Thanks for your reply. I would like to make two points in reply.
One is that the OU is looking into ways to be able to operate more globally and so more opportunities will open up.
The second is that open educational resources (e.g. OpenLearn, MIT and Connexions and more coming all the time) are only part of the story, with other parts being support and a qualification at the end. At the moment I think that people are working more on freeing resources but down the line I expect that someone will find ways to give credit for working through open content.
I agree that for many the qualification provides the motivation that is needed to do all the hard work needed to learn from degree level material.
Just a note for information. The Open University has now joined in the Open Courseware Consortium using the name OpenLearn and started to make some of its course material available for free unde Creative Commons. It is not quite on the same model as MIT as the OU is releasing fairly short self-study units rather than whole course at a time. Anyway to see more of the learning materials go to:
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/
There are also some interesting tools available for people who want to remix or work around the material. These are in a companion site at:
http://labspace.open.ac.uk/
(Admission - I do work for the OU.)
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for your reply. I would like to make two points in reply.
One is that the OU is looking into ways to be able to operate more globally and so more opportunities will open up.
The second is that open educational resources (e.g. OpenLearn, MIT and Connexions and more coming all the time) are only part of the story, with other parts being support and a qualification at the end. At the moment I think that people are working more on freeing resources but down the line I expect that someone will find ways to give credit for working through open content.
I agree that for many the qualification provides the motivation that is needed to do all the hard work needed to learn from degree level material.
Just a note for information. The Open University has now joined in the Open Courseware Consortium using the name OpenLearn and started to make some of its course material available for free unde Creative Commons. It is not quite on the same model as MIT as the OU is releasing fairly short self-study units rather than whole course at a time. Anyway to see more of the learning materials go to:
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/
There are also some interesting tools available for people who want to remix or work around the material. These are in a companion site at:
http://labspace.open.ac.uk/
(Admission - I do work for the OU.)