A major new open education resources initiative became a reality in October, this time at UK’s Open University. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation thus add another major program to the work it supports in this area–which includes the pioneering MIT Open Courseware project. The announcement by the Hewlett Foundation of the new British program explains:

The growing movement to make educational materials available to anyone with an Internet connection marked a milestone today when the United Kingdom’s venerable Open University launched a new online collection of curricula, as well as software to enhance its use.

The new Web-based program, called OpenLearn, will give students and teachers access to 5,000 hours of curricula on topics ranging from the arts to science and technology, and at levels ranging from those suitable for a beginning student through post-graduate study.

OpenLearn differs from the rest of Open University, which requires students to pay tuition, in that its courses and other educational materials are being made available for free and do not lead to the granting of a degree. Another hallmark of OpenLearn will be the ability it offers students and teachers to add, reorganize and republish content to suit their own needs in a part of the Web site called LabSpace.

Open University was founded in 1969 as an initiative of the British government. It is the only university in the UK dedicated to distance learning, or the teaching of students through course materials distributed via television, the Internet and postal mail. Today it is the UK’s largest university, with more than 160,000 students across the country and another 40,000 worldwide.