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eBusiness at the OU > Guidelines and standards > Social media

Social media

OU Activity

Twitter

The OU has two official Twitter profiles - @openuniversity and @ou_community. These channels are used by various units, departments and Faculties around the OU and are managed by Digital Engagement.  They have been used to enable students to share study tips, to promote OU/ BBC co-productions, to link in with the OU's iTunesU presence and as a way of involving the wider OU community in David Cameron's visit to the OU in the Summer of 2010. If you have ideas for innovative ways to use the OU twitter stream please contact communications-online-services@open.ac.uk.

Facebook

Facebook is currently the most popular social networking environment and there are significant numbers of OU staff, students and alumni using the site. As of February 2011 The Open University Facebook fan page had nearly 40,000 fans.

There are two Facebook applications aimed at the OU community, these are Course Profiles and My OU Story.

A number of Faculties and units use the OU Facebook fan page to promote events, share content and get feedback from the OU community.  If you would like to know more about the OU Facebook fan page please contact Digital Engagement.

iTunes U

The Open University was one of the first UK Universities to join iTunes U, making available free high quality audio-visual assets used in its courses and eBooks. For more on our iTunes U podcasts see: http://open.edu/itunes/

University staff can look at the Open Media Unit under Staff resources to find out how podcasts are produced.

YouTube

The OU has an official University channel on YouTube at: www.youtube.com/ou.

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University staff can look at the Open Media Unit under Staff resources to find out how YouTube videos are produced.

OpenLearn

OpenLearn is the OU's Open Educational Resource project which makes content from OU courses available online for free under a Creative Commons licence. University staff can look at the Open Media Unit under Staff resources to find out how YouTube videos are produced.

If you are interested in adding material from one of your courses to OpenLearn please contact openlearn@open.ac.uk.

OU Social Media Policy and Guidelines

The University is aware that many of its staff and students are participating in these areas in ways that are linked to University activity or teaching. For this reason Digital Engagement has produced position papers detailing OU involvement in various Social Media channels. These documents also contain some guidelines for appropriate use.

For more information see the OU Social Media strategy.