Distance Learning, mLearning, Digital Education, Technology

We specialise in delivering effective learning experiences for adults which fit around their lives, whether it’s a busy mum in London working toward her degree, or a primary school teacher in a remote area in Kenya, improving her classroom practice. Over 70% of our students remain at work while studying. We use appropriate technology to break down barriers – for those with disabilities, isolated or economically challenged.  We are open – we aim to remove all barriers to education and set no entry qualifications.  We use a mixture of business models (free, fee, and donor support) to provide scalable and sustainable solutions. We deliver quality learning experiences on scale to over 170,000 students. Of the UK learners, 61,000 are eligible for financial support and 44% start undergraduate study without the entry qualifications they would need at a conventional university.
Via Elizabeth E Charles

A collection of open policy resources that the Open.Ed service has developed and contributed to.  All resources have been released under open licence and are available for re-use with attribution.

Via Elizabeth E Charles

Open Education Resources
Explore the world of free digital materials available through open licenses, and celebrate the four Rs: reuse, redistribute, revise, remix.

Via Elizabeth E Charles

I’ve already written an overview and some thoughts on the ALTC keynotes, this post is an additional reflection on some of my personal highlights of the conference. 

 

I was involved in three sessions this year; Wikipedia belongs in education with Wikimedia UK CEO Lucy Crompton-Reid and UoE Wikimedian in Residence Ewan McAndrew, Influential voices – developing a blogging service based on trust and openness with DLAM’s Karen Howie, and Supporting Creative Engagement and Open Education at the University of Edinburgh with LTW colleagues Charlie Farley and Stewart Cromar.  All three sessions went really well, with lots of questions and engagement from the audience.  

Via Elizabeth E Charles

These days, students and their parents expect information to be immediately available. And while the internet has a wealth of resources, users are rightfully not always confident in their accuracy. Furthermore, many works are protected by copyrights, which prevent them from appearing online in their entirety. So educators must find creative ways to meet students’ expectations of easily accessible digital resources while still adhering to copyright laws and strict budgets. As a result, open educational resources (OERs) are gaining popularity among teachers and students. Here we look at five questions you may have as you evaluate open educational resources to help you consider the best way to provide materials to use in your classrooms.

Via Elizabeth E Charles

A lot has changed since MIT first announced that it would be making its course materials freely available online. Back in 2001, the idea that university-level content could be accessed at no cost by users anywhere in the world was virtually unheard of, and the MIT OpenCourseWare initiative was a major driver in the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement.

Via Elizabeth E Charles

More and more instructors are choosing open educational resources over traditional textbooks, a survey of more than 2,700 faculty members reveals.

The "Opening the Textbook" survey, published by the Babson Survey Research Group today, reports that the number of faculty members at two- and four-year institutions using OER as textbooks has nearly doubled in the last year -- from 5 percent in 2015-16 to 9 percent in 2016-17.

Awareness of OER -- openly licensed and freely accessible teaching and learning materials -- has also increased. Twenty-nine percent of faculty described themselves as "aware" or "very aware" of OER this year, up from 25 percent last year and 20 percent the year before. The proportion that reported they had never heard of OER fell from 66 percent in 2014-15 to 56 percent this year.

Via Elizabeth E Charles

“Directory of Free Educational Resources for Teachers: Classroom Productivity” is a collection of free quality software which is ready to be installed directly onto your computer. It includes a collated set of freely available productivity tools, such as content authoring software, mind-mapping software, graphic editors, office suite among many others.

Via Nik Peachey, Elizabeth E Charles

A video about how technology is transforming our system of education, generating equal opportunities for all. SCRIPT & DIRECTION: Daniel Sierra, Ricardo Haba...

Via ColinHickie, Peter Mellow