Frequently asked questions

If you already have an OU computer username (OUCU) you only need to enter it when registering on OpenLearn Create, followed by your password. No other information is needed.  If you do not have an OUCU because you are not an OU student or staff member, you can register for a free OU account to login to sites such as OpenLearn and OpenLearn Create.  Once you have registered for a free OU account you can use your email address and password to login to OpenLearn Create which enables you to enrol on individual courses.

OpenLearn Create only receives your name, email address, OU computer username (OUCU) and OU Personal Identified (PI) from the central OU signon system, it does not receive any other information you may have given when you registered for a free OU account, such as your date of birth or location.

Step 1: accessing OpenLearn Create

To start, you will need to open OpenLearn Create.

If you would like to open the site in a separate window or tab, right-click on the link with your mouse and select the option 'Open link in new tab'.

Step 2: navigating to the registration page

On the top right-hand side of the screen, there is a green button titled ‘Sign up / Sign in’. 

Click on that button.

You will now be on the sign in to the OU page

Step 3: Create an account

On the right-hand side is a button named ‘Create account’.

Click on that button.

The Create account page will appear with a form to fill in.

Step 4: Filling in the form

Click on each of the boxes in turn to provide the information required.

Fields marked with an asterisk (*) are mandatory. Therefore, the only box you will not be required to fill in is the ‘Phone number’ box.

You will need to fill in the following:

• Title
• Forenames
• Surname
• Date of birth
• Email address
• Password

Step 5: Return to OpenLearn Create

Once you have submitted your details, you will be presented with the ‘thank you for creating an Open University account’ page.

As you are trying to access OpenLearn Create, click on the ‘Sign in to OpenLearn Create’ link.

This link will redirect you to the OpenLearn Create homepage.

Step 6: logging in

You will now need to sign in to your new account.

This is done much in the same way as when you started the process of creating your account.

First, click on the 'Sign in / Sign up' button. You will then be redirected to the registration page you used earlier. This time, use the boxes on the left-hand side. You will need to:

• Enter the email address you used to create your account
• Enter your password
• Click ‘Sign in’.

Once you have clicked ‘Sign in’, you will be redirected to the home page once more. You should now see your name in the very top right-hand corner, showing you have logged in.

Step 7: Enrol on a course

To obtain full access to the courses you want to study and track your progress, you will need to enrol on each course.

You will only have to enrol on each course once to gain full access.

We hope you enjoy your learning experience on OpenLearn Create.

If you have any issues registering or logging in, please contact the OpenLearn Create Mailbox.

PLEASE NOTE: for data protection reasons you must never share your email address and password for your OU account with colleagues or other learners to enable them to login as you. They must create and use their own account to enrol on and manage courses on OpenLearn Create.
If you have created a course on OpenLearn Create, have been given the course manager role and want someone else to manage the course too, they must sign in with their own account then complete and return the Data declaration form to us before they can be granted permission to edit and manage the course too. Please contact openlearncreate@open.ac.uk with the course URL to request the data declaration form.

You can view the course materials of many of the courses on OpenLearn Create without logging in and enrolling, however some features will not be available to you without enrolment. Therefore, you are advised to login (which might mean registering an account or logging in with your existing OU student or staff account) then enrolling on the course.

After you have enrolled, the starting point is in 'Course content'. You then navigate through the course either using the left-hand navigation, or the 'Next' and 'Previous' buttons (if provided).  Many of the courses hosted on OpenLearn Create do not have set start and end dates so you can take as long as you need to complete the course.

Your OpenLearn Create profile contains the information about yourself that you have provided, the free courses you have enrolled on, and those courses or collections that you are creating if you are building courses.

When you want to enrol on a course hosted on OpenLearn Create, you register for a free OU account, then return to the platform, login and enrol on the course.  When you login on OpenLearn Create, the platform pulls information about you from the central OU registration database (your name, email address and OU computer username - OUCU).

Edit your profile

To edit your OpenLearn Create profile, click on your name or profile picture which is displayed at the top right of each page once you have logged in (or click on the blue 'my profile' button when you are logged in).

Your profile has a public view and a private (your) view.  You can control what others can see about you on the public view (for example you can hide your email address and the courses you are studying from others who may view your public profile, there currently is no feature to hide your surname).  You can view how your public profile would be seen by others by clicking on the 'public view' button (which is alongside the 'edit profile' button). Click back to your view of your profile by clicking on the 'private view' button.  If you choose to add some information about yourself which is displayed in 'introduce yourself', the University will only display this information in your profile and it will be stored on Open University servers, this information will not be stored or displayed anywhere else. If you choose to include your learning interests in your profile (using tags) your name will show up in a search of the site by a logged in user for those tagged words or your name.  This provides a semi-public link to your learner profile (only available to users who have logged in to the site when searching).

Your public profile is visible to any signed in user of the site who knows the link to your profile: usually, this is if you have shared the link to your profile with someone or the link to your profile can be seen by others enrolled on the same course if you have participated in any social elements used in the course, such as a forum or wiki. Please note, many courses on OpenLearn Create do not use any of these social tools, so there is no way that other learners enrolled on the same course can know that you have also enrolled. Your public profile can be viewed by users who have been given course manager or teacher roles for a course you have enrolled on. Your private profile can be viewed by OpenLearn Create site managers.

