50 objects for 50 years. No. 46. The Home Experiment Kit

Posted on March 4th, 2019 at 12:01 am by Daniel Weinbren

One of the criticisms made by The Times of the proposed ‘university of the air’ was that ‘the very term is an illusion in the sense that it holds out hopes that it cannot possibly fulfil’. It went on

to encourage hopes that the television viewer will be offered the range and depth of courses open to the university student. This would be misleading nonsense.

What The Times missed was the innovation of Home Experiment Kits. In its first year the OU sent out 33,000 home experiment kits. The first science ones had 136 items. Each included a tiny microscope. The first technology module, The Man-Made World: a Foundation Course, T100 (1972–79), included a home experiment kit with a simple binary computing device, a logic kit, a control/analogue kit and a noise measurement meter. Using the last of these items, students contributed towards the production of a national noise map. They also learned to build their knowledge using more than one medium. For The Digital computer, TM222 (1983– 91) students could experiment with both software and hardware using the (H)ome (E)lectronic (K)it compu(TOR) – HEKTOR. HEKTOR could be plugged into a TV which became its monitor and plugged into a cassette recorder for storage. Initially students were encouraged to write programs in BASIC but later it was used for other purposes, including on a control engineering course.

The HEKTOR III microcomputer system.

Experiments at home were not always popular with posties or indeed at home. Student Matt Kendall recalled that a ‘matrimonial’ resulted from his experiment involving suspending a brick in the airing cupboard. However, there were integral to the OU and it was proud of them. One advertisement featured a student changing a nappy with a home experiment kit in the background.

Steven Rose, the OU’s first professor of biology, established the Brain Research Group, now the British Neuroscience Association. This was important in the development of the new field of neuroscience. He insisted that the OU engage in research and

that we were going to teach science, not “about science’. … Our view was that an OU science graduate should be able to compete on level terms with those from any other university when it came to going on to a science-based career, including research. And teaching science meant, above all, lab experience.

The OU also posted out plastic brains that could be taken apart for study and then reassembled.

 

 

 

50 objects for 50 years. No 45. Drake Court

Posted on February 25th, 2019 at 12:01 am by Daniel Weinbren

The court, to be found around the back of the Gardiner Building, is named after Michael Drake, the first Dean of Social Sciences. He is also why Social Sciences courses are prefixed ‘D’. He recalled how in late 1968 or early 1969 the VC’s Committee of the OU (now the VCE) met.

An item on the agenda was to give a letter to each of the proposed Foundation courses and all courses thereafter.  Some letters were easy; ‘S’ for Science, ‘E’ for Education, ‘A’ for Arts etc.  But what about Social Sciences?  SS seemed inappropriate and anyway two letters would double inputting time.  I piped up – ‘Isn’t it obvious?  ‘O.K, D it is’ and Joe Clinch then Assistant Secretary, minuted it.

Now an Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, Michael Drake contributed to numerous modules both in print and on the television and radio. He has encouraged communication between staff, been active in the local history society and his recollections have appeared in the local press. A longer recording has been made for the OU Archives. Much of his research and teaching focused on the population studies (he studied half-a-million baptism, marriage and burial records from Morley Wapentake, Yorkshire as part of an early project). He wanted to bring elements from the social sciences together with elments from the traditions associated with historians.

Building on his interest in the integration of a popular interest in family history with the disciplines of history and the social sciences Michael Drake and colleagues developed a series of OU modules. Historical Sources and the Social Scientist, D301, which was presented 1974-1988, enabled students to engage in ‘explorations of the past undertaken for the explicit purpose of advancing social scientific enquiry’. Students’ history dissertations, on topics of their choice, employed social scientific methods to complete history dissertations. Between 1994 and 2001 Family and Community History: 19th and 20th centuries, DA301 was presented. Framed by the wider OU commitment to recognizing and valuing the students’ knowledge and experience it too emphasised the need to employ the scientific methods of clearly identifying aims, hypothesizing and using theoretical models against which the findings of local research might be set. Using a problem-based learning approach, students were taught the skills required for small-scale research. On one occasion, with financial support from the Wellcome Trust, he helped over 30 students to explore the history of infant mortality in the years 1871-1910 with a focus on individuals. The studdents submitted their work for a BPhil, an MPhil or a DPhil. He sought to collapse the dichotomy of ‘inside-out and outside-in’, that is to merge the separate, parallel, streets leading either to universities from independent scholarship or vice versa. This was realised in his work for Object Number 25, FACHRS.

