Online Pivot – some Open University resources

As the pivot to online gathers apace, some colleagues have been discussing if we have useful resources at the Open University to help. Lots of other people are doing excellent work online, so I won’t try and collate everything that is out there but rather just focus on OU resources. While we do know a lot about distance & online learning, it’s important to recognise that what is happening now is quite different in nature. This is an emergency, swift response in switching classes to online, which is not the same as a carefully planned 5 year strategy. Our courses take a long time to develop and have the systems in place for production and support. This is not the same as switching your class to Zoom next week.

But having said that, we do have lots of resources that are useful. And most of the OpenLearn content is licensed under a Creative Commons licence (BY-NC-SA), so they can be reused. This isn’t the most liberal licence, but it basically means give attribution, don’t try and sell it and share it under a similar licence. In this situation I don’t think OU lawyers are going to be coming after you if you don’t share it back into OpenLearn. So, it is there to be used and reused. This is different from a lot of the MOOCs I’ve seen and is crucial I think – what this means is that unis and colleges can take the material and adapt it for their staff, which may well be more beneficial. So below are some resources that I hope will be useful. OU colleagues – if you have anything else to add to this list, please drop me a note in the comments.

OpenLearn collection for Online Pivot – the excellent team at OpenLearn kindly pulled together a number of resources that will be useful.

Take your teaching online – a free course, that can be studied any time. About 24 hours total study time, it is badged so you can get a badge or certificate if you want, and available in download formats of Word, PDF, Kindle. It’s included in the above but I wanted to highlight it as it’s probably the key resource.

Being an OU student – your students may need advice on studying full time online also.

OpenLearn YouTube channel – lots of useful educational videos that can be used as resources

OpenLearn iTunes U channel – iTunes U isn’t the thing anymore but there’s still a lot of useful resources on here including podcasts, video, ebooks that can be incorporated into courses.

The Online Educator – FutureLearn MOOC, on things to consider in becoming an online educator. I’ve asked them to keep this open and running rather than fixed date cohorts.

What to do if you suddenly find yourself teaching at a distance – a Wonkhe article from my former colleague Doug Clow. Some very useful tips, and I know it’s Wonkhe, but as Doug worked at the OU for so long, I’m claiming it.

Chris Williams Twitter thread – Chris (an Historian at the OU) has gathered together some excellent advice in this thread

The Digital Scholar – this short course is probably more for the long term, but there may be some useful parts about thinking of online practice

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