e-Taalim

The OpenLearn story started in 2005  when the UK leading University: the open university, got a grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to put in place a Web site that has been offering free access to the University’s educational materials.

Since 1969, The Open University has been a pioneer in making learning materials freely available through its successful partnership with the BBC. Many of our television and radio programmes are already supported by free internet activities and print materials. We wanted to use our knowledge of the latest technologies in education to extend our mission to be open to people, places, methods and ideas. The vision was free online education.

The OpenLearn Website’s development began in May 2006 and the site was launched in October 2006, with an aim to regularly add new content and features. OpenLearn now offers a full range of Open University subject areas from access to postgraduate level and has seen over 3 million visitors since launch. In April 2008 OpenLearn reached its target to have 5,400 learning hours of content in the LearningSpace and 8100 hours in the LabSpace. It continues to grow representing The Open University’s commitment to opening access to education.

This open learning platform contains two main sections:

• The LearningSpace section: Learners find here hundreds of free study units, each with a discussion forum. They can thus study independently at their own pace or join a group and use the free learning tools to work with others
• The LabSpace section: Educators have free access to learning materials from higher education courses. They may edit the materials in the LabSpace, collaborate with others and publish new versions of the learning materials to share with the world.