Welcome to our open online course Planning a Business Startup (IENT102). You will find everything you need for the course on this web site.

To participate in the course you are encouraged to use your own personal learning environments. You will be shown how to set these up during the orientation session.

5 things you should do before starting the course

Time to get started

Register on this course site by clicking on the user icon () in the site menu.
This will enable you to submit WEnotes (microblog) posts and register your blog URL. (Note: As an open course, registration is not mandatory and we will post copies of the announcements on the course site.)
Familiarise yourself with the website navigation to find out where the:
- course syllabus,
- learning materials (see learning pathways link above), and
- support tutorials (see below) are located.
Review the:
- Course aims and learning outcomes and
- Syllabus
Create the accounts you will need to get started for this course (if you don’t already have them):
- Forum site on forums.oeru.org to participate in forum discussions or post support FAQs. (Once logged in, use the drop down Tag list to find discussions for this course.)
- Resource bank on boolmarks.oeru.org used for sharing links to valuable resources you find online. (The code you need to register your account is “oer4all” – all lowercase.)
- Mastodon at mastodon.oeru.org which is an open source alternative to Twitter. The mastodon.oeru.org site instance is for educators and learners participating in OERu courses which we will use as an optional back channel.
Complete the optional OERu new participant survey

Study tips

Study help

There are a few things you should know about the Planning a Business Startup course:

Course tag: The course tag is #IENT102. Write this down because you will use this tag for posting on forums.oeru.org, your blog posts and and external social media like Twitter.
Course feed: The course hosts a live feed where you can read posts from WEnotes (our microblogging platform), course forums, and participant blog posts using the “#IENT102” tag or label.
Suggested study time: The course is divided into four sessions spread over two weeks. You should aim to spend approximately 2 hours per day at times which suit your own schedule. However, as an open course you can ‘sip and dip’, participating in the topics or activities you find interesting. The time you will need to successfully complete the learning challenges will vary according to your own experience. We estimate you will need about 20 – 25 hours of study time to work through the course materials and an additional 15 – 20 hours to prepare assessments if you want to gain a micro-credential for formal credit. (See Assessment Overview for more information on your assessment options.)
International time zones: OERu courses typically register students across 24 time zones. You should study this course in your own time zone. For example, carry out the instructions for Tuesday on your Tuesday.
Using social media technologies: If you are new to using social media technologies, we provide detailed tutorials and instructions to help you set up your own personal learning environment during the orientation session. We recommend that you establish your personal learning environment before the course commences. Blogs provide a good way of interacting with course participants while maintaining control over your own content. You can create a personal course blog or use an existing blog.
Information overload: At times, the aggregated course feed can generate a large number of posts. You are not expected to read everything. Read what is current when you log in and follow the links which you find interesting. After a few days, you will identify participants with similar interests and you can then choose to follow these people in the course feed.
Learn by doing and sharing: Most of all, have fun! We are changing the world for the better by returning to the core value of sharing knowledge freely in education.