50 objects for 50 years. No 44. Whitehall

Posted on February 17th, 2019 at 10:01 pm by Daniel Weinbren

Recognising that a ‘very eccentric institution is a university funded directly by the state, and run by a direct grant from the state’, as noted John Pratt of the OU in 1970, Whitehall, which was an object of significant influence, is this week’s object.

The number of UK universities more than doubled from 20 to 43 during the 1960s but, unlike other new UK universities, the OU, opened in 1969, was not part of a plan developed by the existing committee or was the result of lobbying by local authorities or interest groups. The decision to create the university was made before the main site for it, Milton Keynes, was decided and indeed before concrete started being poured to construct the new city of Milton Keynes. Rather, the British parliamentary system enabled a relatively small number of people to work through Ministerial fiat. The OU has been called the ‘pet scheme’ of the Labour Party Prime Minister and is said to be marked by his, Wilson’s ‘personal imprint’. Being directly controlled by the Minister, rather than being run through the same committee that other universities were, the OU was subject to debates in Parliament and closer investigation than other universities. The OU took the form it took because of the interventions of Labour Minister Jennie Lee. After Labour lost power in 1970 the new Conservative Minister, Margaret Thatcher, sought to amend the entry rules to encourage greater competition and the government directed the OU to support various overseas ventures as part of its diplomatic efforts. It buttressed open learning institutions in The Netherlands, Nigeria, Surinam and Thailand. It sent teams to Iran, Pakistan, it helped the Israelis to establish an Open University.

As a university created by central government and directly accountable to the Department of Education and Science the OU was subject to frequent scrutiny of its activities, budgets and teaching materials. The OU grant was reviewed annually and the OU was forbidden to carry over income from one year to another unless the expenditure was for the development of teaching materials. In addition, the OU could not accumulate reserves, nor own property against which it could borrow money. Formally, there was little scope for errors in budget management. However, costing such an innovative venture was difficult and in practice there was some flexibility. This was perhaps in recognition that the OU was not treated as other universities were. It was not within the remit of the University Grants Committee. The OU’s first VC, Walter Perry noted that, ‘our financial health has been maintained not so much because of lucky budgetary guesses in those early years but because of the extremely understanding and sympathetic way in which the Department of Education and Science (DES) has viewed our problems’. It was crucial that the fledgling university was not directly competing for funds with powerful and unsympathetic conventional universities.

As the university became more established, the demerits of this mode of funding began to outweigh the benefits. It was difficult to plan over the medium term because of the numerous challenges which required immediate resolution. Short-term resource allocation, in response to specific events or initiatives, was favoured, as, according to VC John Horlock, ‘it mattered to our masters at the DES when £500,000 was overspent one year (from a budget of well over £100 million)’. There was also concern that funding decisions were made on party- political grounds. John Horlock complained that ‘the civil servants liked to have their fingers in the OU pie, whereas I hardly saw a civil servant in all my time at Salford’ (where he had previously worked). He also noted that while the government determined student numbers, discouraged research and denied proposals for postgraduate funding, ‘ventures close to its own policies’ received support.

A Visiting Committee was appointed in order to advise the minister on the financial and other plans. Between 1982 and 1990 it was chaired by Sir Austin Bide. It was a period when the amount of government grant per undergraduate fell by over a quarter in real terms. Its eleven members visited a summer school and Walton Hall in 1982 and proposed improvements to the assessment system, which were implemented. Its recommendations led to changes in staffing, acceptance that the OU should continue to engage in research and that there should be a change in the funding arrangements. When the OU sought to expand postgraduate teaching and to fund some undergraduate-level courses in the continuing education programme through the core funding it had to make its case through the Visiting Committee. Sir Austin Bide was also a member of the Croham Report on the University Grants Committee which, as part of a wider brief, reviewed the relationship between the OU and the University Grants Committee. It received evidence from the OU’s Vice-Chancellor and others at the OU and did not recommend the integration of the OU. It did, however, propose the replacement of the University Grants Committee by a group half drawn from outside the world of education.

