In PE’ER project the Open University of Israel offers Hebrew-readers free access to academic educational resources. Presentation given by Edna Tal-Elhasid from the Open University of Israel at IADIS International Conference e-Society 2009, Barcelona, Spain February 2009

1. FREE ACCESS TO ACADEMIC
E-BOOKS, AUDIO-BOOKS AND EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES:
LESSONS FROM THE FIRST YEAR
http://ocw.openu.ac.il
Edna Tal-Elhasid
Center for
Integrating Technology in Distance Education
The Open University of Israel

2. The Open University of Israel (OUI)
• Established 1974, based on the OU-UK model
• Open admission, Distance learning (ODL)
• 45,000 Registered students in Israel & abroad (largest)
• ~ 600 Courses, Undergraduate and Masters (no PhD)
• 2,500 Graduates each year (2007) / Small faculty (70)
• Heavy reliance on Educational Technology (Hebrew based LMS)
• Largest academic publisher in Israel (prints 1 M copies annually)

3. What is OCW
• An OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a free and open
educational resource for faculty, students and
self-learners throughout the world.
• OCW is not a distance-learning initiative: there
are no degrees granted, no student/faculty
interactions and no transcripts.
• OCW is a collection of high-quality learning
materials presented in the form of courses.
Terri Bays, OCW Consortium
Dan Carchidi, MIT OCW
Sunnie Kim, MSU OCW

4. OER/ OCW movement
200+ institutions, ~30 countries, ~6,000 courses

5. OER/ OCW movement

6. The OUI in the global
OCW movement
• In May 2008 the OUI joined the OCW movement and the OCW
consortium.
• Our vision is to enable people with a thirst for knowledge to access OUI
books and learning materials from anywhere in the world
• Free Textbooks in Electronic format (e-books) This is a unique feature
never tried by any university.
• Free Audio books in MP3 format (free for download or as streaming
media)
• Free Video lectures by experts
• Free Online Study materials: RLO (Reusable Learning Objects)
lesson plans, presentations, interactive exercises, glossaries and more

8. Textbooks in electronic format
• Free access to Hebrew books
from 50 academic courses (~300
volumes), some in Russian and Table of content
Arabic.
• Open University books are
especially designed for
independent study.
• Books were selected by an
academic steering committee.
• Some books are under Creative
Commons copy right license.

9. Textbooks in electronic format
Readers can browse through
the book, search
share, bookmark and add
personal and public
comments to the books.
Each time the users return to
the book, they get their
Personal
“own” copy. and public
annotation
Audio books
Users can listen to them through the
Internet or download on mobile players.
Audio books were narrated by
professional narrators and recorded at
the OUI's audio studios.

10. Online study materials
• 126 OCW course (25% of all courses)
• 5628 Learning Objects:
• ~80 Video lectures Video lectures
• 170 multiple-choice questions
• ~ 1300 recommended links Some of the books include
• 16 glossary with 3500 terms video lectures by the authors
• Recorded tutorials or experts in the field, filmed
• Interactive multimedia materials at the OUI video studios.
and more

11. Users and Usage :
Data collection from first 8 months
Questions Research tools
User characteristics: Who are the users? Data from 8579
Registered User statistics
User behavior: What do the users do on the
website?
User feedback: What is the use of preferences? User survey (830 responses)

12. User characteristics
8350 Registered Users
User Distribution User Distribution
by Age, N=5940 by Gender, N=5940
-
-
female
-
-
male
-

13. User characteristics
from user survey
Profession, N=830
OUI
MIT
teachers self learners learners

14. User behavior on website
Average per month:
• Different visitors -7,625
January-February - 11,116
• New visits - 65%, repeat visits -35%
• Average visits per day – 350 (600 on MIT)
January-February - 479
• Time on site - 00:03:30 (00:13:15 on e-books)

15. User feedback
Satisfaction with PE’ER content N=830
High Medium high Low
site interface
content organization
content relevance for you
content variety
content quality

16. User feedback
The importance to the user of the different content categories, N=830
glossaries
bibliography
recommended links
multiple-choice exercises
sample exams
presentations
video lectures
interactive multimedia
audio-books
e-books
very importance of medium importance of little important of no importance

17. PE’ER Next Phase
• Constant addition of books and learning
materials
• Portable electronic books (Kindle)
• Integration of collaborative Web 2.0 tools to
grade the content, add remarks and give
feedback , to lay the ground work for sharing
between users and faculty
• Research:
• Faculty survey to understand motivation or
objections in opening up their courses
• The impact on sales of our books
• The impact of PE’ER on student registration

18. http://ocw.openu.ac.il
Edna Tal-Elhasid
ednata@openu.ac.il
Center for Integrating Technology in Distance Education