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Learner Support Sites - first impressions

I've now spent some time looking into education sites that go further in supporting Higher Education's online learners than simply providing searchable repositories or links to Open Courseware (OCW). OCW such as MIT's OpenCourseware may be excellent learning material in its original context but it does not come with the same support available to enrolled students such as expert tuition or interaction with fellow students.

A number of sites have now sprung up that do offer some degree of learner support. Considerable time, effort and sometimes money has obviously gone into setting up and running these sites and often with the involvement of dedicated volunteers who stand to gain little personal reward. Although sometimes hard to find, absolutely excellent educational material is available and there are good examples of learner support but from the point of view of the learner there is some way to go before anything like an Open Global Education Network can be achieved. Here are some of my first impressions gleaned from the sites we have visited including those already listed.

Open Courseware Learner Support


Details of sites providing open learning communities, tuition or other types of support for online users of Open Courseware (OCW).

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We are attempting to compare Learner Support sites from the point of view of a learner in Higher Education. The table below is incomplete, and may not be accurate! We would greatly welcome comments on any aspect from learners or anyone with an interest in these sites. See also, Learner Support Sites - first impressions for further comment.

LeMill

LeMill is a web community of about 5000 teachers and other learning content creators. At the moment it has over 4000 reusable learning content resources, 1600 descriptions of teaching and learning methods, and about 600 descriptions of teaching and learning tools.

University of the People

University of the People - promises to open the gates of higher education to anyone in the world interested in attending college. We believe that education at a very minimal cost is a basic right for all suitable applicants, not just for a privileged few. Comprised of students from around the world, the student body will learn through peer-to-peer teaching with the curriculum and support of respected scholars.

N.B. - in the process of setting up.

Open Learning Initiative

Carnegie Mellon's Open Learning Initiative (OLI) grew from collaboration among cognitive scientists, experts in human computer interaction and faculty. The project adds to online education the crucial elements of instructional design grounded in cognitive theory, formative evaluation for students and faculty, and iterative course improvement based on empirical evidence. Some online instructional components are: cognitive tutors, virtual laboratories, group experiments, simulations

WikiEducator

WikiEducator is a community project working towards a free version of the education curriculum by 2015. Focus is on building capacity in the use of free software technologies for mass-collaboration in the authoring and development of free content for use in schools, polytechnics, universities, vocational education institutions and informal education settings, facilitating the establishment of community networks and collaboration with existing free content initiatives in education, fostering new technologies that will widen access, improve quality and reduce the cost associated with providing education.

Wikiversity

English wikiversity is a communal effort to learn and facilitate others' learning. Find information or ask questions about a subject, share your knowledge and build learning materials around that knowledge, find learning materials of all types to use yourself as self-study materials. If you want to meet other people who are interested in your subject join a learning community.

OpenLearn

OpenLearn offers a full range of the UK's Open University subject areas from access to postgraduate level specializing in content and support designed for distance and elearning including self-assessment tools, collaboration forums and a personalised learner experience. OpenLearn uses a number of learning support and social networking tools to replicate the different informal modes of communication and learning that happen on a traditional campus facilitating the creation and support of elearning communities.

Peer 2 Peer University

Peer 2 Peer University is an online community of open study groups for short university-level courses. Think of it as online book clubs for open educational resources. The P2PU helps you navigate the wealth of open education materials that are out there, creates small groups of motivated learners and supports the design and facilitation of courses. Students and tutors get recognition for their work and pathways to formal credit are being built.

N.B. - in the process of setting up.

Connexions

Connexions is a place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc. Anyone may view or contribute: authors create and collaborate, instructors rapidly build and share custom collections, learners find and explore content

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