http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=1181&parent=315
by OpenLearn Admin.This week OpenLearn reached its target of publishing 5400 learning hours of materials from Open University courses in the LearningSpace and 8100 hours in the LabSpace. OpenLearn launched in October 2006 with an ambitious target to publish almost 5% of the OU’s learning materials online by April 2008. The OpenLearn website now boasts almost 2 million users globally.
The latest release of the website offers a range of new features. Visitors to the site will be able to rate the study units, using an Amazon style five star rating system and share units with friends via email.
The team have also responded to interest – initially from self organising groups of learners and organisations – in creating Learning Clubs. People will be able to set up their own Learning Club, with free access to a discussion forum and events calendar. Members can book and publicise online meetings using OpenLearn's communication tools such as MSG instant messenger and FM video conferencing. Anyone visiting the site can view the Learning Clubs on offer and either join an existing club or set up their own.
Patrick McAndrew, Research Director, explained the motivation behind this: "We have set up our Learning Clubs to help people who want to group around a shared interest. Just as with the growing number of social networking sites that provide features to help people connect with one another, we want our users to connect with each other. That may start with their shared interest in OpenLearn study materials and go much further. The support of other learners helps motivate and inform students and the clubs will provide space for collaborations between educators who want to reuse the materials."
Commenting on the most recent updates he added, "The Technical Team, led by Jenny Gray, have been working hard to make improvements based on feedback from our users. We’ve simplified the forum structures, improved the layout of the study unit homepages and de-cluttered the pages by removing links to the less popular features. From May we'll be able to provide our learning support tools anywhere in the site – before the learner could only access the tools from the unit homepage, now they can use them at any point in the learning journey.”
OpenLearn publishes cohesive learning objects taken from high quality Open University courses under a Creative Commons licence. This means that users can download and reuse the materials, amending them to suit their purpose and context.
