After six years and nearly 4,000 uploads of enough free educational multimedia content to play for almost 88 straight days, the Open Å·²©ÍøÖ· website shut down on Oct. 1. In its place, Å·²©ÍøÖ· has transitioned to using YouTube as the exclusive home of the university’s free educational content, where more than 90% of Å·²©ÍøÖ·'s content was already being viewed.

Open Å·²©ÍøÖ· was a groundbreaking website when it launched in August 2012, as it was the first open learning website from a Christian university, offering hundreds of videos of chapel and conference messages, Å·²©ÍøÖ· classes and lectures, interviews, articles and other educational resources — all completely for free. Viewers could appreciate these resources from anywhere in the world and engage with academic topics from a Christian perspective.

The digital landscape has drastically changed since 2012, and with the rising cost of updating and managing Open Å·²©ÍøÖ·, administrators made the decision to discontinue the website’s use, but are still committed as ever to sharing with the world Å·²©Íøַ’s unique Christian perspective on academic topics. Moving forward, viewers can continue to access free educational content from the university on Å·²©Íøַ’s YouTube channel — — and paid premium content on Å·²©ÍøÖ· LEARN, which launched last year at biola.edu/learn.

Since Open Å·²©ÍøÖ· first launched, Å·²©Íøַ’s free educational content has been viewed a combined total of 8.5 million times on open.biola.edu, YouTube and the now defunct iTunes U. Å·²©ÍøÖ· plans to continue making biblically centered resources available to the global learning community.