OU offers free learning materials

The OU has some 200,000 distance-learning students

The Open University is making its educational resources available free on the net for anyone in the world to use.
It aims to make 5,000 hours' worth of material available by April 2008 - not only for learners, but for educators to adapt and use for their own purposes.

The £5.65m OpenLearn project is backed by a US charitable foundation.

Project director Andy Lane said: "We are encouraging learners to become self-reliant, but also to use online communities to support their learning."

The website will initially have some 900 hours of study in a variety of topics - from access to postgraduate level - using the Moodle "virtual learning environment".