Exhibition: The OU Story

The 2000s and 2010s have seen the growth of online services offered by the University. By 2000 over 50% of the OU's students were linking to the University via the Internet. Enabling e-learning was announced as a major priority for the University. This year also saw the launch of the OU Library's 'My Open Libr@ry' service, providing students with access to an increasing range of electronic journals, e-books, databases and resources via the Internet. 

In 2006 OpenLearn was launched, providing free learning materials from The Open University. The first clip on this page is a programme created in 2017 about OpenLearn.

In the 1990s technological advances had changed the nature of the University’s broadcast activity. Audio-visual material for courses was made directly by the University and sent to students in the form of CDs and DVDs. December 2006 saw the last of the course-material programmes to be shown on the Learning Zone.

The Open University evolved its partnership with the BBC to co-produce peak-time TV and radio content to support OU teaching and learning. This not only provided unique assets for the curriculum but also enabled the University to continue its social mission of inspiring learning for a general public audience. In 2007, more than 20 TV series were broadcast bearing The Open University logo. Since then the OU/BBC partnership has gone from strength to strength, co-producing award winning TV, radio, digital and online content. More information about the current television and radio programmes can be found in the TV & Radio pages on OpenLearn.

The second clip on this page is the BBC/OU trailer for programmes shown in 2017.