Change your name or email address for your OU account

If you need to change your name or contact email address in your OU registered account please go to https://www.open.ac.uk/account/myaccount and amend your details (this does not work on Chrome - please use another browser). This will pull through to the OpenLearn Create database after you login to OpenLearn Create again (the change can take time to appear). Please note, currently the system does not pull all forenames through into the OpenLearn Create database so if you want your middle name(s) to appear in any Statement of Participation you achieve, you need to put your middle name(s) in the surname field.

Your OU Computer Username (OUCU) and Personal Identifier (PI)

If you are not an OU student you sign in with your email address, though if you know your OUCU or your PI (personal identifier) then you can sign in with either of those in the username box instead of your email address. If you need know your OU Computer Username (OUCU), then contact the OU Computing Helpdesk (01908 653972) or SRS (Student Recruitment Service) on 0300 3035303.  If you need to change the email address you use for signing in because you no longer use or have access to the email address you used for registering a free OU account to login to OpenLearn Create, then contact SRS (Student Recruitment Service) on 0300 3035303.  If you are not an OU student please explain that you use your free OU account for logging in to OpenLearn Create.  They would be able to update your details and provide you with your OUCU and PI number if required.

Your OLC profile URL

If you need a unique URL for your OpenLearn Create profile, login and go to your profile via the blue 'my profile' button.  The URL which appears won't look unique to you (it will be http://www.open.edu/openlearncreate/local/ocwactivityreports/) and defaults to displaying the tab ‘achievements’.  Please click on one of the other tabs (‘enrolments’ or ‘create’), the URL will change to a longer URL which includes your profile number on the end.  Then click back on ‘achievements’ and the URL will change to a shorter link and has the unique profile number at the end.  This is your URL for your OpenLearn Create profile.

It is not possible to merge the records of two OU profiles into one profile. If you have two Open University accounts and have signed in at different times with each account on OpenLearn Create, this gives you two profiles on OpenLearn Create. If you have studied different courses on each profile, we cannot merge the two into one account holding all the records of the courses you have enrolled on.

It's not possible to gain any formal Open University qualifications through OpenLearn Create. You will need to register for an Open University module if you want to become a student and have the support of a tutor, sit examinations and gain qualifications. For more information visit the Study at the OU section of The Open University's website to view the online prospectus.

• Subject
• Skills
• Learning level
• Resource length (study hours)
• Teaching language
• Location (if the materials are only relevant to people in a particular location)
• Provider (we can add providers to the list if you email us on openlearncreate@open.ac.uk with more details of the provider)
  

Subject, learning level and resource length are all required when a new course is being set up in OpenLearn Create, while the other taxonomies are optional. This means that you may not find many courses when you filter using the optional taxonomies.

Tags are words or terms that we have assigned to OpenLearn Create content. Tags act as links enabling users to classify, search and find content based on keywords that are meaningful to them.

Sets of tags are combined into tag clouds, allowing you to see the most popular keywords associated with content from a particular subject. Each subject, for example 'Languages', will have its own dedicated tag cloud.

If you are creating a course on OpenLearn Create you can add tags to your course by: turn editing on - add block - tags.

If you choose to include your learning interests in your profile (using tags) your name will show up in a search of the site by a logged in user for those tagged words or your name.  This provides a semi-public link to your learner profile (only available to users who have logged in to the site when searching).

To see the OpenLearn Create tags go to http://www.open.edu/openlearncreate/tag/search.php

Currently OpenLearn Create is by default a dofollow site, which means that links posted on the site in courses and articles can be counted by Google for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). 

We regularly monitor the articles which are published on OpenLearn Create by third parties. We move any articles which contain inappropriate content or many links to sites we cannot endorse to a Spam folder and will delete such articles after 3 months.

We also monitor the courses published by third parties on OpenLearn Create for inappropriate or excessive links to external sites and reserve the right to remove or unpublish any course which appears to abuse dofollow on OpenLearn Create for 'link juice' to commercial or inappropriate sites.

OpenLearn Create does not provide you with a tutor, most courses hosted on this platform are free standing short informal learning courses which do not have tutor support.

Digital badges are a way of recording and displaying your new skills and achievements online for anyone to view. Badges can demonstrate your interest in a subject, commitment to your career or provide evidence and recognition of continuing professional development. They do not, however, carry any formal credit towards an Open University qualification.

Only some OpenLearn Create courses carry a digital badge. OpenLearn Create badged courses have been created by a variety of projects and all have different assessment criteria.  Badged courses hosted on OpenLearn Create which have been created in partnership with The Open University may not carry The Open University logo on the badge image, however they may have 'The Open University' written on the badge image.  Only the official OU badged Open Courses hosted on OpenLearn course may carry the OU logo.

You can gain a digital badge on OpenLearn Create or OpenLearn by studying one of the free ‘badged open courses’ (courses clearly indicate at the start if they carry a digital badge).  Whilst you will not receive support from a tutor on a badged course, you do get useful feedback from interactive quizzes. You are awarded the badge when you have read the full course and gained a particular grade in the quizzes.

Digital badges normally consist of the badge image and the badge information which lists the badge title, who issued the badge and the requirements for gaining the badge.  This enables employers, organisations, schools and individuals to see what you can do.  It also provides you with a confidence boosting record of your abilities.

You can show your digital badges to others by sharing them with Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn and by making them public, should you choose, in your OpenLearn Create profile or your My OpenLearn profile.

