Friday, October 15, 2010

Open University e-Learning Tools

In addition to the tools in the Moodle Leaning Management System (particularity Forums), the UK's Open University is now provides a number of other online tools. Cohere is a web based knowledge mapping tool, FlashVlog video diary, FM Adobe Flash based video conferencing tool and the Lab Space

There is also the Compendium is a knowledge map software provided. I was not able to work out what the difference between this and Cohere was.

Some of the OU facilities are implemented with the basic Moodle tools. As an example "Learning Clubs" are simply Moodle forums set up for students to discuss topics and help each other.

One tool central to the online courses is the Learning Journal. This is for the student to collect notes about the course. This is similar in nature to the idea of an e-Portfolio, but seems to have been implemented by OU more like a Blog, using the Moodle Forum module.

One aspect which sets OU's approach from other educational instutions is that Re-use of content is encouraged. Materials is provided under an open access licence. OU provide instructions on how to download the course content. Content is provided is several different formsts (mostly some varaiatuion on XHTML or XML zipped files), including Connon Cartridge 1.0 and SCORM, as well as a Moodle backup file, plain Zipped file and as an RSS feed.

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