Director OpenLearn
"Much of my working life has been at The Open University and I completely share its mission and philosophy of making education accessible to all. OpenLearn offers the opportunity to take that to another level, reaching tens of millions of people each year around the world, not just the hundreds of thousands as at present."
Professor Andy Lane has a BSc in Plant Sciences and a PhD from the University of London. He has been in the Systems Department of the Technology Faculty at the Open University since 1983 and held various offices, including being Head of Department, Sub Dean (Courses) and from 2000 Dean of the Technology Faculty. He was promoted to Professor of Environmental Systems in 2005 and in 2006 he was appointed as Director of the OU's OpenLearn Initiative. He is also a Chartered Environmentalist.

Hear what Andy has to say about:
OpenLearn and the OU mission
and access and engagement.

Patrick McAndrew has a Mathematics degree from Oxford University and a PhD in Computer Science, from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. He joined the Open University in 1999 to research and teach approaches to web-based teaching and learning.

Knowledge Media Institute, LabSpace Learning & Collaboration Tools
"OpenLearn's LabSpace presents intriguing possibilities for understanding the dynamics of self-organising communities of learners and educators. I'm excited by the opportunity to investigate at scale how such groups can be supported to engage more deeply with open educational resources, and with each other."
Simon Buckingham Shum has a background in psychology, ergonomics, and human-computer interaction, which he now applies to the design of next generation tools for sensemaking: tools to help express and contest perspectives. These are finding application in many academic and organisational contexts. He joined the Open University's Knowledge Media Institute as a Research Fellow in 1995, where he is now Senior Lecturer.
Listen to Simon discuss:
 new users and the OpenLearn sense-making tools,
the current use and future development of these tools,
and what OpenLearn offers to The Open University.

Technical Director (LTS)
"The combination of open source tools - such as Moodle - and open educational resources - such as OpenLearn - offer great potential to allow high quality university-level education to be made available to a widening international community. The fact that the Open University is making major contributions to both these areas is hugely exciting and I'm really pleased to be able to contribute to both activities."
Ross leads the technical teams that are developing the OpenLearn platform and the Open University's Virtual Learning Environment.  He has a BSc, MSc and PhD in Physics from Bristol University, and has worked at Cornell University, University of Oxford and Oxford University Press. Ross joined the Open University in 1995 and has been involved in a wide range of online learning initiatives and activities at the OU over last 12 years.

Communications Manager
"I'm looking forward to spreading the word about OpenLearn now we've launched. I want to ensure that as many people as possible benefit from open access to higher education."
Laura has responsibility for online communications, events management, media relations and partnership liasion. With an MSc in Electronic Publishing, she has worked in communications, publishing, online production and technology research for the BBC, The McGraw-Hill Companies, University of Sussex, City University, Nissan, Unilever, BA and Intercontinental.