As you work through a Badged Open Course, you may be invited to complete interactive quizzes which can count towards a digital badge. There may also be other requirements to claim your badge, such as reading all the pages of the course. At the end of the course when you have completed all the requirements, your badge will be issued. You will receive an email and the badge will appear in your OpenLearn Create profile, normally within 24 hours.

You can manage your digital badges in your OpenLearn Create profile. You can show your digital badges to others by sharing them with Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn and by making them public, should you choose, in your OpenLearn Create profile.

Some courses on OpenLearn Create have a Statement of Participation. Once you have enrolled on one of these courses and have completed it, you will be able to access and download the statement of participation.

You can print or email this statement of participation to demonstrate your successful completion of a free online course and your interest in the subject, commitment to your career or to provide evidence of continuing professional development.

Course owners who wish to set up a Statement of Participation for their course need to follow the guidance in the Course Builder Guide on how to configure a Statement of Participation.

Some courses on OpenLearn Create have a Custom Moodle Certificate. Once you have enrolled on one of these courses and have completed the criteria for the certificate, the certificate will become available to you for download.

Course owners: the Custom Moodle Certificate is customised to your preferred design, rather than using the standard Statement of Participation. Course owners who wish to set up a Custom Moodle Certificate for their course need to follow the guidance in the Course Builder Guide on how to configure a Custom Moodle Certificate.

You will be notified by email if you have received a statement of participation or been awarded a badge. This is usually within 24 hours of successfully completing the course. Please note that the Statement of Participation does not issue immediately as a data update to your course record (called a CRON run) has to take place before the Statement of Participation is available. You will be able to download the badge image from the email.

Once the statement or badge are available you will be able to see and download them from the course, when you are signed in, and from your  OpenLearn Create profile, under the Achievements section. (The statement will be a PDF file. To access the badge information, you will need to click on the badge from the course or ‘Download’ in your profile).

The default instance of Moodle on OpenLearn Create is a course.  This means if you create a course the design and terminology used by the site will refer to it as a course (rather than a module or unit).

We regularly monitor the courses which are being published on OpenLearn Create and reserve the right to remove or unpublish any course which contains content we deem not appropriate for an educational site, including direct marketing, plagiarised or offensive material. Please do not attempt to publish courses on OpenLearn Create which market commercial activities (especially those unrelated to education) or promote essay writing services.

Please note: If your course title consists of a random collection of characters, does not make sense or is very long, we will treat it as spam.

Please use the guidance on the site at 'Get started' to help you build your course, especially the Course Builder Guide - How to use OpenLearn Create.

Course image

Please upload an image for the course so that the courses listing shows the course image rather than the default image (the OpenLearn Create logo on a grey background). The course image for the listing is uploaded via the edit settings form. You will be asked to provide information about the image for attribution, including the correct licence and owner of the image - Title, Author, Source (URL if online) and Licence information. You will also need to provide a banner version of the course image.

Course summary and course description

The purpose of the course summary is to attract interest in the course and it should only be about a sentence long. The course summary will not appear in the learner view of the course; it will appear in the courses listing and will be truncated if it is too long. The course description on the course home page is where more information is provided. Please use the edit button on the top right to edit the course description and heading. Your course description needs to provide information about who has written the course and its purpose. Please also provide an Acknowledgements page (where you could list attribution information about resources such as images and videos you have used) and a References page.

Learning outcomes

Learning outcomes are not a course description. A good way of writing learning outcomes is to articulate them as active and think about them as what the learner will be able to do as a result of studying your course, so use verbs at the start of each learning outcome – see the useful guide on learning outcomes by Bridget Winwood and Alison Purvis https://academic.shu.ac.uk/assessmentessentials/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/How-to-write-Learning-outcomes-2015.pdf 

Accessibility of your course content

You are responsible for ensuring your course content is Accessible to learners - please refer to the Accessibility guidance and relevant sections of the course builder guide to ensure images have long descriptions, transcripts are provided for audio and video content, text and tables are formatted with standard html heading, paragraph and table styles so screen reader software can read the content to users and language used is inclusive.

Requesting publication of your course

When you publish the course, a notification email will be sent to the mailbox and it will be checked before the publication is confirmed. Any courses which are not ready for publication will not have publication confirmed and we may send you some advice on the configuration issues identified for you to fix before the course can be published.

If you are a student at any college or university you can use OpenLearn Create to build a draft course which you need to have assessed by your teacher/tutor rather than publish it for real learners to study. For this your teacher will need the 'reviewer' role for the draft course, so they will be able to view it as if it was published.

Please follow the following steps in this order:

• Do not click on ‘publish’ when you have finished editing your course as this will send a message to the mailbox asking us to check and authorise the course for publication.
• You will need to ask your teacher/tutor to login to OpenLearn Create (they may need to register an account then login, or login to www.open.edu/openlearncreate with their existing Open University account if they have one already).
• Once your teacher/tutor has confirmed they have logged in to OpenLearn Create, please send a message to the openlearncreate@open.ac.uk mailbox with the following details:
  course URL, course title, your name, the name of the teacher/tutor and the email address they used for logging in to OpenLearn Create. In the email message, please ask for the teacher/tutor to be given ‘reviewer’ access to your draft course, so they will see it as learners would see it.