During the 1980s, Keith Joseph, Secretary of State for Education 1981–86, adopted the view that the impact of the university-educated elite of the UK had been economically detrimental as it was wary of commercial and industrial activity. Keith Joseph’s 1985 White Paper, The Development of Higher Education into the 1990s, envisaged a smaller higher education sector. The sector, meanwhile, responded to the prevailing climate by consciously adopting industry-based models of management, which were endorsed in the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals’ 1985 Report of the Steering Committee for Efficiency Studies in Universities. The Committee, which was chaired by  industrialist Sir Alex Jarratt, emphasised an enterprise culture and specific managerial styles and structures. It also called for improvements to strategic planning and resource allocation within all universities and proposed performance reviews. This framework was already relatively familiar to the OU. It argued that it had already created structures which were in line with the recommendations of the Jarratt Report, notably a Vice-Chancellor’s Management Team and a Senate and Council connected to the Strategic Planning Resources Committee. Other universities took steps to implement its main recommendations. In the development of its management systems the OU was in some respects further down a path which all universities would have to follow.

The ease of access to OU materials and the direct line between the university and the national civil service enabled a number of Ministers to comment on OU teaching materials over the course of a decade. On being told that a social science course showed a Marxist bias in its critique of monetarism, Sur Keith Joseph read all the relevant teaching materials, visited the OU and summoned the University’s Vice Chancellor ‘to what proved’, the VC John Horlock recalled ‘to be a very difficult interview’. Anastasios Christodoulou (the University Secretary, 1968–80) said that the Minister ‘didn’t like the OU at all’ and thought that the OU ‘was politically motivated, ideologically unsound and its standards suspect and I’m almost quoting’. In 1988 the government the body which administered funding to the universities was abolished. This ‘buffer’ was replaced with that which academic Robert Anderson described as ‘more feeble barrier against direct state control’. The OU was joined by other universities in a new system. It no longer enjoyed a near-unique status within Whitehall.

 

50 objects for 50 years. No 43. Examination papers

Posted on February 11th, 2019 at 12:01 am by Daniel Weinbren

Stamps and papers: This examination paper, from a second level module ‘History of Mathematics’ was sat on 30th October 1979. For one of the Questions students were invited to look at the cuneiform numeral and were asked ‘What does this number signify?’.

The OU issued Examination and Assessment Boards with rulers and green pens so that a clear line could be drawn on the print out which delineated which students were in each category. Of greater interest to at least some Board members (mostly those with a barely suppressed desire to be that caricature of librarians or with fond memories of a John Bull printing press) was the other item in the picture. It is the stamp which was used at the meetings of the Examination Boards. ‘Considered by the Board’ meant that a script had been taken from its place in the files, assessed by one or more Board members and sometimes regraded.

