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About Pe'er

In the Pe'er project (the Hebrew acronym for "Opening Treasures of the Mind"), the Open University of Israel (OUI) offers the general public free access to dozens of academic textbooks in electronic format and to a variety of study materials, including lesson plans, presentations, video lectures, interactive exercises and other learning aids. Many of the textbooks are also offered in audio format.

We believe that the project will enrich the public's exposure to academic knowledge in Hebrew and will thus enhance the quality of academic materials available on the Internet. From the OUI's perspective, making these educational materials public and providing free access to the general public reflects an ideological change in the perception of knowledge ownership. The willingness to contribute one of the University's important assets - its academic study materials - to the public, without compensation or intent for profit, is a revolutionary and challenging idea that has not been tried to date in Israel, and in this sense, the OUI is a pioneer and a trailblazer.

Pe'er is not a substitute for studies in the Open University, and does not offer an academic degree. The study materials published in Pe'er do not represent the course contents in their entirety, but offer a glimpse into what the course contains.

Pe'er will gradually publish books from 50 courses in a wide variety of fields from among the hundreds of titles published by the OUI. Due to copyright issues, some pictures and texts in the electronic books were intentionally concealed.

The Story of Pe'er

The Open University's Shoham Center for Technology in Distance Education manages Pe'er as an integration of two independents projects.

The first project, known at the time as "Northern Exposure," began after the 2nd Lebanon War of July 2006 and offered free access to selected OUI study materials for the benefit of higher-education students in northern Israel. During that war, residents of northern Israel were forced to stay at home or in shelters and students could not attend classes. The project aimed to provide access to OUI-developed study materials directly to students' personal computers, enabling them to catch up and compensate for missed lectures.

In the second project, originally named "Open Books" and initiated at the beginning of 2007, the University decided to convert and upload several of its books to the Internet for the benefit of the general public.
In the planning and characterization phases of both projects, it was only natural to merge them into one project offering two types of study materials to the general public - learning materials and books. The combined project - Pe'er - is almost entirely funded by the Yad Hanadiv Foundation.

Material Published in Pe'er

Textbooks in electronic format

The Pe'er website provides free access to hundreds of books from 50 academic courses. The books are in full electronic format with a rich pedagogic and technological envelope enabling users to browse through the book, select the reading display format, search for text within the book, etc. In the near future, users will be able to add comments to the books for both personal and public use and create a personalized copy of the e-book.

Each electronic book is a duplicate of the printed book. Users must register for system identification purposes; however, access is open to everyone free of charge. Books in the Pe'er project were carefully selected by an academic steering committee so as to represent courses in varied academic disciplines studied at all institutions of higher education in Israel, that may be of interest to the widest audience - students from other universities, high school students and individuals seeking to expand their general knowledge. As part of the project, the University will also upload OUI books in Russian and in Arabic, providing access to students in the former Soviet Union, Russian speakers residing in Israel, and speakers of Arabic in both Israel and the entire Middle East.

All the books undergo a strict copyright approval process with respect to all sections that were not written by the OUI (for example, images, illustrations and quotes). Sections not approved for publication are concealed and will be published if and when approval is granted.

The conversion of published books to electronic format began in April 2007 and will continue over a three-year period during which the books will be posted gradually. The conversion is performed by Olive Ltd., an Israeli company specializing in e-books, in collaboration with the Israeli software company Netwise.

Audio books

Most of the electronic books also include a full audio version (in MP3/stream format). This allows users to listen to the books via the Internet or to download them to their personal computers and listen to them on mobile players. Audio books are recorded at the OUI's audio studios and narrated by professional narrators skilled in radio recording. Prior to recording, careful consideration is given to the best way to narrate the book: how to describe pictures referenced in the text; how to read tables, some of them complex, to ensure the listener's understanding of the data displayed; how to treat footnotes so their narration will not interrupt the listening sequence and impair understanding; how to describe diagrams in the text; how to pronounce terms and names specific to a knowledge field with which the narrator is unfamiliar, etc. Such issues are considered on a case by case basis in collaboration with the faculty member who authored the course or a teaching assistant.

Preparing an audio version along with voice editing also entails correcting narration errors, removing background noise, adding bookmarks displaying the table of contents, etc. Books in the exact sciences (Physics, Mathematics) which contain many equations, formulas, curves/graphs, tables, pictures and other visual material will not be converted into audio format.

Video lectures

Video lectures by the authors or experts in the field, most of them senior faculty members at the OUI or other universities, will gradually be added to the electronic books. Lectures enrich the study material and offer an additional perspective or emphasis about specific chapters. Lectures are filmed at the OUI video studios.

Online study material

The OUI has an extensive database of online learning objects specifically developed for OUI students, and that until now were accessible strictly through OUI course websites. Study items include glossaries, lists of recommended websites, multiple-choice questions, presentations accompanying tutorials, video recorded tutorials, courseware, etc.

Some of these study materials are already accessible to the general public through the Pe'er portal and do not require special registration. Additional material will be published gradually until the end of 2009. In a parallel process relating to the books in this project, the materials also undergo a strict copyright approval process, together with academic quality-assurance.

All Pe'er material is organized according to OUI course structure. The decision regarding the types of contents to be published is determined by the content developers, in most cases course coordinators, monitored by the faculty member in charge of the course.