We have provided an instance of Moodle on OpenLearn Create which means you can identify the content you upload to the site as an article rather than a course. An article is one page of content which has a summary, author(s) and text. It can contain images and links to video or audio which is already hosted elsewhere. The article feature is used to accompany courses in a collection though an article can also be a standalone publication.

We regularly monitor the articles which are being published on OpenLearn Create. We reserve the right to remove any article which contains content we deem not appropriate for an open education site, including direct marketing, plagiarised or offensive material. Please do not attempt to publish articles on OpenLearn Create which market commercial activities (especially those unrelated to education) or promote essay / assignment writing services.

Article image

Please upload an image for the article so that the articles listing shows the article image rather than the default image (the OpenLearn Create logo on a grey background). The article image for the listing is uploaded via the edit settings form. You will be asked to provide information about the image for attribution, including the correct licence and owner of the image - Title, Author, Source (URL if online) and Licence information.

Images in the article

When including images in an article on OpenLearn Create, please limit the size of the image to 512 pixels wide so that it does not exceed the design layout of the article. Please ensure all images you use within the article have the correct attribution information inserted when you upload the image (author, source, licence), as attribution is displayed via a small icon at the top right corner of each image, author will default to your name when you upload an image, so you must change it to the correct details.

Title of article

Please keep the title of your article short as the design of the article only gives two short lines for title in the articles listing, with longer titles truncated in the listing. Please note: If your article title consists of a random collection of characters, does not make sense or is very long, we will treat it as spam.

Authors of the article

Please include the author’s name in the article - this must be the author's real name. You can have more than one author with one identified as the lead author. Only include material in the article which you have permission to use. If you publish an article without an author listed, we are likely to unpublish the article until you update it with details of the author(s) and information about yourself (at the end of the article) if you are not the author.  If you are publishing an article on behalf of an author you MUST indicate that the author has given you permission to do so and include Title, Author, Source and Licence if the article was originally published elsewhere as well as your name as the person who has published the article on behalf of the author.  If you do not include this information, we reserve the right to unpublish the article until you provide this information.

References and bibliography

Your article needs to have relevant references or a bibliography showing the sources of information you used for the article.

Accessibility of your article

You are responsible for ensuring your article content is Accessible to learners - please refer to the Accessibility guidance and relevant sections of the course builder guide to ensure images have long descriptions, transcripts are provided for audio and video content, text and tables are formatted with standard html heading, paragraph and table styles so screen reader software can read the content to users and language used is inclusive.

Requesting publication of your article

When you publish the article a notification email will be sent to the mailbox and it will be checked briefly (though not proofread) before the publication is confirmed. Any articles which are not ready for publication will not have publication confirmed. Spam articles will be deleted.

Article limitations

The article feature does not take uploads of XML or SCORM files, it is a simple page of content which is edited in the Edit settings form for the article.

In addition to the ‘Course’ and ‘Article’ instances of Moodle on OpenLearn Create, you can also identify the content you upload to the site as Materials, Handbooks, Guides or Competitions when you Create a Resource.

Materials: like a course and has the same functionality available as a course, but a different descriptor (Materials).  It is usually used for open educational resources which do not need to be described as a course, such as reports, briefings and resources about a programme of study.

Handbook/Guide: these are identical except for the terms used to describe them.  They have less functionality than a course or materials, as they do not have the Rate and Review facility in their layout on screen, only Description and Content. The format for a Guide or Handbook is usually ‘topics format’. 'Guide' is usually used for How to guides while ‘handbook’ is usually used for training handbooks.

Competition: has the same functionality as a course, but with a different descriptor (Competition).  It means that some of the Moodle tools can be used to run a competitive activity which is clearly identified that way rather than being called ‘course’ or ‘materials’. For example, assignment or workshop tools could be used for submission of competition entries which can be judged by the panel using the marking tools. It is also possible to use the questionnaire tool for a competition entry form and for confirming that the terms and conditions of entry have been read and understood. If you need to use some of these tools for your competition, you may need to request ‘manager’ permissions for the competition and support with setting it up (via the openlearncreate@open.ac.uk mailbox).

You are responsible for ensuring your content is Accessible to learners - please refer to the Accessibility guidance and relevant sections of the course builder guide to ensure images have long descriptions, transcripts are provided for audio and video content, text and tables are formatted with standard html heading, paragraph and table styles so screen reader software can read the content to users and language used is inclusive.

When you publish the materials, handbook/guide or competition a notification email will be sent to the mailbox and it will be checked before the publication is confirmed. Anything which is not ready for publication will not have publication confirmed and we may send you some advice on the configuration issues identified for you to fix before it can be published.

OpenLearn Create is optimised to be enjoyed by users on the current full versions of Firefox, Safari and Chrome on Windows XP, Windows 7 and Mac Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion, and Internet Explorer 9 and 10 on Windows 7 and 8.

Older browsers will display most of the content normally, but some features won't work. Windows users who use Internet Explorer 8 are strongly advised to upgrade their browser, or use an alternative, to get the full value of OpenLearn Create content.

In addition, we aim to provide the best possible experience for users of iPads, Android Tablets and Surface, but cannot guarantee that all features will work as intended on these devices.

Furthermore, some content on the site - in particular older interactive features and audio-visual content - was optimised for browsers at the time these were originally published, and users may experience some compatibility issues.

There could be many reasons but the most probable is that you have simply forgotten your password, are trying the wrong one or are entering it incorrectly. Does your username or password contain a mixture of upper- or lower-case letters? It should be entered exactly.

