Collaborating over rich media: The Open University and BBC partnership

Open Educational Resources comprise many types of assets including rich media. However dynamic rich media offer different opportunities and challenges for learners, teachers and higher education institutions alike than do more static items such as text. The Open University in the UK (OUUK) has been extensively developing and using rich media in collaboration with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) for its distance teaching and outreach programmes since it was established in 1969. As new media technologies have arrived so have the capabilities of the OUUK and the BBC to create rich media in partnership and make them openly accessible. This paper describes these developments and then discusses the approaches and evidence required to guide them in a way that both serves the BBC, the OUUK, the higher education sector and the wider community. It concludes that rich media are an essential part of the developing OER landscape and that openly sharing them brings defined benefits to an HEI beyond their traditional student body