You are one of the people formerly known as the audience. Now we'd like you to become part of the conversation!
Welcome to /use - the place to find out where the OU is participating online, what we're playing with and what cool stuff we're giving away.
The OU has been working with external partners to create spaces for you to experience what we have to offer and make decisions about our quality and values on your own terms. We want everyone to reach their own conclusions so we've made thousands of hours of content freely available to you via YouTube, iTunes U (Visit The Open University on iTunes U) and OpenLearn. We want you to feel free to reuse this content in ways that benefit you, so make sure you visit these sites and take what you need! A small point to bear in mind is that the terms and conditions of the licences for each of these sites does vary. If you want to find out full details please contact Stuart Brown s.a.brown@open.ac.uk
/use is also about us building new relationships with you in new spaces. We know that increasingly people are coming together online and getting the information they need from each other rather than from organisations like us. We think that's great, we know it's the future and we will provide as much as you want us to to help you do your thing.
Platform is the place to come if you want to read some great articles, meet people with similar interests and get involved in discussion. Platform is open to the world but includes many users who are either OU students or OU alumni.
Serving a similar role to the student print magazine Sesame, Platform publishes interesting and fun articles with an OU slant. There are news items relating to traditional university subject-areas, blog posts from academics and alumni and a Time Out area with games and competitions. Platform encourages its community to contribute to the site through forums, comments and voting on articles.
Platform was built using the Open Source Drupal Content Management System and supports OpenID login.
If you are not an iTunes user then you can access all the OU podcasts available on our iTunes U channel (see below)via the OU podcasts site.
This site offers podcasts in every area of the OU curriculum, allows you to subscribe to podcast feeds (or use Miro) and enables you to listen or watch through an embedded media player on the site.
Hear from us in iTunes U - If you fancy something interesting to listen to on the bus or around the house the OU is one of the first UK universities to make its podcasts available for free on iTunes U. Visit The Open University on iTunes U. Our content covers the spectrum, from Arts and Humanities to Engineering and Technology. Free learning from the OU all over again.
For all you XML hounds the RSS for each podcast is available via iTunes so you're free to mashup / widgetise as you want. There's also a transcript of each podcast available so if you're looking for a little background research for a blog post or article this could be a great place to start. Copy and paste away if you need, but don't forget to link back and reference us.
Meet us in Facebook - You've got a Facebook profile right? So have we! Join us here and find out what students and non-students alike are saying about their OU experience. It's a great way to find out the issues that people are weighing up before deciding what courses to study and how people are managing the work/life/study balance. If you're thinking about studying with us or any other institution why not come along and put your questions to the community? There's always someone around in a similar position to you; even better they're almost always willing to help! You can even join the OU Library on Facebook. Who’d have thought it of a library!
If you're an OU student we've created a couple of Facebook applications that might be of interest to you. The first is called Course Profiles - it allows you to show others what courses you have studied (and hope to study in the future). Based on this info the app enables you to create relationships with other OU students, leave course reviews, access free course-related content, and suggests possible future courses based on others who have studied similar things to you.
The second app is My OU Story - this app allows you to publish your thoughts as you go through your course. You can assign an emotional status to each story and then see how your mood has changed throughout your journey! You can see other people's stories and leave them messages too; it's a great way to meet new people, offer support and share stories.
See us on YouTube - There's a dedicated OU page on YouTube, once again we're the first UK university to have this arrangement with YouTube so come and join us trend-setters!. We've launched with only a fraction of what will be available so either friend us to receive alerts when there's more, or visit regularly!
We're offering a great mix of content on this channel. There will be loads of material on the subjects you love as well as content created by students (we hope!). Get involved, whether you've got a full on HD video camera setup or a mobile phone we want to hear your thoughts on the videos we upload. Of course, being YouTube you're free to embed much of the content on your site, profile or blog.
Talk to us on Twitter - We can't have 10 Downing St be on Twitter and us not right? We're here so friend us and we'll friend you back! If you've got something to share with us direct a tweet with @OpenUniversity (if we're friends) otherwise just mention Open University in your tweet and we'll find it. We're pretty good like that! You might also want to follow our library on Twitter, they’d love to hear from you.
Use OpenLearn - We're all passionate about something. We all want to find out something more about at least one particular area; but do we love it enough to pay for it? Do we love it enough to want to study it, write essays about it etc? Well that's what OpenLearn is for! You're almost guaranteed to find high quality online content about your passion here; nearly a thousand diggers can't be wrong can they? OK, maybe they can, but they were right about OpenLearn!
All content on OpenLearn is taken from OU courses and as such is guaranteed to be of the highest standard. Better than that, OpenLearn, like MIT OCW is part of the OER movement. This means that all the content you find on the site is made freely available to you under Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 licence (UK: England & Wales). You're free to download, remix and reuse it any way you wish so long as you stick within the terms of the license.
OpenLearn is more than just content however, it's also about a massive community of learners using some of the coolest web2 communication tools to connect and help each other. These tools are also available under open source licenses by the way!
Interact in Open2.NET – open2.net is the home of BBC/Open University TV and Radio programmes on the web.
If you are interested in Open University programmes, want to know more about the world around you, or are considering taking up a short or degree course, then this is the site for you.
Course reviews - if you've studied an OU course in the past two years or are considering studying one in the future then you may want to either leave your own comments on the course or catch-up with those left by other users. You can reach these reviews by visiting Study at the OU and searching for the course you are interested in. If comments have been left you can find them about 2/3 of the way down the page. If there are no existing reviews and you want to be the first to add your voice you can do so here
