Since the 1990s, online courses have provided an opportunity for busy adults to continue their education by completing courses in the comfort of their own homes. However, this may not be the best solution for everyone. A researcher at the University of Missouri has found some students may find success in these types of courses more easily than others.

Many undergraduates have trouble finding, validating, and using online scientific resources, particularly as they tend to be novices immersed in learning scientific procedure and what represents scientific literature. A teacher and a librarian established a partnership and developed a tutorial to help mitigate these problems in a senior-level plant sciences seminar.

On 4 February, United Nations University launched the UNU OpenCourseWare Portal, accessible at http://ocw.unu.edu. Initially, the UNU OpenCourseWare Portal offers open access to about a dozen courses developed by three of UNU’s Research and Training Centres and Programmes (RTC/Ps) and the Tokyo-based UNU Media Studio.

The new program provides on-site and online learning for relief workers to improve technology skills and increase emergency response capacity.

Children and their teachers are already benefiting from online learning communities such as the Oracle Education Foundation's Think.com, but there is a real opportunity for richer learning with such systems that is yet to be tapped.