OpenLearn supports learners’ employment skills and subject mastery. Content is not accredited, but achievements carry the University logo, and many courses are endorsed or co-produced with the private sector, the third sector and the UK Government.

Most of the content on OpenLearn is in English, followed by selected resources in Welsh. 

In January 2022 OpenLearn platform metrics showed that learners studying from Ukraine prior to the Russian invasion were no different in their subject choices to the platform’s learners overall. However, from February 2022 - the point of the Russian invasion - this group switched to studying language learning courses (English, French and German) and those relating to workplace skills. 

In response to this, the OpenLearn team curated a set of resources for displaced Ukrainians in May 2022, which became the seventh most popular page on the platform within a month. Resources were allocated to translating some of this content - articles and whole courses carrying digital badges - into Ukrainian, along with Word and PDF versions for offline use. 

This article takes a dive into the rationale and process for translating OER into Ukrainian, uptake figures across all study formats and lessons learned in the context of the dominance of OER in the English language. 

Introduction

The OpenLearn platform is home to around 1,000 free courses, thousands of videos, articles and educational activities and serves as the OER output of The Open University (UK). When launched in 2006 supported by a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, its aim was to release OER as a by-product of the formal taught curriculum, which in turn supports the social mission of the OU. This activity complements the OU’s Royal Charter which states that it should “promote the educational well-being of the community generally” (The Open University, 1969). Alongside this, OpenLearn also supports the recruitment of new students and, hence, a business interest for the OU (Perryman et al., 2013; Law and Perryman, 2015). 

Today, OpenLearn’s audience is global, and its video content is also shared on YouTube, collectively reaching over 14 million people a year, rising to 22 million during the first 12 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The activity, now a business-as-usual function for the OU, has been researched and evaluated to investigate the motivations of non-formal learners, and the desired outcomes of specific demographic groups to improve commissioning and platform development (Law, 2023; Law et al., 2013; Perryman et al., 2013).

All OpenLearn courses carry free certificates, with over 80 of them issuing free digital badges for the passing of assessments. This recognition for non-accredited learning is a factor in the value placed by learners using the platform for employability, personal interest, health and wellbeing and confidence building (Law, 2015; Law, 2016). Many of the badged courses also carry Continuing Professional Development (CPD) ‘points’ that have provided a further layer of endorsement to the free learning issued by the OU that is not credit-bearing, a function that is in support of a national upskilling and social regeneration agenda. 

While self-directed learning on OpenLearn is a requirement to work through free courses without the provision of tutor support or a peer group, the use of OER by OU students formally engaged in a programme of study, illuminates that connected learning can still take place. Students (OU and non-OU) use non-formal learning on OpenLearn as a required adjunct to their formal studies, to support confidence building, preparation for exams, and decisions around pathways through qualifications (Law, 2019; Law and Jelfs, 2016). Free badges and certificates can be shared on social media, personal statements, online resumes and with tutors. Peters et al. (2022) states that “research on the interconnections between formal and informal learning in online higher education has been limited”. However, the use of OpenLearn within the formal taught curriculum encourages students to engage with subjects tangentially aligned with their chosen qualification or to supplement and build upon employment-related skills. Institutional metrics show the movements between formal and non-formal learning environments and, beyond that, the relationship between non-formal learning achievements and desired work-based skills. Further, platform metrics show that OpenLearn OER are now used by other educational institutions, as there were over 30,000 visitors referred to OpenLearn directly from 400 UK and US educational institutions (.edu and .ac.uk) over a 12-month period (February 2022–February 2023). (These data exclude links coming from within an institution’s logged-in learning environment because this cannot be tracked, hence this number is likely to be larger.) 

The dominance of OER in English

Because the output of the OU’s taught material is primarily in the English language, most of the content on OpenLearn is in English, with the addition of around 100 articles, videos and courses that have been translated into Welsh.

The OER movement, which emphasises the free availability of scholarly and educational materials, originated largely in English-speaking countries with the USA and the UK investing heavily in OER through philanthropically driven endeavours. OpenLearn sits alongside other OER platforms such as OpenStax, Khan Academy, OERu and the Saylor Academy as one such endeavour originating in an English-speaking country, delivering education primarily in English. Phillipson (1992) writes of the dominance of English in educational contexts as one that reinforces privilege for English-speaking communities in the global knowledge economy. This prevalence of English in OER limits access for non-English speakers, perpetuating both a language and digital divide. It can also be argued that such OER are based on Western pedagogical models, which may not necessarily align with a spectrum of cultural learning styles. A decolonised approach would involve recognising and incorporating various educational methodologies rooted in different cultural contexts. 