If completion tracking has been set for your course a progress bar will appear along with tick boxes beside the elements of the course which count towards completion.  Some courses will have check boxes alongside every section of the course material (if they have been set up with separate files for each section) while others will have one checkbox for all the course materials if all sections are in one file.  There will be separate checkboxes for other activities such as quizzes if they count towards course completion. 

If the course materials for your course have been set up using OU structured content files then alternative versions of the course materials will be generated which you can download to study offline.  However, the system cannot track your progress through offline materials you have downloaded which you might be studying on a mobile device, laptop or personal computer, it only tracks your progress through the online version of the materials in the course. This means that you might complete all the quizzes (which you can only do online) and they will show as complete, while the tick box beside the course materials in the course will not show any progress until you have clicked through every page of the materials online.

If you click on the unenrol button for the course you will get a message asking if you really want to unenrol from the course. You will find the unenrol function via two routes - on the course home page is a link 'You are on this course' and in your profile there is an unenrol link with each course you are enrolled on.

When the message asking if you really want to unenrol from the course appears, there are two buttons, one labelled 'continue' and the other labelled 'cancel'. If you click on 'continue' you will be unenrolled from the course and this means any course progress data including grades for graded activities will be deleted and cannot be reinstated if you subsequently re-enrol on the course, though any badges you have received in the course will not be deleted. Therefore, it is important to be sure you want to unenrol from the course before you confirm it via the 'continue' button. To stay enrolled on the course, click on the 'cancel' button.

If you want to delete your OpenLearn Create account please contact us on openlearncreate@open.ac.uk. 

Please note, deleting your OpenLearn Create account will delete all your course enrolments and course achievements (including any badges and Statements of Participation you may have achieved) on the platform. It will not delete your OpenLearn account. It will not delete your free OU account.  If you wish to delete your OU account please contact the OU Computing Helpdesk. Deleting your OU account will result in your OpenLearn and OpenLearn Create accounts becoming inaccessible to you if they have not already been deleted.

The OpenLearn Create website has been designed so that text can be resized using the standard tools in your browser. For example, in Internet Explorer and Firefox this is achieved using the View menu and increasing the text size. If you use Google Chrome, you can adjust the font size in 'Settings' > 'Advanced Settings' > 'Web content'.

If you are creating a course in OpenLearn Create you need the following images which you insert via the Edit Settings form when in edit mode:

• A course image (which is used in the free courses listing) of 1.34 : 1 (7x5 picture size);
• A course banner image (which is used on the course home page) of 785 pixels x 350 pixels (width x height);
• Images in the course content should be no larger than 512 pixels wide.

See the Course builder guide for details of how to add the course and course banner images.

If you are creating a collection of courses and articles you need a collection banner image which is 850 pixels x 398 pixels (width x height).  You add this via the Edit category form for the collection (go to Manage courses in the footer, click on the collections tab and click on Edit collection).

Please ensure you provide the correct image attribution information when you update the image, for example the details of author/creator of the image and the licence information. This is displayed with the image in some places on the site.

OpenLearn Create site design and guidance materials are in English by default. Moodle language packs are used to change the language for your course. Applying a language pack to your course does not provide an automatic translation of the materials you upload; it means that the editing menus as well as some of the course layout design labels and messages on the site can be changed to a different language.

The Moodle language packs available on OpenLearn Create so far are:

• Arabic (ar)
• Bengali (bn)
• Bulgarian (bg)
• Burmese: Myanma bhasa (my)
• Chinese (Mandarin) (zh_tw)
• Chinese (Cantonese) (zh_cn)
• Czech (cs)
• Danish: Dansk (da)
• Dutch: Nederlands (nl)
• English (UK): Olc_english (olc_english)
• English (US): United States (en_us)
• English (old default on the site):  Ocw (ocw)
• Finnish: Suomi (fi)
• French (fr)
• German: Deutsch (de)
• Greek (el)
• Hindi (hi)
• Hungarian: Magyar (hu)
• Italian: Italiano (it)
• Japanese (ja)
• Kannada (kn)
• Norwegian: Norsk (no)
• Odia/Oriya (or)
• Polish: Polski (pl)
• Portuguese (Brazil) (pt_br)
• Portuguese (Portugal) (pt)
• Romania (ro)
• Russian (ru)
• Slovak (ski)
• Spanish: Espanol Internacional (es)
• Swahili: Kiswahili (sw)
• Swedish: Svenska (sv)
• Vietnamese: Vietnamese (vi)
• Welsh/Cymraeg: Ocw_cy (ocw_cy)
  

Moodle language packs rely on the Moodle community to help with translation, therefore some of the packs are incomplete. In addition, there are some bespoke language strings on OpenLearn Create which means language packs which show as 100% translated on the Moodle language pack list might still not be fully translated for OpenLearn Create. This means some labels on the front end of your course or in the editing menus might still appear in English rather than the language of your choice.  If you have a definitive translation for a label, we can probably update the language pack in OpenLearn Create via the language customisation tool (using language ‘strings’).  Please send details to the openlearncreate@open.ac.uk mailbox of what needs to be translated – we will need to know the Language pack you are using, the URL for your OpenLearn Create course, the English wording and the correct translation.

To change the language pack from the default English language pack in your course or resource, go to Edit Settings – Appearance and use the dropdown for ‘Force language’ to select the language pack.

