It has been in the pipeline for some time now, but the Open University has now launched OpenLearn, a website which makes OU course materials freely available and provides "state-of-the-art learning support and collaboration tools" to boot. The selection of materials available at the moment is modest, and appears to be suffering from some teething problems (some courses have been noticed appearing and disappearing) but provides an interesting sample of the breadth of OU courses and looks like it could become a valuable site. I still have a year to go until I finish my degree, but afterwards I wouldn't be surprised if I look to this site for the odd extracurricular learning experience, as it were.
More broadly, I think this is great. Our tax pounds go to support the university system, including the OU (maybe not supporting it as much as it could, but that's a whole other story) and this has the obvious benefit of helping to educate the nation, but with the free distribution of these materials, I feel we are getting even more value for money. Sure, I still need to pay if I want to follow a course properly and get a qualification, but now I have the option of looking over the shoulders of the "real" students and get some benefit from well written study materials. I believe some other universities are also publishing course notes. Long may it continue.
3 comments:
Dear,
Can I have the softcopy of M358 block1-5? am currently learning m358 in HK. I want it for my reference only.
kapo.wong@yahoo.com.hk
It's great to see the OU getting involved in providing open course ware.
The OU was the great achievement of the Wilson government. It's not well known that it was a major contributor to the peace movement in Northern Ireland. Practically every long term republican prisoner or internee had an OU degree and I've known several who got their PHd behind barbed wire.
MIT also has an open courseware project
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html
And for newly developed materials Connexions is great
http://cnx.org/
Interesting thought about the NI situation. I did know that quite a few OU students are/were behind bars. This seems like a good use of taxpayers' money: for a very tiny fraction of the cost of keeping a prisoner you can give them a decent education.
Actually, I heard a story (no idea if it is true) about someone who deliberately did poorly at a couple of courses to avoid getting first class honours, as it is generally believed that prisoners get the best results and this student didn't want to look like a jailbird.
Oh, and kapo.wong -- while I did study M358, I don't have a softcopy of the materials. Perhaps this is something worth contacting the OU about?
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