‘Open’ education – a celebration of knowledge sharing

Posted on 7 March 2018 • Education

Education is all about sharing; sharing information and sharing knowledge. Open Education Week  (Monday 5 – Friday 9 March 2018) is a celebration of the global Open Education Movement. Its goal is to raise awareness of the Open Education movement, which combines learning with modern technologies, such as the internet, so that anyone can share education resources and learn anywhere. The movement has a huge impact on teaching and learning worldwide.

To mark the event we’ve pulled together our most popular free courses, interactives, and print items in in our Open Education Hub on free online learning platform, OpenLearn.

“Open is a relevant and changing term in education”

One of the academics supporting the movement is Professor of Educational Technology, Martin Weller:

“Open Education Week has become a fixture in the calendar, bringing together the various interests under the broad umbrella term ‘open education’. This includes traditional open education as developed by the OU, but also open access publishing, open textbooks, Open educational resources, MOOCs and more general open practice.

This diversity demonstrates that ‘open’ is a relevant and changing term in education, and the OU is at the centre of many of these changes.

A guide to the different aspects of Open Education is available in a recent report by the OU, Openness and Education: A Beginner’s Guide.