Title: The Open University UK: creating a win-win situation by sharing code and content
Author: Gregor Bierhals
Pages: 12 pp.
Source: Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR), osor.eu
Publisher: IDABC
Date (published): 27/10/2009
Date (accessed): 12/12/2009
Type of information: case study
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML, pdf, odt)
Abstract:
In 2005 The Open University (OU) UK, one of Europe's largest distance learning universities, established that it was time to deploy a new Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), for both The Open University itself as well as for their OpenLearn project aimed at providing free open educational resources (OER) to the general public. A team with different sub-tasks was formed, which investigated future learning environments and how learning material was presented and disseminated through those. Next to this, the OU also researched open learning models, as part of the OpenLearn project. The team of researchers and technical staff, after setting out the components required to meet the OU's needs the most appropriate match was determined. The choice fell on the VLE Moodle, which is an open source product. Today the Moodle VLE has been successfully implemented at the OU and the OU has further published a significant amount of their learning material under a Creative Commons license as courses on the Moodle VLE based OpenLearn website, which are freely available to anyone interested. The OU continues to collaborate closely with the Moodle community , as this provides a very large platform for feedback and information. All the OU's development are given back to the Moodle community, which improves the product for the OU and the rest of the community.