Nick Pearce, Special Adviser on Education to the Prime Minister, spent this morning in KMi, hosted by the Vice-Chancellor Prof. Brenda Gourley. He came to learn about how the OU is supporting learners online, and how it envisages the future of the OU and the Higher Education sector in the era of free Open Educational Resources, Web 2.0 social media, and corporate developments such as YouTube and iTunes University.

KMi’s Simon Buckingham Shum and Peter Scott introduced current OU strategic initiatives in which they are playing leading roles: the SocialLearn Web 2.0 project, and Open.U on Apple’s iTunesU. They were joined by Andy Lane, who presented the OU’s OpenLearn OER initiative, and Niall Sclater, who described the OU’s open source Moodle Virtual Learning Environment. Also joining discussions were Prof. Denise Kirkpatrick (PVC Learning & Teaching) and Prof. Brigid Heywood (PVC Research & Enterprise).

Nick Pearce is Head of Strategic Policy and a Senior Policy Adviser in the No.10 Policy Directorate. Prior to his directorship of The Institute for Public Policy Research, Nick was a special adviser to David Blunkett at the Home Office, and previously at the Department for Education & Employment. He was involved in the creation of learndirect. Nick studied at Manchester and Oxford Universities.

Related Links:

• The OUs iTunesU
  
• SocialLearn
  
• OpenLearn – free online learning from the OU
  
• The Institute for Public Policy Research