Correspondence courses have been offered in Brazil since the late 19th century; in the 20th century, instructional media such as radio and television were successfully used long before the introduction of the Internet. However, distance education (DE) was officially established in Brazil only in 1996 by the National Educational Law of Policies and…

Studies have claimed that use of multimedia technologies motivate and stimulate the learning of students as compared to using traditional teaching methods alone. Multimedia aids are therefore significant in effective teaching learning process. It is even more significant in open and distance learning where the learners are separated from their…

Augmented reality tools and applications have been shown to have powerfully impelled the development of the field of education. In this article, the authors designed and developed an augmented reality technology-based courseware "Starry Sky Exploration--Eight Planets in the Solar System" and explored how AR can bring an immersive…

Students from many different subject areas are required to study statistics as part of their qualification. The Open University developed a statistics module which could simultaneously be studied by students from a variety of different disciplines, by engaging them with topics which are of interest to everyone, namely money, education and health,…

The Open University (OU) makes a proportion of all its taught modules available to the public via OpenLearn each year. This process involves the modification, of module excerpts, showcasing subject matter and teaching approach. This activity serves both the University's social and business missions through the delivery of free courses to the…

The School of Science and Technology of "Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University (YCMOU)" has proposed to offer "Web Based Live Teaching Learning Support" from "real" teacher, with "Live Virtual Online Class (LVOC)" integrated with "Learning Management System (LMS)" for all courses of all…

Wawasan Open University (WOU) was established in 2007 with the sole aim of providing affordable and accessible higher education opportunities to working adults in the fields of business, technology, education and liberal studies. As part of its Open Distance Learning (ODL) delivery, WOU provides tutorial support for students every semester through…

The constant emphasis on maintaining a high level of quality in the Open Distance Learning (ODL) self directed courses delivered at Wawasan Open University (WOU) demands the accurate assessment of course learning outcomes (CLO). The summative and formative assessment components of each course module are, in theory, designed to effectively measure…

Coming up with the latest and greatest learning curriculum for employees year after year can be overwhelming--especially if one works for a small or mid-size company with minimal resources. Fortunately, there is a burgeoning trend that three-time No. 1 Top 125er PwC is helping to "open" up. In creating PwC Open University, the professional…

In this essay Robert Rhoads, Jennifer Berdan, and Brit Toven-Lindsey examine some of the key literature related to the open courseware (OCW) movement (including the emergence and expansion of massive open online courses, or MOOCs), focusing particular attention on the movement's democratic potential. The discussion is organized around three…

This paper describes the framework for the development of OER-based learning materials "TCC121/05 Programming Fundamentals with Java" for ODL learners in Wawasan Open University (WOU) using three main development phases mainly: creation, evaluation and production phases. The proposed framework has further been tested on ODL learners to…

Over the recent years, there has been a growing interest in Open Educational Resources (OER). A similar trend was observed about a decade ago in the concept of Learning Objects, which inevitably faded without really making an impact in real-world educational contexts. A number of repositories were created that contain thousands of learning…

Success in open educational resources (OER) has been reported by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the USA and the Open University in the UK, among others. It is unclear, however, how valuable OER are in learning and teaching. Approaches to OER policy and sustainability are just two other key aspects that remain unresolved across the…

The free and open publication of course materials (OpenCourseWare or OCW) was initially undertaken by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and other universities primarily to share educational resources among educators (Abelson, 2007). OCW, however, and more in general open educational resources (OER), have also provided well-documented…

One of the serious problems associated with Indian school education has been high dropout rate. The reasons are many and varied but the major constraints are: non-availability of adequate number of competent and trained teachers in most of the schools and separate room for each class. To overcome such problems and increase equitable access to all,…