The case of ‘OpenLearn’: Can Open Educational Resources develop pathways from informal to formal learning?

Dr Alison Gilmour 10 May 2012

Overview

• What is OpenLearn?

• What are the benefits?

• Challenges

• Emerging questions related to DSC

Case study based on interviews:

• Kate SignoriniPlanning and Collaborations Manager, Open University

• Jonathan DarbyAcademic Director of the Support Centre for Open Resources in Education

What is OpenLearn?• What are Open Educational Resources (OERs)?

UNESCO:

‘the open provision of educational resources, enabled by information and communication technologies, for consultation, use and adaptation by a community of users for non-commercial purposes.’

[Cited in Kozinska et al, 2010]

What is OpenLearn?

‘OpenLearn … gives anybody, anywhere in the world, free access to high quality educational materials produced by the Open University. 5% of our curriculum can go, be available, on Open Learn for free and people can use it, learn whatever they want to learn from the website … it’s all material that comes from our courses or that has been written specifically for Open Learn through quite a rigorous academic process – so it’s all high quality, Higher Educational material that we’re providing for free on our website.’

[Kate Signorini, Open University in Scotland, Planning and Collaborations

Manager]

What is OpenLearn?• Learning Space

• Lab Space

What is OpenLearn?‘OpenLearn has two parts to it: Learning Space is where all of the OU resource materials are placed and it’s if you like the core repository for OU materials. Lab Space is where you can put up your own materials or where you can adapt one of the resources that you found in Learning Space. So, one of the things that the originators of OpenLearn envisaged quite a lot of is that people would find the resource on Learning Space, would then press the button which would make a copy of it on Lab Space – editable copy – that they could then change and adapt and then, over time, you would get these variants of the Learning Space resource in Lab Space which helped different needs – so they would be developed, improved, refined by others.’

[Jonathan Darby, Director of Support Centre for Open Resources in Education, based at the Open University.]

What are the benefits of OpenLearn? • Supporting the journey from informal to formal learning

• Widening participation

• Potential students can access the site to gauge their English language competency

• Provision and adaptation of teaching resources in Lab space.

• Development of ‘minority curriculum’.

Challenges

• Accessibility and using the technology

• Amount of material

• Academic level of OpenLearn units

• Absence of tutor or peer support

Emerging Questions

• How important is informal learning within the curriculum?

• What are the implications of online delivery for independent learners?

• In what ways are we meeting the demands of an increasingly diversified student body?

Contact details and links

• Contact: Dr Alison Gilmour, alison.gilmour@open.ac.uk

• http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/