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This paper describes key features of a new multimedia CD-ROM pack produced by television makers in collaboration with computer science educators -by the BBC for the Open University Computing Department. The pack, The Object Shop, forms an early component of an undergraduate course which introduces object-oriented computing and software development to students new to computing. Building on the results of empirical evaluation, The Object Shop has been designed to help students with no programming experience to understand core object programming concepts. Throughout the CD-ROM, video, animated graphics and an underlying object-oriented simulation of a virtual shopping environment provide an accessible introduction to the central ideas of objectoriented programming. The key power of the multimedia approach is that the student-user is able to gain a sound operational understanding of concepts before learning the details of programming code or syntax. Users can continually monitor their progress through a series of taskbased, assessed exercises.

This article presents an argument that educators should challenge students to develop as individuals who can understand their own limitations, their own particular socio-political, economic, historical and cultural embeddedness, and who have tools of critical reflection to make moral/ethical judgments and choices that are the imperatives of a liberal arts education.

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 chapter 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.