Getting Started on OpenLearn
OpenLearn - free educational material from The Open University.

Welcome to OpenLearn! This page will help you use the free online learning materials that have been made available by The Open University under a Creative Commons licence.

This short video about OpenLearn will give you a better idea about what our free online educational resources can offer you.

Please note that in order to be able to view the videos on this page you will need to have Adobe Flash Player installed.  You can download Adobe Flash Player for  Windows here, for  Mac here, and for Linux here.

Using OpenLearn does not mean that you become an Open University student, or that you will have a tutor, sit exams, or gain a degree. It does mean that you have free, no-strings-attached access to high quality online educational material taken from Open University courses.

So, what do you need to do to get at this free university material? Well, the short answer is `absolutely nothing'! It's all laid out for you in the LearningSpace and the LabSpace. If you are interested in learning, try the LearningSpace first. If you want to remix our educational resources, try the LabSpace.

To take full advantage of all the features and technologies that we have made available, and to be able to enrol on any or all of our free study units however, you will need to register.

Registering is completely free, makes no future requirements of you, and ties you to The Open University or OpenLearn in no way. It does however provide you with:

• access to tools that will help you organise and make sense of your study
• free and unlimited access to the OpenLearn community. 
  

People in the OpenLearn community are probably here for the same reasons as you - they are interested in learning. Connecting with other people in OpenLearn can help you learn more as you can share thoughts, questions, ideas and perspectives.

All you need to do is enter your details in the short registration form. If you are concerned about privacy, take some time to look through our privacy policy.

For more information on registration take a look at this Flash movie on how to register on OpenLearn.

Well now you can either get stuck in to the free learning resources or, if you have registered, you can take a while to read a little about what your new-found privileges offer you!

Personal profiles allow you to share information about yourself with other learners and connect with those that have the same interests as you. 

If you have registered and are logged in, the LearningSpace  or LabSpace should display your name in the top right-hand corner of the screen. Clicking on your name you will take you to your profile page where you can change your account settings (name, location, photograph, password, learning interests etc).

For more information on personal profiles take a look at this Flash movie on how to edit your personal profile.

In the LearningSpace or LabSpace you will see that there are a number of topic (or subject) headings to choose from. When you click through to a topic area that interests you, you will see descriptions of all the related study units.  Underneath each study unit description is a link to Join this unit.

Joining a unit adds it to your personal profile.  This means:

• you will be able to join discussions in the study unit's forum
• the study unit will be added to your Learning Journal and myLearningSpace/myLabSpace page to make it easy for you to keep track of the units that you are studying.

Joining a unit will also add you to the list of participants.  A full list of participants for each study unit can be viewed in the left-hand column of the unit  homepage once you have logged in.  This, and the fact that your MSG profile will show you as someone studying that unit, makes it easier for you to discuss study-related issues with your peers if you choose to.

For more information, take a look at this Flash movie on how to join an OpenLearn study unit.

Forums
Forums are online message boards where you can post messages and read those from other learners. The OpenLearn forums give the community a place to meet, discuss and share ideas.

You can access the general forums through the LearningSpace or LabSpace (use the Discussion  forums link on the top right-hand side of the page) or unit-specific forums via the link on each unit's homepage (just below the image).

Before adding a thread you should look through the existing thread titles to see if there is one that relates to what you want to discuss. If there is, click on the discussion heading. If you want to join the discussion, simply click on reply on one of the posts. If nobody has started a discussion on your topic of interest, click on the button that says Add a new discussion topic.

For more information on forums take a look at this Flash movie on how to use the OpenLearn forums.

The learning outcomes listed in each study unit provide ways for you to assess your own progress. You can check against these at the end of the study unit to see whether you have met the intended outcomes. It is possible you might have additional or different learning outcomes and you might want to log these in your Learning Journal or share these by writing a review of the study unit.

You will find activities in the study units. By clicking on links that say, 'Now read the answer' , you will be able to reveal answers and check these against your own thoughts. You might also come across short quizzes.

If you have visited sites such as Amazon or Ebay you may be familiar with the idea of user ratings and reviews. We want you to have your say and tell others what you think of our study units. This helps the community to judge the most useful study units and provides useful feedback for us!

On the first page of every study unit you will find a link called 'Rate this unit' (below the image).  This link will take you to a questionnaire which should take less than a minute to complete.

If other learners have completed the questionnaire you will be able to see how they rated the study unit by clicking on the responses link, next to the print button, at the top right of the screen.

On the first page of any study unit you will find a link called 'Unit reviews' (below the image). If you want to leave a review of the study unit you can add your comments here. You might want to consider questions such as:

� What worked well for me on this study unit?

� What did I learn?

� What further information do I need on the subject?

� How long did it take me to study the unit?

� What would have improved my study experience?

� Now that I have finished the study unit, I will...

For more information on rate and review take a look at this Flash movie on how to rate and review an OpenLearn study unit.

A Learning Journal is similar to a study diary or blog. It allows you to keep your own personal notes and reflections on the material you're studying, or on your general study experiences.

You can choose to keep the notes to yourself, or to share your entries with other people. All your notes will be stored on the OpenLearn site and are always available for you to review, edit or delete.

For more information on Learning Journals take a look at this Flash movie on how to use a Learning Journal.

myLearningSpace/myLabSpace has been designed to help you organise your learning. You can create your own learning environment, personalising the homepage of the LearningSpace or LabSpace to reflect how you use the website. View the courses you're enrolled in, keep up to date with forum entries and organise your learning toolkit.

For more information on creating your personal homepage take a look at this Flash movie on myLearningSpace. (myLabSpace is almost identical)

RSS allows you to keep up to date with the latest content without the need to visit the website. You can select the content you want to read and have it delivered to your desktop. All OpenLearn study materials are available as RSS feeds, allowing you to choose what content you see and how.

For more information on using OpenLearn RSS take a look at this Flash movie on RSS.

Tags are words or terms that users have assigned to study units in OpenLearn. You will see them on the first page of any OpenLearn study unit and on your Learning Journal pages. Any registered user can add a tag using keywords to describe the content of a study unit or their learning journal entry. The tag will act as a hyperlink enabling users to classify and find content based on keywords that are meaningful to them.

Personal tags from all users are combined in to a community tag cloud, allowing you to see the most popular keywords associated with study units. Tags are made public so everyone can view them. You will be able to find all OpenLearn resources tagged with a particular keyword, such as 'graphs', by clicking on that keyword in the tag cloud.

You may add as many tags as you like to study units. Each tag must be one word without spaces. If you want to use several words, replace the spaces with underscores eg learning_skills. Each tag word may be up to 20 characters long, and all punctuation other than underscores will be stripped. There are many ways to use tags. Here are some examples:

• Navigate the website: Add a tag and check out what other study units people have tagged with the same word. The more resources are tagged with a keyword, the larger that keyword will appear in the tagcloud. This makes it a reliable way to find resources that are likely to be of interest. Are you a poetry enthusiast? Find a poetry unit that you've studied and tag it with the category "poetry." Click on the "poetry" tag you created and see what other study units people have tagged with the keyword "poetry".  You can assign as many tags as you wish to each study unit, so tag away!
• Organize your learning: Tag study units you've studied in the past to organize your learning in any way you wish. If you don't like the way OpenLearn has organized the study units, tag the units you care about with the categories that matter to you.
• Search tags: You can search for study units with a given tag from the community tag cloud.

You can also tag your personal profile with your interests so that you can find other people on OpenLearn with shared interests.

If you have any questions about accessing OpenLearn on your computer see our Technical FAQ's.