A learning unit about the Ancient Olympics hosted on the OU's free educational resource website OpenLearn has been recognised internationally with an award for excellence.
One of five global winners in the multimedia category, the award for Ancient Olympics: Bridging Past and Present was announced at the OpenCourseWare Consortium’s OER12 Conference in Cambridge on Monday (16 April 2012), with the unit’s use of multimedia highly praised.
The Ancient Olympics: Bridging Past and Present learning unit helps users explore the differences between ancient and modern games with maps, timelines and video materials. An unusual element of the unit is the use of animation videos illustrating how athletes in ancient Olympic Games were naked, partly in order to compete equally – a long way from today’s high-performance ergonomic kit.
The academic behind the unit, Lecturer in Classical Studies Dr Aarón Alzola Romero, said: “It is tremendous news that the Ancient Olympics unit has attracted recognition from such a large global community and it is a unit that we are very proud of producing. Sharing learning materials via our OpenLearn website is a key way that The Open University stays true to its mission of extending education to all. With less than 100 days to go to the London Olympics we expect this unit to prove increasingly popular, as part of our dedicated Olympics portal.”
“We’re very pleased to honour these courses,” said OCW Consortium Executive Director Mary Lou Forward. “They are truly outstanding examples of the amazing educational resources being shared openly by the members of the OpenCourseWare Consortium.”
The Awards for OpenCourseWare Excellence provide annual recognition to outstanding courseware and OpenCourseWare sites created in the OCW Consortium community. They also recognise individual leadership in moving the ideals of OpenCourseWare and Open Educational Resources forward. The awards were judged by the OCWC Board, including Anka Mulder, the President of OCWC and were presented at an event attended by academics from around the globe.
A screencast giving an overview of the unit is available here. The Open University’s Olympics Portal contains a breadth of resources and interactives around the Games, including video interviews with academic experts and athletes including Usain Bolt and Matthew Pinsent. A fun online game, Olympicize Me, gives people a way to get their own personal experience of the Olympics – the interactive assesses physical, psychological and social factors to help determine which sport people should compete in and what medal they would win.