Back in 1979 at many universities the external examiners would arrive each summer, look over some Finals papers and approve the assessment processes. At the OU there was a concern that the university was not seen as having the same status of other universities and that students writing their TMAs out of sight of their tutors might have received unacknowledged help. Although there were many other ways to assess, the unseen examination paper came to dominate. The shift away from the model of a course in which six assignments constituted half the overall marks and a three-hour unseen exam constituted the other half, took a long time. This model, it was argued, would counter the possibility of cheating. The OU came under criticism because, being open, it was easy to learn from it. Having listened to some OU radio broadcasts philosopher Roger Scruton claimed that one OU sociology course was ‘certainly biased’ and concluded that a student ‘who learns to write a perfect examination answer in Marxism’ would be rewarded. He also claimed that OU students’ minds ‘are neither impressionable nor truly open’. In the face of such remarks the OU employed external examiners for every module. Often these examiners would spend a whole day considering scripts and marks and the general standard of work. In 1971 the examination budget was £130,000 and this had risen to £220,000 by 1973. As it took only 10 per cent of a Foundation course cohort to be on an examination borderline for the results of 600 individuals to be reconsidered, the OU swiftly resorted to the use of computers. However, human beings remained central. Through its extensive use of external examiners and assessors the OU sought to maintain parity of standards with other institutions. Today the concerns that the OU sought to allay have spread. The ‘essays mills’ problem (buying material to pass off as your own) is rife across many institutions and there have been cases of personation in examinations. Many universities use software to check that electronically-submitted work is not copied.
Ian Price was stationed in Bagram, Afghanistan, on the day he had to take a German oral exam. The Ministry of Defence permitted him to make a call and he did his oral examination over the phone. Despite the telephone being cut off twice, he passed. Whether the exam is being sat in a quiet hall, in a prison, under fire in Afghanistan or on a Polaris submarine, what has not changed since my mother sat the examination pictured (her marginalia is preserved on the paper) is that sense of dread. Although her Headteacher wrote to say that she was likely to succeed, my mother left school a few months before she could matriculate. This was so that she could come to England, which was then at war. By the 1970s her ideas about exams must have been hazy. Many OU students would have last sat an exam at school and would not have passed. Those memories can intrude. Richard Baldwyn recalled ‘the dreaded [OU] exam’ which led him to be ‘transported back some fifty years’. Michael Hume felt that the OU helped him to overcome ‘the huge mental blocks A levels were giving me’. In its early years the OU employed Tutor-Counsellors. They were responsible for all first-year tuition (they assessed assignments) and counselling on the broader educational needs of the student. Student counsellor Peter Grigg remembered the first years of the OU and how ‘One student had to be helped to the examination hall, his state of mind being such that his grip on the stair rail had to be forced free to get him to the room.’ Student Christine Smith recalled that the evening before the exam ‘I panicked and phoned my tutor and said I couldn’t do the exam – I just couldn’t revise – I knew nothing. Very patiently she talked me through what I had to do and convinced me of how much I did know and gave me the confidence to take the exam. I passed’.
The OU wants to reward success and examiners (human being who have sat many exams themselves) consider that under examination conditions people often panic. Statistically, if you make it to the examination hall, you are very likely to pass.
All best with your assessment.

 

 

50 objects for 50 years. No 42. The Perry Building

Posted on February 4th, 2019 at 12:01 am by Daniel Weinbren

The Perry Building (see illustration) is on the Milton Keynes campus and is named after Walter Laing Macdonald Perry KT OBE, Baron Perry of Walton, (1921 – 2003). One of the influential Scots at the OU he was born in Dundee in 1921. He died in 2003 and was the subject of obituarties in the Independent and Guardian.

The image here includes the art work outside the building.

As its founding Vice-Chancellor Walter Perry was central to the creation and establishment of The Open University. He was appointed in May 1968, felt that the OU could ‘change the face of education not only in Britain but in the world’ and set out to transform learning and teaching. There were 42,000 applications to start studying in 1971 of whom 25,000 were accepted. Other UK universities which opened in the 1960s started with a few hundred students. He established a successful system for transfer of academic credits and he encouraged prisoners to study at the OU. Despite opposition from those who felt the OU should only teach, he noted that ‘it was the intent of the new university to promote the research activities of its academic staff, an intent from which the Open University has never wavered’. Many knew him as a skilled negotiator, despite the fact that as he noted ‘at one Senate meeting in 1971 each member received 487 pages of typescript weighing 2lbs 15 oz’. He was also flexible. When the site was a sea of mud he sent out for slippers which were issued to staff. He initially demonstrated little interest in the regions and nations, claiming that he used an amended version of the further educational administrative boundaries because ‘we had no coherent plan for the regions when we started; they were simply allowed to evolve’. Nevertheless, the model of central planning was amended to encompass the specific needs and aspirations of nations. He insisted on high academic and pedagogic standards noting that

the standard of teaching in conventional universities was pretty deplorable. It suddenly struck me that if you could use the media and devise course materials that would work for students all by themselves, then inevitably you were bound to affect – for good – the standard of teaching in conventional universities. I believed that to be so important that it overrode almost everything else.

He also recognised how difficult it was to study with the OU. His history of the OU, Walter Perry, Open University: A personal account by the first Vice-Chancellor (Milton Keynes: Open University, 1976) was one of the blocks upon which Daniel Weinbren, The Open University, A history (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014) was built.