Please note, the main site header and footer labels will not change from English when a different language pack is applied in a course.

The Statement of Participation template displays in the language pack of the course. Courses using the Arabic language pack should not yet attempt to use the Statement of Participation function because we have not yet made the Statement of Participation layout template compatible with right aligned languages, so please use the Custom Moodle Certificate function instead if your course in Arabic needs to have a certificate.

If your course needs a language pack which is not yet installed on OpenLearn Create, please let us know via the openlearncreate@open.ac.uk mailbox. We cannot promise that the pack will be installed and tested when you request it because there is a development cost involved and other developments may have a higher priority. However, if we get enough requests with good supporting reasons for a language, we will add the language pack to the list of packs to be installed in a future site upgrade, IT development funds permitting.

The Open University aims to make its content on OpenLearn Create as accessible as possible. We continue to work towards full compliance with W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standards for all aspects of the site, including providing accessible versions of OU interactive content.

For more information about the accessibility of Open University websites, please see the Accessibility Hub for The Open University.

Further details about how The Open University is committed to making sure that as many people as possible can use our websites can be found in the Accessibility Statement for The Open University.

If you find that a certain section of OpenLearn Create is not accessible please use the feedback form on the Accessibility Hub for The Open University.

While we recognise there are areas that can and will be improved, core aspects of the site and Open University created content hosted on the site are provided in a way which meets the needs of a wide variety of users. Those users with screen-readers should have no difficulty accessing text-based content. Users who require specific Windows or browser settings should not have any difficulties with the site, nor should users with screen magnifiers. Video and audio materials uploaded by OU staff are provided in such a way that they can be played through a range of different media players or downloaded and have textual descriptions or transcripts to accompany them. As far as possible, where material is provided as figures/images, we have included textual descriptions of them, but this does not yet cover every diagram or formula.

Some parts of OpenLearn Create are not yet mobile responsive which means some screens may not display well on the small screen of a mobile device.  We are working towards making the site fully mobile responsive as soon as possible.

Please note: all content released by The Open University aims to conform to the standards above, however The Open University does not take responsibility for content published on OpenLearn Create by Third Party Providers who may not work to the same accessibility standards, although we provide advice during the course publication process about the accessibility of their content. Course creators must endeavour to ensure their resources are accessible, using the accessibility guidance on the platform.

If the course you are studying has been built using OU structured content, you can download each section of the course to study offline. The alternative formats offered which will best support offline study include Word, PDF and eBook / Kindle versions of the materials. The other alternative formats (SCORM, RSS, IMS, HTML and XML) are useful to those who want to export the course to host on another learning management system.

On course pages, if the course has been rendered in this way, you will find links to access these materials for each section of the course (they are usually displayed at the bottom of the first page of each section).

To view these, you will need appropriate software on your device, or experience of working with the format.

• ePub - this will work on tablets and devices which have eReaders built-in; if you are using a desktop machine you may need to find an ePub reader. A list of these can be found at the tucows website
• Kindle - Requires an Amazon Kindle, or software. For tablets, you should be able to download free versions from your app store; desktop users can use a web-based version
• Word - this will open in most word processing software, including Microsoft Office and Google Docs. Microsoft offers a number of free Word readers via its website.
• PDF - Most devices and desktop machines will come with a PDF reader bundled in the operating system. Adobe offer a range of up-to-date free downloads.

In some courses The Open University also provides a range of formats which allow the course to be shared through other Learning Management Systems. We cannot provide support for these formats, and they are made available on an as-is basis. If you would like to discuss a supported service to use these formats, please contact The Open University. These formats are listed below:

• RSS
• OUXML package
• OUXML file
• IMS Common Cartridge
• SCORM (version 1.2)
• HTML

Please work through the online version of the course for full functionality (such as accessing links, using the audio and video materials and completing the quizzes). 

Please note: if you download one of these offline formats of the course material, OpenLearn Create does not track your offline progress thought this material. If your course completion relies on visiting individual pages of information in the course materials, your progress bar will not show as complete even if you have completed all other activities which also count towards course completion.  You will need to click through all the pages of the course materials online so the system can record that you have visited every page to indicate you have completed the materials.

Please use the downloads as convenient tools for studying the materials when away from the internet and return to the online version to ensure you can complete all activities which may lead to earning a badge, a Statement of Participation or a Custom Moodle Certificate.

The standard Moodle tools available to external course authors enable you to upload your own Word or PDF versions of your materials which learners can download, however the OU Structured content (XML) functionality is not available for external course creators to use.  

The Open University Corporate and Commercial team offers a supported service for your course or project which can include tagging and rendering your materials into OU Structured content and rendering to your draft course for you to approve.  See Supported project collections on OpenLearn Create for further details.

We want to understand about your use of our website and how we can help you.

We do this in three ways:

• by logging general activity on the sites such as the time each visitor spends on the site and whether they have also used some other sites;
• by tracking the use of content for learning;
• and by asking visitors whether they are willing to be involved in research.

You can read about how we handle your personal data in our Privacy statement.

Cookies are small data files on your hard drive or browser. Cookies cannot read your hard disk or make any information collected by use of a cookie available to a third party. A cookie can only be read by the organisation that installs it. OpenLearn Create cookies store information about your use of the website, in particular we use these so that we can recognise that you have visited the site before. This information is used for statistical analysis including to assess the usefulness of our site and the effectiveness of our navigational structure, and to identify trends in educational needs and demands. You can read more about this in our cookie policy.