Altbach (2004) talks widely of the dominance of English in university systems in that it dominates the international educational marketplace, academic databases and as a medium for instruction. Altbach states that “English is supplanting such languages as French, German and Spanish as the international medium of scholarship. These languages are in no danger of disappearing in higher education, but their world role has shrunk” (Altbach, 2004, p. 10). Within the context of OER more broadly, Hodgkinson-Williams and Trotter (2018) advocate for the integration of Indigenous knowledge and local languages to ensure cultural relevance and address historical imbalances in educational content. 

What we’ve done

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, triggered an exodus of Ukrainian refugees. The United Nations (UN) estimated the invasion generated 4.8 million international refugees, with an estimated 7.1 million more displaced individuals inside Ukraine (World Population Review, 2022). In April 2022, the UN called the Ukraine refugee crisis “the fastest and largest displacement of people in Europe since World War II” (United Nations, 2022.) At the time, the OpenLearn team turned its thoughts towards how it could use OpenLearn to support those forced to flee due to the conflict. The team analysed the learning resources that Ukrainians were using on OpenLearn to gain insight into what they had been, and were now, studying. Data showed that learning preferences of Ukrainians visiting OpenLearn prior to the Russian invasion were no different to the site’s overall analytics in terms of the popularity of certain subjects. However, from the point of the invasion, Ukrainian learners rapidly switched to studying language learning courses (English, French and German) and those relating to workplace skills.

In response to this the OpenLearn team established a project to curate and promote a set of resources for Ukrainian refugees based on these needs and on feedback sought from the OU Government Affairs team. In April 2022, a collection of curated OpenLearn resources was launched, including:

• practical courses on learning, working and studying in English, German and French
• employability skills courses and articles
• study skills courses and articles
• mental health and wellbeing support
• external links to key refugee support organisations.

The interest in this curated page of resources, and as part of a broader set of measures by the OU to support Ukrainians, led to a project to translate five courses and an article, plus associated external links and advice, into Ukrainian. 

The OpenLearn platform is based on open-source code (Moodle) with a series of modifications to meet the needs of independent learners and OU branding. It functions as both a learning management system (LMS) as well as a content management system. Moodle is an open source LMS with over 100 languages that can be deployed through so-called ‘language packs’, to enable the publication of content using a variety of alphabets, including Ukrainian. For this project the Ukrainian language pack was duly deployed to OpenLearn, but due to the high number of Moodle modifications to the platform, close work with a translator was required to ensure that platform navigation, in-course signposting, associated digital badges and certificates were also described correctly.

Results

A month after being made live, the English language OER collection of resources became OpenLearn’s seventh most popular page on its introduction with over 36,000 views. The majority (72%) of visitors to the resources were in the UK, but the nation with the second most visitors was Ukraine (12%), which helped confirm OpenLearn’s belief that there was a need for Ukrainian language content to better support displaced learners (Table 1). By interrogating platform metrics, it was established that 65% of the learners visiting OpenLearn from Ukraine were accessing the materials via a mobile device, compared to 39% for OpenLearn overall. 

Table 1 Top 10 countries by share of visits to English language OER collection of resources for Ukrainians on OpenLearn

(Source: Adobe Analytics April 2022–November 2023)

The OpenLearn team requested resource to further develop the project, with key courses and the collection page itself being translated into Ukrainian (Free online resources for Ukrainians settling in the UK and Ireland (Ukrainian), 2022). This also required a development period to enable the Ukrainian alphabet to be installed onto the OpenLearn platform, with associated translated navigation features, translated free certificates and digital badges, and a suite of alternative formats of each course downloadable for use offline or for uploading to another compatible LMS. The new translated collection page was made live in October 2022 including an introduction and explanation of the resources, course categorisations and links, as well as five translated courses and one article (Table 2).

Of the 27 courses and articles on the page hosting the English language resources, the five courses and article chosen for translation were selected by examining their popularity since the invasion of Ukraine and following advice from OU Government Affairs who wished to ensure that there was a mix of language, employment skills and mental health resources. Project budget was also a factor. 

Table 2 OpenLearn resources translated into Ukrainian

The resources were promoted through various OU communications channels and via leaflets distributed at the Ukraine Refugee Arrival Hub at Luton International Airport in the UK. From April 2022 to November 2023 there have been 122,008 visits to the collection page in English and from October 2022 to November 2023 there have been 14,715 visits to the collection page in Ukrainian. The distribution of countries visiting those pages is shown in Table 3.

Table 3 Countries by visits to collection pages.

