The Open University of Israel (OUI) joined the open courseware movement in 2008 by making 145 of its courses freely available online. This includes ebooks, audio books, video lectures, and other learning materials. With over 45,000 registered students, the OUI is Israel's largest academic institution and aims to provide open access to knowledge for learners around the world. Analysis of usage data shows that learners spend more time with the open materials than educators. The OUI will continue adding more resources and integrating collaborative Web 2.0 tools to improve the open courseware and measure its impact on book sales and student enrollment.

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. 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

5. Textbooks in electronic format
• Free access to Hebrew books ,some in Russian and Arabic.
• Open University books are especially designed for independent study.
Free Audio books:
• Free Audio books in MP3 format (free for download or as streaming media)
• 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.

7. Book selection criteria
Books were selected by an academic steering committee:
• General interest to the public at large
• Balance between fields of knowledge
• Introductory / Compulsory courses in other universities
• New and updated
• In Final Edition
• Original (not translated)
• Minimal IPR issues

8. A major issue: IPR
• All published books are cleared for print version.
• Books written by OU faculty but contain copy-righted material
necessitated re-acquisition of rights for the digital version
• 14 e-books are under Creative Commons copy right license
 DRM Digital Rights Management:
We protect our own IPR by not allowing downloading or printing of
the total book.
The audio books are free for download.

10. Online study materials
145 OCW courses (25% of all OUI)
~6500 learning objects
• Recorded Video lectures Video lectures
• Interactive exercises
• Multiple-choice questions Some of the books include
• Recommended links video lectures by the authors
• Presentations or experts in the field, filmed
at the OUI video studios.
• Glossaries
• Interactive multimedia materials
• Lesson plans
and more

11. Instructors choose
& mark content on
their web course
Process of opening
Academic Learning Objects from
review
OUI LMS to OCW website
linguistic
editing
Instructors
Graphic improve
design content
copyright
Approval
Open to OCW website

12. Users and Usage
• User characteristics based on user registration data
• User survey to understand use of preferences, visitors‘
satisfaction and preferred content
• User behavior on website monitored by Google Analytics
• Faculty survey to understand motivation or objections in
opening up their courses

13. User characteristics
User Distribution by
User Distribution by Age Gender
User Profile:
22-34 Male Student
female
37%
35-44 22-34
male
15% 49%
63%
Self
learners
37% Learners
41%
Educators
23%

14. User characteristics
OUI MIT
43.00% 42% 41%
36.50%
22.50%
9.00%
6%
Other Self learners Educators Learner

15. Users’ feedback
Most frequent activities on OCW
website, N=1497
81.10% e-books
78.50% other OER's
32.60% video lectures
18.20% audio-books
6.70% purchase a book
The sales of print books of the titles that were offered
free on-line are being closely monitored

16. OER versus eBook
Number of visits Avg. Time on Site
25,000 0:00
21:36
20,000 19:12
16:48
15,000 14:24
12:00
10,000 9:36
7:12
5,000 4:48
2:24
- 0:00
Jan-09
Mar-09
Jun-09
Jan-10
Oct-08
Oct-09
Nov-08
Apr-09
May-09
Nov-09
Aug-09
Feb-09
Jul-09
Sep-09
Dec-08
Dec-09
Visits Oer Visits eBook Avg. Time - Oer Avg. Time -eBook

17. Number of visits as a function of learner type
100%
90% Rate of
37.3 80% frequency of
52.6 70%
visits is higher
60%
6+ visits
50% among learners
2-5 visits 40% than educators
49 55
1 visit 30%
20%
10%
0%
Learners Self Learners Educators
The largest percentage of visitors (46.1%) who find Pe'er useful to them
are among the “Learners," which is significantly greater than among
“Educators" (32.6%) who find the site useful to them.

18. Impacts of OCW on OUI
• Opening the existing learning materials has forced updates, quality
control, clearing copyright issues and careful monitoring of the academic
level
• Greater involvement of senior faculty and the university’s management in
the quality-control of on-line materials
• Usage patterns and traffic are being monitored for correlations with
numbers of new students in specific courses whose books are offered for free

19. 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 on student registration

20. http://ocw.openu.ac.il
Edna Tal
ednata@openu.ac.il