 

 

 

50 objects for 50 years. No 41. Trade Unions

Posted on January 28th, 2019 at 12:01 am by Daniel Weinbren

After negotiations reaching back to 2002 the new contract for Associate Lecturers (ALs) is going to be implemented over the next two years. This was after 93% of AL union members who voted in a union ballot, favoured the new contract. Casual labour has long been an important element of staffing at the OU. In the past it was only when students signed up for a module that the ALs to teach them are employed. If the number of students fell then, although efforts were made to avoid this, ALs might not be contracted. The new, permanent contract for over 4,000 ALs will mean more job security for tutors, as well as better terms and conditions, more staff development opportunities, and improved long term planning. The Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Mary Kellett spoke of this being ‘a huge step towards an inclusive OU family and a united teaching workforce’. UCU regional official Lydia Richards said: ‘The new contract is a huge step forward for associate lecturers at the Open University. It means they are free from the fear of being out of work if there is a fluctuation in student numbers’.

In the light of this development, this week’s object is the trade unions at the Open University. Members of a number of unions have worked at the OU. Currently two trade unions are recognised at the OU. UNISON was created in 1993 through the merger of a number of unions, including the National Union of Public Employees, founded 1905. It negotiates on behalf of Secretarial and Clerical, Industrial Production Staff and Manual and Ancillary staff at the OU. This includes members who work for private contractors on an OU location. In addition to employment Terms and Conditions UNISON offers advice and support regarding Leave Entitlement, Health and Safety, Bullying and Harassment and it also offers services such as Insurance, Holidays and Legal Advice. Based at Walton Hall, it has representatives at all the OU locations. These include Walton Hall, the Regions, the Nations and the Wellingborough Warehouse.


At Walton Hall the pensions strike picket line, Princess Leia, sporting her bagel-style haircut, helped with the leafleting. Strikers were also supported by the local prospective Labour MP, Cllr Hannah O’Neill.


 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

The OU branch of the University and College Union negotiates with the University’s management on behalf of academic, research, AL and academic-related staff. It encourages staff to have a voice in the strategy and future of the university. Fifty years before the OU received its Royal Charter the Association of University Teachers (AUT) was formed. In 1949 the Scottish AUT (formed 1922) affiliated to the AUT (UK) as the AUT (Scotland). Almost from the start the AUT was active within the OU. It was joined by the Association of University and College Lecturers in 1992 and in 2006 it merged with the National Association for Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) to form the University and College Union (UCU). The union’s trained caseworkers have provided support and advice to members on a wide range of issues. Unreasonable treatment, such as bullying, discrimination and unfair dismissal have been challenged. There have been campaigns about the gender pay gap, job losses, casualisation, excessive workload and many other issues. The union has not simply been reactive. It has encouraged members to work together and to imagine how education could be better. There has also been support from the central officials and representatives of the union. Following votes, members have gone on strike with other branches around the country, most recently over pensions. Whilst most UCU branches have a membership based in one campus or a single town, the OU branch has Associate Lecturer and Staff Tutor members across Britain and Ireland. The UCU has often campaigned to defend students, opposing the decision to introduce high fees for learners. It has, in turn, received support from students. When tutors have explained that their reasons for postponing the assessment of students’ work, they have received letters and emails of support.
Specially-produced clothing to promote a campaign at the OU.

There have been other initiatives to engage with trade unions and industrial workers. In 1977, in an OU television programme and an internal paper Dr Ke  Jones drew on his own research in order to demonstrate that education was perceived as middle class He proposed study centres in industrial premises and the offer of guaranteed places for industrial workers. (Ken Jones, Given half a chance: A study of some factors in cultural disadvantage affecting the acquisition of learning skills in adults). The OU has also been in partnership with Unionlearn, the learning and skills organisation of the Trades Union Congress which helps trade unions provide opportunities for their members to learn.

 

 

 

 

50 objects for 50 years. No 40. Scotland

Posted on January 20th, 2019 at 12:01 am by Daniel Weinbren

 

Right. The Open University in Scotland,  Jennie Lee House, 9-11 Drumsheugh Gardens, Edinburgh

On the left, Dr Gerry Mooney, OU Staff Tutor in Scotland and author and co-author of many texts including an article which won the Sociological Review 2017 prize for outstanding scholarship: Place revisited: Class, stigma, urban restructuring in the case of Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games.