(Source: Google Analytics, April 2022–November 2023)

To earn a free certificate and/or digital badge, learners must enrol on a course so that their progress can be tracked. The process of course enrolment requires learners to create an account with The Open University, the set-up for which is a universal function for the university’s websites and is only available in the English language. Table 4 shows platform metrics for the five courses and article translated into Ukrainian from the point of being published (October 2022) to November 2023.

Table 4 Site metrics for content that was translated into Ukrainian, including download data for alternative formats where available. 

                                                                                                                                               Downloads

(Source: Google Analytics, April 2022–November 2023. *Source: page views, Adobe Analytics October 2022–November 2023)

Gathering comments from learners who had studied the translated content was not sought. This was because the project had limited resources, all of which were used for funding translation and platform development. The project had tight timescales with a pressing sense of urgency because of the escalating conflict in Ukraine to locate translators who were able to work with content developed in XML (the code compatible to publishing on OpenLearn). Hence, the project could not accommodate a research element. However, feedback was provided by Dmytro Zavgorodniy, Director General for the Directorate for Digital Transformation, Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine who said: 

How has this helped?

The commitment to supporting displaced Ukrainians has allowed OpenLearn to support many thousands of learners across the UK, Ukraine, Poland, Ireland and Germany (Tables 1 and 3) and provided an opportunity to learn from the process. Working closely with translators and without the use of AI, the project has made a small contribution to delivering education to a displaced population at a time of need. Like all OER projects and mainstream endeavours, a business model for stable, quality provision is essential to ensure the longevity and reliability of resources. While the dominance of OER in English reflects a Eurocentric view, the project has shown that it is possible to translate existing content out of English and work with the accessible, open-source tools provided by the Moodle community to embrace all languages and alphabets in an institution’s LMS. 

The data show that while visit numbers were high in a relatively brief period of time, completion figures (the issuing of free certificates) was low in all cases for the five translated courses. However, learners may choose to take only what they most need from a piece of learning, may have been unused to self-directed online learning or had experience poor internet access. Learners may also have stalled at the point of creating an account with the OU which requires interaction with English language set-up pages.

The numbers of course downloads in Word format and PDF are encouraging, however. Previous examination of this activity for English language content on OpenLearn has shown that learners do this because they want to study in a different format for reasons of personal preference or physical requirement, because they are in a data-poor environment and can’t reliably study online for long periods, wish to study offline or that the download itself is destined for re-use and adaptation by an educator. This last scenario can also be examined through the numbers of SCORM downloads seen in this study: 319 for the 12-month period reviewed. These downloaded files are only usable to someone who can republish a course (in this case, in Ukrainian) to a SCORM-compliant LMS such as Moodle or Canvas. This supports the idea that translated content for displaced learners can serve more than one type of recipient – learners and educators – for a range of purposes if it is optimised for use on a mobile device, available to download in other formats for offline use and can be effectively transferred to another LMS. 

The project employed two Ukrainian translators, one of whom was able to work with the OU’s XML schema to enable an easier transition of translated content back into the platform. This translator was able to explain nuances with the language used in English versions of the courses and work with the technical developers to translate navigation features, question and answer sets needed for the issuing of digital badges, and text needed for certificates and badges. The arrangement with one of the translators to have direct access to the OpenLearn platform was enabled to deliver the most meaningful experience to Ukrainian learners navigating the platform and was essential to the success of the project particularly given that no Ukrainian speakers are present in the OpenLearn team. However, the contractual arrangement for this one-off piece of work does present potential problems for the future when content becomes outdated and will require resource to maintain. 

Final thoughts

While English currently dominates the OER landscape, this project describes an endeavour to promote linguistic diversity in open education. Initiatives are underway to translate and adapt existing OER into multiple languages, making OER more accessible to non-English speakers. Additionally, there is a growing awareness of the importance of inclusivity and cultural diversity in educational materials, which may contribute to a more multilingual OER landscape in the future. Decolonisation efforts should prioritise the translation of existing content into multiple languages, making educational resources more accessible to diverse linguistic communities. Encouraging the creation and adaptation of OER in multiple languages is fundamental to decolonisation. 

There is an opportunity to utilise AI translation tools to support the future development of new, and conversion of existing, content in Indigenous languages, ensuring the OER are accessible to learners globally. 

Interrogating platform analytics and metrics has become easier and less specialist with it now being straightforward for publishers and educators to view the location of learners visiting a learning platform and the device that they are using to do so. This information can in turn, provide valuable data as to approach of not only what to translate, but in what format.

This project has revealed that the provision of multiple formats for use by learners and educators alike is an important feature of OER provision. This will better allow the re-use, re-publishing and adaptation of OER, serve the various preferences of learners and support people in data-poor contexts, such as those displaced by conflict.