on two-thirds of all courses undertake eLearning activities

• All courses include optional online activities

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Revolutionary opportunities • The opportunities:

– Reaching informal learners on a worldwide scale– Bringing informal learners into formal HE

• OU examples:– BBC– OpenLearn– YouTube, Facebook, iGoogle– iTunesU– Elluminate– Second Life– SocialLearn

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Science at the OU

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The learning journey• From programme to website to course• The I-Player-U

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OpenLearn

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Impact on progression

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OpenLearn Globally

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September 2009, Live

September 2009, Reuse

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YouTube, facebook, iGoogle

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New Channels to reach learner? With rich / AV content?

http://www.youtube.com/ou

http://podcast.open.ac.uk

http://itunes.open.ac.uk

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Social Video and YouTubea community solution

http://www.youtube.com/ou

YouTube users can distribute our videos by embedding them in other websites, often blogs and social networks. We can have a conversation with our viewers via comments, contests, groups, asynchronous chat and bulletins.

Viewers can feedback to us by marking a video as a favourite, sending us a message, adding our channel as a friend or subscribing.

Playlists to connect to others content! Bring your uploaded video into our playlist

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iTunesU

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• The iTunes music store, open 6 years & sold 6 Billion songs

• 75 Million credit card accounts

• Powerful mobile synch

• iTunes U. open -2007June 2008 UKOU + 2 …Oct 2008 Oxbridge {OU @ 1M downloads}Jan 2009 Europe {OU @ 2.5M downloads}

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Open University on iTunes U

First 525 days (75 weeks)

• 10m downloads

• over 1 million visitors downloaded files

• currently averaging over 376,000 downloads a week

• 88% of visitors from outside the United Kingdom

• 1 in 10 downloaders go on to visit the OU website

• 259 albums

• currently >1 new download every 2 seconds

Open University on iTunes U was launched on 3rd June 2008

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The Open University on iTunes UGeographical breakdown of downloads

3 June 2008 - 14 September 2009

All downloads external to The Open University’s intranet

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http://kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/microscope

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S276 GeologyOpen University

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Second Life Building Community in a Virtual World

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SocialLearn

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Beyond social networking…

From:

• people like me

• “friends”

• informal chat

• quick facts / info. exchange

• simplistic numeric ratings

• tag clouds

• shopping recommendations

To:

• people who challenge/stretch me

• learning peers/mentors

• learning conversations

• learning journeys/depth

• endorsements and critiques

• meaningfully connected ideas

• learning recommendations

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• Secure Identity• e-Portfolio• Activity History• Social Network• Marketplace• Analytics

SocialLearnOpen Platform

and Website

SocialLearn joins the cloud as another service hosting data and interoperable web applications

Web 2.0 personal learning environment

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Challenges• The bridge between informal and formal

• The disaggregated university

• Borders and borderless

• The digital divide

• The sustainable university

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The bridge between informal & formal learning

• Global Online

• Open Learn and BBC sites as recruiters

• Open Learn as preparation

• APEL (Accreditation of Prior Experiential Learning)

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“university”

Cohort & Community

Scholarship

Mentors

AccreditedValidation

CriticalThinking

Identity &Reputation

Quality Teaching& Research

EXCLUSIVE access to

People, Archives & Technologies

The disaggregated University

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The growth of ‘borderless’

• Is informal learning bounded by nation?

• Is informal learning truly global in a way that formal learning can never be?

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The digital divide - Internet

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The digital divide - Mobile

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Public/Charitable Funding

Mainstream University Business

Customer

OU

SocialLearn

The sustainable university

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Questions?