We do not release cookie information to third parties. Understanding how our users interact with OpenLearn Create helps us to improve the service we offer. If you prefer not to share anonymous information on your use of the site, you can disable cookies from your browser and delete all cookies currently stored on your computer. You do not need to have cookies turned on to use or navigate through many parts of our website.

If you register for a free OU account and login to OpenLearn Create, other users will be able to see your name, location and study interests if you have made this information available when editing your profile. See How do I update my profile? in the frequently asked questions for details of how to edit your profile and how the public/private settings of the profile work.  

If you need to change your name or email address in your OU registered account please contact the OU Computing Helpdesk.

If you are enrolled on a course by a partner/third-party organisation which has been given enhanced permissions to manage their course(s) hosted on OpenLearn Create, the individuals managing or teaching that course will be able to see your name, email address, progress through course materials and any grades you may achieve (by completing activities such as quizzes or submitting files for assessment). Course managers and teachers who are external to The Open University are required to sign a declaration to confirm they will act in accordance with the OU data protection and privacy policies as explained in in Conditions of use, Privacy and cookies and Frequently asked questions about OpenLearn Create.

In some courses by third-party organisations a third-party course creator may have inserted some data collection code for particular activities which may save the comments you enter to an externally hosted platform rather than on OpenLearn Create. They are required to explain to users where this data will be stored and how it will be used in advance of the activity, so that the learner can make an informed choice about whether to record and save their comments on the screen in third party produced courses. 

Unless we have provided a supported service to build a course, The Open University does not inspect every externally produced course in detail which is hosted on OpenLearn Create, although we do provide advice and guidance to course creators via the onsite guidance and by responding to queries via the openlearncreate@open.ac.uk mailbox.  When alerted via the Report a concern button or a message via the mailbox, the Open University investigates, hides or removes inappropriate content or unethical data collection activities in resources on the site which may contravene General Data Protection Regulations.

The Open University is not responsible for the content and quality of third-party courses it has not been involved in creating which are hosted on OpenLearn Create, learners enrol on and participate in such courses at their own risk.

We are continually developing further improvements to the functionality and features of OpenLearn Create. Sometimes this means the site is not available to users for a short period of time. When IT developments are ready to be made available on the live site, we put the site into maintenance mode so that the IT developers can transfer the code across and test everything still works as expected before making the site live again.  Sometimes this can take a few hours to complete if the upgrades are extensive.  Smaller updates and bug fixes are patched to the live site if they don't involve big code changes.

Planned updates can happen up to four times a year and we will put a warning banner on the site a few days before an update is due to take place.

OpenLearn Create contains material published by The Open University and third-party providers.

For materials published by The Open University, The Open University owns and retains copyright in its course materials. However, our material also includes substantial extracts from other sources: quotations from books and journals, still and moving images, interviews with academic and subject experts and performers, and so on. We make use of these extracts under licence. We make every reasonable effort to clear and license our use of other rights holders' work. We will promptly remove any material that infringes the rights of others. If you believe that any of our content is infringing the rights of others please contact us by email at openlearncreate@open.ac.uk.

For materials published by a Third-Party Provider please check their rights and licencing on the site and contact the project owner directly.

We believe the primary barrier to access high-quality educational experiences is cost, which is why The Open University aims to publish as much free content as possible under an open licence on OpenLearn and OpenLearn Create. If it proves difficult to release content under our preferred CC licence (e.g. because we can't afford or gain the clearances or find suitable alternatives), we will still release the materials for free but under a more restrictive end-user licence.

For content in which The Open University owns copyright, these are licensed for you to use under the Creative Commons licence 'Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share-Alike'.

This means that you must meet the following three requirements to use the materials:

• Your use is 'non-commercial'.
• You always cite The Open University and retain the name of any original authors.
• You 'share-alike'; that is, make any original or derivative works available under the same terms as our licence to you. Derivative works must be redeposited in OpenLearn Create.

We recognise that our materials may be more effective if they are adapted or built on (e.g. translated, disaggregated, mixed with other materials, localised with new case study examples etc.). Therefore, we strive to avoid the use of the 'No Derivative' restriction on our content.

Therefore, we grant you the right to make use of the materials as they are or in modified form. You may translate, modify, print, network, reformat or change the materials in any way providing that you meet the terms of the licence.

Free course content in which The Open University does not own copyright, but which we have licensed for use from other rights holders, are identified in the acknowledgements of every free Open University course and in the article information of other OpenLearn and OpenLearn Create content. These extracts may be used freely as part of your use of the website, but we are unable to grant the right to modify them or to use them as stand-alone items. The surrounding OpenLearn Create content may be modified, however, and the extract retained for use within the modified version.

Canonical linking:

When you directly republish content from OpenLearn or OpenLearn Create on your own website, you must indicate the canonical source of the content in the metadata. You should add this tag in the <head> area of your webpage:

<link rel="canonical" href="[URL of content on OpenLearncreate" />

<link rel="canonical" href="[URL of content on OpenLearn" />

Free content which is published on OpenLearn Create by other parties must be shared using an open licence - there is a licence chooser when a course is created.  Course creators retain ownership of their course and are responsible for the content and copyright clearances - this means checking the copyright restrictions of any content they include in their course and publishing acknowledgements and clear information on how to cite the course.

