iBerry

Serving the international academic community since 1999, iBerry is a non-profit making website connecting to information and resources for learners, educators, researchers and anyone else with an interest in Higher Education. Our focus is on connection rather than content - we see iBerry as one small part of an emerging and Open Global Education Network that one day will bring inexpensive education to anyone, anywhere, regardless of their circumstances.

iBerry gratefully acknowledges the support of widged.com - Bite-size Applications for Education.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is iBerry's misssion?

"Higher education shall be made equally accessible to all, on the basis of capacity, by every appropriate means, and in particular by the progressive introduction of free education." - Article 13: International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 16th December 1966

Higher Education remains an impossible dream for many people but resolution of the urgent and complex problems facing humanity will require considerable expertise involving a wide range of academic disciplines together with a climate of informed opinion able to meet the momentous changes to come. iBerry's mission is to foster free and accessible Higher Education by every appropriate means.

Are you setting up a free university with expert staff, creating open courses and storing open courseware in huge repositories?

Hardly! - iBerry has no resources apart from the interest and enthusiasm of its Registered Users and anyone else who cares to help. 'Free' universities already exist and so do experts willing to contribute time and energy to online education for little in return. As for repositories, many Open Educational Resources (OER) including Open Courseware (OCW) and free online textbooks are already accessible.

Then what DO you do?

We assemble and co-ordinate information about Higher Education and existing open educational resources, particularly Open Courseware for online learners. Our Open Courseware Directory points to hundreds of publicly accessible courses (lecture notes and videos, slides, podcasts, exam questions, software, demonstrations, etc) from all over the world. The News Aggregator brings together RSS feeds on various Higher Education topics. We also list information and directory sites, focusing on up-to-date portals providing specialized links to particular academic subject areas. Recently, we (imaginatively) coined the term Open Courseware 2.0 to denote the intelligent re-purposing of existing OCW for online use. We also have a new section on Learner Support with details of sites providing open learning communities, tuition or other types of support.

How does iBerry compete for learners with other education websites?

We don't compete! With no advertising, no commerce, no hidden agenda - we can afford to co-operate rather than compete. We recognize that from a learners point of view, different sites may well be best for different types of services. Rather than establish yet another 'walled garden' of captive users, iBerry encourages learners to use different websites for whatever educational services they best provide. This might lead to fewer replicated services of a particular type, such as forums for discussing specific academic subjects, but greater viability and sustainability and greater progress towards a truly Open Global Education Network.

Who runs iBerry and what is their academic authority?

iBerry is administered by me and kindly hosted for free by widged.com (for the curious, some more information is provided here) but otherwise we simply rely on Registered Users or anyone else who cares to contribute. Personal identities are not considered very relevant but a Registered User can access all other user profiles and communicate with or without revealing private email addresses. As for authority, some Registered Users (including myself) have considerable experience of Higher Education as students, educators or researchers but anyone is free to add comment to any of our content. Any Registered Users can create new content such as annotated links to new OCW items.