History of the OU

Often the OU is seen in terms of systems. It also needs to be understood in terms of students. (more…)

Jan Hyde has a job (as a Careers Employability Officer, Adviser and Coach) a spouse and five children plus one foster daughter. She has completed 14 OU modules and is, she says, ‘a little addicted to study’. When writing about her experience of the OU she started not with her first engagement with it in the 1990s but with the institution itself and its support for a wide range of learners.  Read her account here.

There has been a lot of coverage of Massive Open Online Courses, MOOCs, of late. Stories have been run about the millions invested and the numbers interested in these free online courses open to all with electronic access.

MOOCs have also gained attention because the OU has joined with 11 other UK HE institutions to form a company, FutureLearn, which will offer a range of free, open and online courses on one learning platform. The OU’s Vice-Chancellor has declared that FutureLearn’s aim is to provide the “best quality student experience of any of the MOOCs on the planet’. (more…)

 Writing on 11th November journalist Carole Cadwalladr argued

When the Open University was launched in 1969, it was both radical and democratic. It came about because of improvements in technology – television – and it’s been at the forefront of educational innovation ever since. It has free content – on OpenLearn and iTunesU. But at its heart, it’s no longer radically democratic. From this year, fees are £5,000.

Her analysis of how the OU has supposedly lost its’ way is supported by personal testimony (more…)

1. Who is the Open University’s current Chancellor? (more…)

The Open University Students Association (OUSA) is holding its conference 22-24 June on the Walton Hall campus.

There will opportunities  to learn about studying, careers, faculties, research and to meet the Vice Chancellor. There is also the History of the OU Quiz. You’ll be able to pick up copies when you come along to the talk about the history of the OU at 4pm in the Jennie Lee Building Room 1. Alternatively, you can pick up copies on the Campus History Tour. Meet at the OUSA Desk at 3pm. Both these events will take place on 22^nd June. The quiz answers will appear on this blog on 27^th June at two minutes past midnight.

The OU has long been in a league of its own. Many have seen it as rising above the others in a manner comparable to the way the inspirational tower associated with Blackpool is clearly far above the flat countryside of the Ipswich Town tractor boys. (more…)

Distaining to take the hint offered by Professor Malcolm Chase who suggested that ‘there are rather more histories of adult education than of other fields which would seem as deserving of historical scutiny, for example … higher education’, Vaughan College, Leicester has seized the opportunity of an anniversary, its 150th birthday, to reflect on its past (Chase ‘”Mythmaking and mortmain”: the uses of adult education history’, Studies in the Education of Adults, 27, 1 ,1995, p.52). The event will be marked by three main sessions over July 2nd – July 3rd 2012 which will look at what Vaughan College has stood for, how ‘the Vaughan tradition’ now fits into current thinking, policy and practice and the place of adult education in contemporary society.

It opens at 4.30 on the 2nd with a talk by AA100 author and AL at the OU, Dr Lucy Faire who is also Director of the HE Certificate in Modern British History at Vaughan College.  (more…)

On the website Catherine Smith has uploaded an account of an OU examination when ‘we sat in a room four floors up which looked out onto a small courtyard; every few minutes the lid of the rubbish container creaked as if it was in the same room. After that I started to wear a pair of industrial ear protectors during exams’.

Janet Wardle was an ‘A’ year (1971) student who, due to her husband’s job, moved to Rome in 1972 but then could not sit the examination as the papers were lost in the post. On her return to London she sat the examination ‘stuffed between high-shelved bookcases with someone typing behind them’.

If you have an OU examination story that you’d like to share you can do this via the website.