Archive for December, 2012

Hyde: parked at OU but roaring to go

Tuesday, December 25th, 2012

Jan Hyde has a job (as a Careers Employability Officer, Adviser and Coach) a spouse and five children plus one foster daughter. She has completed 14 OU modules and is, she says, ‘a little addicted to study’. When writing about her experience of the OU she started not with her first engagement with it in the 1990s but with the institution itself and its support for a wide range of learners.  Read her account here.

MOOC News

Friday, December 21st, 2012

There has been a lot of coverage of Massive Open Online Courses, MOOCs, of late. Stories have been run about the millions invested and the numbers interested in these free online courses open to all with electronic access.

MOOCs have also gained attention because the OU has joined with 11 other UK HE institutions to form a company, FutureLearn, which will offer a range of free, open and online courses on one learning platform. The OU’s Vice-Chancellor has declared that FutureLearn’s aim is to provide the “best quality student experience of any of the MOOCs on the planet’. (more…)

MOOC Update

Monday, December 17th, 2012

 There has been widespread coverage of the OU’s MOOC initiative and support from some of those associated wioth the OU’s roots in the WEA and Labour Party. Details have been collated here.

FutureLearn and history

Friday, December 14th, 2012

On 14th December OU Vice Chancellor Martin Bean announced on Radio 4 and also on television that FutureLearn Ltd (majority-owned by the OU) is to provide free open, online courses from the universities of Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, East Anglia, Exeter, King’s College London, Lancaster, Leeds, Southampton, St Andrews and Warwick. The aim is to build on the OU’s expertise in delivering distance learning and pioneering open education resources and to increase accessibility to higher education. It will be headed by former BBC staffer Simon Nelson. He said that he looks forward ‘to using the OU’s proud history’.