Although the OU has never simply been in Walton Hall, Milton Keynes the assumption that the OU was to be a unitary institution to serve the whole nation was illustrated by the editor of the Times Educational Supplement, who in 1971, called it ‘England’s Open University’. This marginalises that Scots have played a significant part in the shaping of the OU. Harold Wilson first announced his plans for a ‘University of the Air’ in Glasgow Concert Hall, and Jennie Lee (the MP who did so much to create the OU) and Walter Perry, the founder Vice Chancellor, brought their experiences of Scottish universities to the OU. The Scottish Education Department attended the Advisory Committee which helped to shape the OU. Scottish personnel brought experiences of specific features of higher education that were particularly relevant to the OU. The four-year degree was widely accepted in Scotland and the Scottish Universities Council for Studies in Education had already explored credit transfer systems.  Stirling University offered modular degrees from its inception in 1967. These precedents encouraged the OU’s planners to believe that a modular system, necessary as students often took breaks within their studies or did not seek to complete an entire degree, could successfully be developed. Members of the Planning Committee included Professor Lord Ritchie-Calder, Professor of International Relations at University of Edinburgh and Roderick Maclean, Director, University of Glasgow Television Services. Winnie Ewing, Scottish National Party President 1987–2005, suggested that the honorary doctorate she received from the OU in 1993 was ‘in recognition of my role in establishing it’.

The Scottish local authorities were given the right to nominate a member of the OU’s Council. They brought with them the confidence that working-class students could attend a university, a notion with a longer pedigree in Scotland than in England. Since the nineteenth century there had been a large number of bursaries for university places in Scotland and there are strong traditions of independent working- class education in Scotland. In the 1860s 1 in 1,000 people went to university in Scotland compared with 1 in 5,800 in England, and 20 per cent of students at universities in Scotland were of working-class origin. OU students were not always like those from England. Among the first ten cohorts of OU graduates 44 per cent were teachers, but this was only 37 per cent in Scotland, where there had long been many graduate teachers; the percentage of teachers without previous degrees was 41 per cent across the UK but only 29 per cent in Scotland.83 In addition, 20 per cent of Scottish students were geographically remote.

Once established the regional structure enabled the OU to adapt to differences within the United Kingdom. Roger Carus, the first Scottish Director of The Open University, ignored ‘“instructions” from Milton Keynes when he believed they did not meet Scottish needs’. Neil McCormick (an arts Staff Tutor in Scotland) noted that the Scots working in Edinburgh felt obliged not only to appoint and supervise staff in Scotland, but also to adapt OU teaching to local conditions. Scotland has a different legal system, different educational traditions, an Established Church of its own and a distinctive cultural history. The distance between the university’s central administration and its furthest flung students put a lot of mileage on its Scottish staff, as Neil McCormick noted: ‘Stornaway Tuesday, Milton Keynes Thursday’.

Soon after the tuition fees doubled in the course of four years he pointed out the inequalities of access in Scotland and McCormick commented, ‘The better-off can travel from Arran to Aberdeen, just for a day school, if they want to. The others may not be able to, even once a year.’ A generation later when fees were raised the OU’s Young Applicants in Schools and Colleges Scheme (whereby about 25,000 school students studied OU modules) was closed in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It was retained in Scotland where the fees were remained the same.

The teaching methods had to be adapted as the reception of broadcasts was unreliable in some parts of Scotland and the distances people were required to travel, if they sought to attend tutorials, were vast. However, there were compensations: staff who went to Kirkwall and Lerwick spoke of how they returned with sides of lamb from appreciative local organisers. For part-time staff with more generic roles, location counsellors, location centres (rather than study centres) and telephone and later video conferencing were employed. Telephone tutorials were developed by, amongt others, Judith George These were for those who lived in remote locations, some disabled students and those on some low-population courses.

