The Development Research Teamat KDI School helped launch the Open Learning Campus (OLC) Korea at the Westin Chosun Seoul on June 24, 2016. As the second OLC worldwide, OLC Korea is expected to play a crucial role moving forward with the Ministry of Strategy and Finance of the Republic of Korea acting as the main partner for OLC.

OLC is an online learning platform supported by the Korea-Leadership, Learning and Innovation (LLI) Global Program on Knowledge Sharing (KGKS) in partnership with the World Bank Group (WBG). Over the past five years, statistics show that WBG produced more than 6,000 digital learning activities that reached over 350,000 users across 190 countries.

OLC reflects recent WBG initiatives aimed at processing knowledge into academic modules that can be incorporated in diverse learning platforms such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), e-courses, webminars, and podcasts. The new OLC platform certainly fits the bill and is expected to help WBG reach an even wider range of users around the world with an extensive repository of resources including WBx Talks (recordings of seminars and talks)A, WBa Academy (facilitated or self-paced online courses), and WBc Connect (web portal with access to experts in each field).

This interactive and open learning resource is based on well-established digital learning platforms such as the Massive Open Online Courses hosted by EdX and Coursera.  OLC aims to turn knowledge and experience in the development field accrued at various partner organizations (including KDI) into learning modules that will help provide policy-makers and other stakeholders with immediate and effective learning.

More important is the fact that KDI School participated in turning such knowledge and experience into usable learning modules for OLC. So far, the WBG has acquired 14 case modules for its OLC platform.

Meanwhile, the first OLC was launched in Washington D.C. on January 12, 2016. Anyone can join and logon to the website and gain access to the wealth of information available at OLC.

By Arifenie FITRI NUR (2016 MPP, Indonesia)