This short paper is a contribution to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) expert workshop to help identify "motivations, benefits and barriers for institutions producing open educational resources". The motivations are examined by looking at the reasons behind the launch by the Open University in the UK of a web based collection of open educational resources, OpenLearn. OpenLearn launched on October 25th 2006 and reflects an initiative backed by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Open University to develop a learning environment (LearningSpace) and an accompanying educator environment (LabSpace) giving free access to material derived from Open University courses. There are of course many reasons for the taking part in open educational resources and so this paper considers motivations in community, organisational, technical and economic terms.

The paper was initially prepared for the OECD experts meeting on Open Educational Resources 26-27 October 2006 in Barcelona, Spain.

This short paper is a contribution to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) expert workshop to help identify "motivations, benefits and barriers for institutions producing open educational resources". The motivations are examined by looking at the reasons behind the launch by the Open University in the UK of a web based collection of open educational resources, OpenLearn. OpenLearn launched on October 25th 2006 and reflects an initiative backed by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Open University to develop a learning environment (LearningSpace) and an accompanying educator environment (LabSpace) giving free access to material derived from Open University courses. There are of course many reasons for the taking part in open educational resources and so this paper considers motivations in community, organisational, technical and economic terms.

The paper was initially prepared for the OECD experts meeting on Open Educational Resources 26-27 October 2006 in Barcelona, Spain.

This short paper is a contribution to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) expert workshop to help identify "motivations, benefits and barriers for institutions producing open educational resources". The motivations are examined by looking at the reasons behind the launch by the Open University in the UK of a web based collection of open educational resources, OpenLearn. OpenLearn launched on October 25th 2006 and reflects an initiative backed by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Open University to develop a learning environment (LearningSpace) and an accompanying educator environment (LabSpace) giving free access to material derived from Open University courses. There are of course many reasons for the taking part in open educational resources and so this paper considers motivations in community, organisational, technical and economic terms.

The paper was initially prepared for the OECD experts meeting on Open Educational Resources 26-27 October 2006 in Barcelona, Spain.

Engaging employers with youth in workforce preparation activities is widely supported by program providers as a good practice. Research, although limited, supports this practice as well. This paper describes the findings from 58 interviews with youth program providers, employers, and policy-makers that explored the inclusion of employers in workforce preparation activities for disadvantaged youth. We examined the degree to which youth and employers are prepared to engage with each other, how race and culture influence the entire experience, and whether program and policy efforts to increase employer engagement are in scale with youth program demand. The research highlighted important disconnects between program providers and employers and the affect these disconnects may have on expanding employer involvement. Implications for program development are also discussed.

Engaging employers with youth in workforce preparation activities is widely supported by program providers as a good practice. Research, although limited, supports this practice as well. This paper describes the findings from 58 interviews with youth program providers, employers, and policy-makers that explored the inclusion of employers in workforce preparation activities for disadvantaged youth. We examined the degree to which youth and employers are prepared to engage with each other, how race and culture influence the entire experience, and whether program and policy efforts to increase employer engagement are in scale with youth program demand. The research highlighted important disconnects between program providers and employers and the affect these disconnects may have on expanding employer involvement. Implications for program development are also discussed.

Engaging employers with youth in workforce preparation activities is widely supported by program providers as a good practice. Research, although limited, supports this practice as well. This paper describes the findings from 58 interviews with youth program providers, employers, and policy-makers that explored the inclusion of employers in workforce preparation activities for disadvantaged youth. We examined the degree to which youth and employers are prepared to engage with each other, how race and culture influence the entire experience, and whether program and policy efforts to increase employer engagement are in scale with youth program demand. The research highlighted important disconnects between program providers and employers and the affect these disconnects may have on expanding employer involvement. Implications for program development are also discussed.

Empowered by a multi-partner Consortium, MORIL will deliver high-quality Open Educational Resources (OER) with pedagogically-rich content, specifically designed and developed for distance learning. MORIL refers to "Multilingual Open Educational Resources for Independent Learning". It constitutes a New Generation of open resources, having a strong focus on development and delivery of quality-assured materials for off-campus target groups. MORIL is value added, as face-to-face didactics are not obligatory, contrary to on-campus education. Besides open offers, formal offers are fronted as well, establishing a transparent prospective learning path into higher education for those that seek recognition and/or certification. MORIL will provide a single European access point for lifelong open and flexible learning: a referatory to participating local repository portals. For courses of interest to domestic markets, universities can utilise multilingual versioning and localisation. Blending MORIL with leading edge quality assurance and benchmarking, truly provides the Consortium with a head start. European-wide quality and benchmarking is enabled by E-xcellence: a web-based instrument to assess the quality of e-learning in higher education. Although many instruments already exist, which cover the organisational and content-related quality assurance of higher education institutions and programmes, only few exist which have developed a focus on the parameters of quality assurance that govern e-learning and even fewer or none, have their focus on OER. E-xcellence as such being supplemented to MORIL, is to cater for open and accessible quality and benchmarking. MORIL is supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Empowered by a multi-partner Consortium, MORIL will deliver high-quality Open Educational Resources (OER) with pedagogically-rich content, specifically designed and developed for distance learning. MORIL refers to "Multilingual Open Educational Resources for Independent Learning". It constitutes a New Generation of open resources, having a strong focus on development and delivery of quality-assured materials for off-campus target groups. MORIL is value added, as face-to-face didactics are not obligatory, contrary to on-campus education. Besides open offers, formal offers are fronted as well, establishing a transparent prospective learning path into higher education for those that seek recognition and/or certification. MORIL will provide a single European access point for lifelong open and flexible learning: a referatory to participating local repository portals. For courses of interest to domestic markets, universities can utilise multilingual versioning and localisation. Blending MORIL with leading edge quality assurance and benchmarking, truly provides the Consortium with a head start. European-wide quality and benchmarking is enabled by E-xcellence: a web-based instrument to assess the quality of e-learning in higher education. Although many instruments already exist, which cover the organisational and content-related quality assurance of higher education institutions and programmes, only few exist which have developed a focus on the parameters of quality assurance that govern e-learning and even fewer or none, have their focus on OER. E-xcellence as such being supplemented to MORIL, is to cater for open and accessible quality and benchmarking. MORIL is supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.