Navigating this new world: creating, finding, and then using learning resources in an effective learning programme is a great challenge. For example, the UK Open University distributes proprietary course materials to learners worldwide via its own Moodle VLE. It also distributes a wide range of free and open resources via its Open-Learn programme, on iTunesU, in YouTube, and via a variety of other 'podcast' channels. The impact of these free and open channels can be substantial.

Since launching in Apple's iTunesU in June 2008 the OU has shipped over three million 'tracks' of our course materials to learners worldwide. We can already take a number of useful insights from current research projects into these challenges.

Projects like iCoper for content repositories and STEEPLE for podcast services seek to provide guidelines to frame this challenge and help both learners and teachers to be more productive in a Web 2.0 world.

Trying to bring the research challenges in this new world into a single framework is an immense challenge, which is being addressed by the STELLAR Network of Excellence. STELLAR is looking at the issues by seeking to define the grand challenges for a new generation of Technology Enhanced Learning."

Peter Scott is the Director of the Knowledge Media Institute of the Open University. KMI is a seventy-strong Research and Development Unit on the OU campus in Milton Keynes, which explores the future of learning and the boundaries between knowledge and the media we use to work with it.

Scott's own research group in the institute, the Centre for New Media, prototypes the application of new technologies and media to learning at all levels. His current research interests range widely across knowledge and media research. Three key threads at the moment are: telepresence; streaming media systems; and ubiquity. In June 2008 he coordinated the launch of The Open University into the Apple iTunesU portal.