BeBettr Afternoon Session

Mmmm, back from lunch at Beas of Bloomsbury. Highly recommended. Now full of lovely food and ready for the afternoon. Hopefully I won’t have a carb crash at 3.30 as is usual!! Water at the ready

The event MC is back on the stage telling us there is 7 further speakers and we have a lot to get through. The hall door has been closed and the timing is key. We’re just going through who is coming on and the next speaker is Laura Dewis who is presenting a case study of how a university is opening up it’s content. MATT CARDLE IS ON THE FIRST PAGE OF HER PRESENTATION!! O.M.G.!! Thank the lord… it’s gone now! So… what is open media. it’s free and accessible on BBC, iTunes, OpenLearn and YouTube. Their vision is that the OU is recognised as the world leader in sustainable, quiality open educational resources. Starting with the BBC and OU (there’s a chap on the screen in a kipper tie, well it’s an improvement on Matt effin’ Cardle!). People used to stay up late to watch OU programming. This went on until a few years back when the OU and BBC ceased to broadcast this content. It was inspirational at the time but now the OU’s relationship with the BBC is different delivering content to hard to reach audiences with things like Coast, Bang Goes the Theory, Darwin etc… on TV, web etc… We’re looking at the showreel with various BBC talent making engaging learning content for people who may not even realise they are learning. This content gets over 300 million views a year in the UK and over 1 billion worldwide. Quite literally WOW!! She’s pointing people to OU content online and on mobile devices. This is aimed at all ages not just older learners. iTunes new is a new thing for the OU appearing next to MIT and Oxford university. OU has always delivered education using technology. They get 300,000 weekly. They have a YouTube channel too. Short form content mainly. Getting involved in YouTube has enabled them to get involved in projects with Google. Now we’re on to the main site for OU. 5% of all their course material is available for free. That’s 6000 learner hours of content and all available under the creative commons license. Is this too much of a good thing though? Too many destinations, too much demand on academic time, too much moderation needed. Academics giving too much time to delivering this content outside their regular work. These are just some of the questions. The new site, OpenLearn, in Drupal and now in BETA, is the central point of this content. For topical events related to their core content. Should launch properly in the next couple of months. They are trying to differentiate each o their digital spaces. OpenLearn – aggreagator, high traffic media rich, Learning Space, more formal learning, built in Moodle containing OU courses. Also Lab Spaces where mashed content can be uploaded. A home for OU remixed content. This all has to be accountable so they have to keep track of public awareness, public engagement, conversion/avtive learning (informal to formal learning) and value for money / ROI. These are the KPIs for this area of OU content. Although her department runs on 30 people out of 11,000 OU employees they are generating quite a stir in the media and a buzz in the learning comunity. Ultimately the mission is to be open to people, places, methods and ideas. Course have no formal entry requirements and help people who don’t think they are good enough to get qualifications to succeed.

More at www.open.ac.uk/openlearn

 

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