Currently not all third-party courses and resources shared on OpenLearn Create have a clear acknowledgements section.  You must make reasonable attempts to attribute materials shared by third party users on OpenLearn Create using the guidance provided about citing content for attribution when reusing content you found on the site for your purposes.

The Open University considers 'non-commercial' to include educational institutions, commercial companies or individuals making use of OpenLearn and OpenLearn Create content on a cost-recovery basis.

We aim to make as much free learning content available as possible. We encourage others to adapt and develop our materials in the development of new free learning experiences.

You may charge for learning experiences you provide using our materials on a cost recovery basis under the following conditions:

• You may represent these materials in any format or medium, including photocopied or hard copy printouts/DVD/SD Card. You may make a charge for the recovery of your costs for printing/duplication.
• Where the OU open media content forms part of a course you are presenting you may charge for the recovery of your costs for value added services such as the provision of the additional or adapted content or tutoring/teaching and support.
• You may not charge for services to return a financial profit (through sales of the content or through placing advertising around them).
• You may not charge for these services if you have not made significant adaptations of the materials or if our un-adapted content forms the main basis of the course. Aggregation of our content does not comprise adaptation.

Please check the licensing conditions for ALL content that is to be adapted. Exceptions to the CC BY-NC-SA can be found in the acknowledgement pages of our free course content.

If you are unclear we are always happy to discuss the meaning of 'adaptation' and 'significant' on a case-by-case basis. If you are unclear about these conditions - or feel your case needs special consideration - please contact us at openlearncreate@open.ac.uk. We are keen to explore how we can support your educational service - however big or small.

If you use or amend or incorporate materials from OpenLearn Create provided under a Creative Commons licence, use the following attribution:

• '(Name of project/course). An OpenLearn Create chunk used/reworked by permission of The Open University copyright (c) (Year), (course URL).'
• OR
  
• '(Name of project/course). An OpenLearn Create chunk used/reworked by permission of (Third party organisation who created the content) copyright (c) (Year) (course URL).'
  

If a chunk of material has a named author then the following citation must be added:

'Written by (name)'

If your use is online, you must also include a link to the Creative Commons 'Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)' licence if it includes OU material, or the appropriate open licnece if it is non-OU material.

If your use is offline, please include the web address http://www.open.edu/openlearncreate

Educators are encouraged to use OpenLearn and OpenLearn Create content in the classroom. Should you wish to adapt then you can copy the materials in your own project, where you can adapt and use them for your teaching purposes.

There are several ways you can reuse the course content. Please make sure you keep a record of where you copied material from and acknowledge it properly in your new course or resource in accordance with the terms of the licence.

• You can copy and paste content from individual pages of a course if you only need to use an extract of the course.
  
• You could request a Standard Moodle Export of course materials (.mbz file) and upload this into another Moodle platform.  If the course content is entirely Moodle (i.e. there are no OU structured content files in the content) then you will be able to edit it in another Moodle platform to suit your context.  If the course content includes OU structured content files then you will not be able to edit those pages of the course in your version of the course.  In this event, copy and paste from individual pages would be your best option instead.
• Some courses have the whole course content in an easy to download Word or PDF version which you can download and reuse.  This will not contain any Moodle quizzes in the original course.
  
• Some courses have a 'copy this course' function (if the course manager has activated the 'Manage course' block), this enables other users to make a copy of the course on OpenLearn Create, however be careful to rename the course properly so it does not get confused with the original course.
  

The OpenLearn Create website has been developed using Moodle technologies. Moodle is an open-source learning software. For more information visit Moodle http://moodle.org/

OpenLearn Create is committed to open systems and will share its approach with those who may wish to launch similar efforts. OpenLearn Create is best described as an open educational resources (OER) project. This means that we are using many of the principles of the open-source software movement and applying it to materials and tools that help people learn. Most of the educational content hosted on this site can be reused according to the Creative Commons licensing that we have adopted and where this logo is seen:

Some software tools that we have developed for Moodle are also being released as open source to make them available for reuse and for others to contribute to the development. Finally, we are trying to use as many open-source components in our work as possible, in particular building the main learning environments on the open-source Moodle system. We do need to use some proprietary software behind the scenes to fit with how The Open University works.

When originally developing OpenLearn and OpenLearn Create in 2006, The Open University was very grateful for the generous support of The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The philosophy of open content mirrors exactly The Open University's founding principles of widening access to high quality educational opportunities. Through OpenLearn, the University expects to contribute significantly to the development of both the quality and reach of open educational resources delivery at an international level.

The generosity of our users, supporters and partners will help our dedicated staff to continue the academic, pedagogic, technological and research activities that support OpenLearn and OpenLearn Create.

Making a donation

You can make your donation to The Open University using our safe and secure online form. Please quote OpenLearn or OpenLearn Create in the 'What prompted you to donate?' box. Your gift - whatever the amount - will enable us to continue to fulfil our mission.

You may also send your donation to:

The Open University Development Office
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA
United Kingdom

Tel: 01908 653786

Email: giving@open.ac.uk²⁹

Web: http://www8.open.ac.uk/about/giving/³⁰

If you cannot find the answer that you are looking for in our Help and Support area or would like to setting up a project on OpenLearn Create, please contact us at openlearncreate@open.ac.uk and we will try to respond as soon as possible.

If you are interested in finding out more about The Open University you can use the contact form