Wow: I have been waiting eagerly to link to the following Open University press release, which has just gone live on the new OU Open Content Intiative site:
OU announces £5.6m project to make learning material free on the internet
[Excerpts are below, but let me interject a personal note:] This is momentous. I am very privileged to have been an employee of the Open University for the past 30 years (!!!), and feel very strongly that this initiative is part of our destiny. It is absolutely in line with the original mission and vision of the Open University (“open to people, open to places, open to methods, open to ideas”), and I think this is going to have phenomenal ramifications, about which I’ll be writing more in due course. KMi is very involved with this, thanks to the efforts of Simon Buckingham Shum.
Meanwhile, here’s an excerpt from the Open University press release:
OU announces £5.6m project to make learning material free on the internet
OU learning materials available online free of charge
The Open University today announced a GBP £5.65 million (US $9.9 million) project to make a selection of its learning materials available free of charge to educators and learners around the world.
Supported by a grant of US $4.45 million from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation the University will launch the website in October 2006.
The provision on the internet of ‘Open Educational Resources’, free at point of use and available to everyone, reflects The Open University’s mission of promoting fair access for all. During the initial phase of this initiative, the University will select and make available educational resources from all study levels from access to postgraduate and from a full range of subject themes: arts and history, business and management, health and lifestyle, languages, science and nature, society and technology. Learners will also be able to benefit from a range of study skills development material.
Read the full press release and see job vacancies linked on the OU OCI site.
Read Simon’s KMi Planet story about Open Sensemaking Communities and KMi’s role in OCI.
Wow.
Technorati Tags: open.content, open.courseware, Open.University, open.source, OCI, Hewlett.Foundation
