Via Andreia Santos werd ik gewezen op het onderzoeksrapport van de OpenUniversiteit UK over hun OpenLearn initiative. Interessant rapport. Hieronder enkele conclusies:

• OpenLearn has helped raise the OU’s international standing both outside the higher education sector and with other higher education institutions.
• OpenLearn highlighted that people may want a different relationship with the OU other than as a registered student. OpenLearn gives them the opportunity to be an OpenLearner.
• Good quality free content appears to be the attractor around which other business opportunities may depend.
• There are increasing numbers of organisations who would like to be seen as working with the OU. OpenLearn offers a mechanism to start those collaborations.
• Working in an open world encourages new forms of research. OpenLearn has supported ideas about agile research (rapid, intensive yet rigorous inquiries to answer specific questions) and large scale participatory research (the availability of willing, widely distributed research participants who can help collect and analyse data). The greater visibility of such work also encourages collaborative research activity.
• Research methods that bring out the relationship between the selection, use, design and evaluation of OER will help create a shared understanding of how OER work.