About OpenLearn

OpenLearn gives you free access to learning materials from The Open University.

We launched OpenLearn back in October 2006 thanks to a grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Our shared vision was free online education, open to anyone, anywhere in the world. OpenLearn is the result and we have since reached over 8 million people.

In the first two years, OpenLearn grew to include over 8000 study hours of learning materials from Open University courses. The website continues to grow with new course materials being published regularly in our LearningSpace.

And that’s not all. In 2010 we merged OpenLearn with open2.net, The Open University website that has supported our BBC broadcasts since 1999. So now OpenLearn gives access to topical and interactive content, from expert blogs, to videos and games. This 'open media' often links to our BBC television and radio programmes. As if that isn’t enough, you can also find Open University channels on YouTube and iTunesU and you can follow us on Twitter.

Want to know more?

OpenLearn published a Research Report documenting the story of our first two years of running the website. The Open University are now leaders in the research of Open Educational Resources, collaborating with Carnegie Mellon University to form OLnet. We also run a Support Centre for Open Educational Resources (SCORE), working with other universities in the UK to develop more free learning materials.

The Open University was the first distance education institution and the first UK university to join the OpenCourseWare Consortium, a global community of ‘open content’ providers.

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