The OU in Scotland gained a reputation for reaching out, providing evidence that the OU, while distant, was also nearby. The Scottish Director of The Open University from 1988, John Cowan, an educator of international reputation, was involved in many local issues and networks and active in securing access to university education for the Highlands and Islands. Emeritus Professor Ian Donnachie chaired Validation Panels for OU Validation Services, the Centre for Inclusion and Collaborative Partnerships, and acted as an assessor with QAA, the Scottish Funding Council, and reviewer for the Arts and Humanities Research Council. He also took a long-term interest in the heritage of the New Lanark World Heritage Site, helping to develop a search room and archive at New Lanark.  Professor Christopher Harvie was a senior lecturer in history at the OU before becoming an elected Member of the Scottish Parliament. Katla Helgason started to study at the OU in 1971. She became a tutor, established the Scottish Prison Scheme which replaced ad hoc arrangements with prisons, and later became the Assistant Director OU in Scotland. She went on to be active within National Dementia Carers Action Network.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

50 objects for 50 years. No 39. The Stuart Hall Building

Posted on January 14th, 2019 at 12:01 am by Daniel Weinbren

The Stuart Hall Building, on the Walton Hall campus, is this week’s object.

It was named after Professor Hall, 1932 —2014, a Jamaican-born British cultural theorist, sociologist, and political activist. Hall’s father was the first nonwhite person to hold a senior position within the Jamaican office of United Fruit. This was a powerful American farming and agricultural corporation. His mother was mixed-race. In 1951, Hall won a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford and became engaged with radical politics. Following Kruschev’s ‘secret’ speech of 1956 and the Russian invasion of Hungary, many Communists left the Communist Party. The Reasoner, later The New Reasoner, was created to address some of their concerns. Another journal, less associated with former Communists, was also founded, Universities and Left Review. Stuart Hall was the first editor-in-chief when, in 1960, these journals merged into New Left Review. Hall joined Birmingham University’ Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in 1964, became acting director in 1968 and Director in 1972.

Hall was a popular public intellectual, frequently calling for social justice and against nuclear proliferation.

 

He left Birmingham University in 1979 to become a professor of sociology at the Open University. He noted that the OU was ‘filled with good social democrats. Everybody there believes in the redistribution of educational opportunities and seeks to remedy the exclusiveness of British education’. He later pointed out ‘it would have been funny to come to the OU and not to be committed to redistributing educational opportunities’. He remained at the OU until he retired in 1997 and became a Professor Emeritus. He played a full part in teaching and research. One of the modules with which he was involved included a popular teaching text: Paul Du Gay, Stuart Hall, Linda Janes and Hugh Mackay, Doing Cultural Studies: The story of the Sony Walkman (London: Sage, in association with The Open University, 1997).

His ideas about race, gender and culture informed much of the OU’s teaching. His focus was less on the conventional division between the culture of the masses and the validated culture of the dominant, the music and books that were supposed to teach people how to be civil and which would reveal them as well-mannered. Rather, for Hall, culture was ‘experience lived, experience interpreted, experience defined’. It was a site of ‘negotiation’ and popular culture was ‘where this struggle for and against a culture of the powerful is engaged: it is also the stake to be won or lost in that struggle’.

50 objects for 50 years. No 38. The annual Innovating Pedagogy reports.

Posted on January 7th, 2019 at 12:01 am by Daniel Weinbren

Naomi Sargant (later Lady McIntosh) studied sociology, worked within market research and was an associate of Michael Young on the National Consumer Council. She joined the OU in 1970, becoming Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Student Affairs; 1974–78) and a Professor of Applied Social Research. Through sample surveys and interview she brought the disciplines of marketing to education before anybody else did. Since that period the Institute of Educational Technology, which she helped to establish in 1970, has become a leading European research institute in the field of innovative education. It operates alongside teaching and strategic work at the OU and provides support for doctoral students as well as running a Masters in Online and Distance Education.

The impact of IET’s research has been far-reaching, leading to improvements in practice and policy. Its research on using mobile technology to enhance education, resulted in institutional and national policymakers signing formal declarations committing to the development of mobile learning across Europe. Its research also lies behind the OpenLearn website – now accessed by over 22 million visitors. It also works in the fields of Learning Design and Learning Analytics and its contributions for almost 50 years have led to worldwide recognition and considerable funding from a wide range of sources

Since 2012 colleagues within IET have produced annual reports outlining recent relevant educational developments. The 7th annual Innovating Pedgogy, the 2019 edition, echoes its predecessors in providing information about newforms of teaching, learning and assessment. The report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency and have the potential to provoke major shifts in educational practice. These are

Playful learning

Learning with robots

Decolonising learning

Drone-based learning

Learning through wonder

Action learning

Virtual studios

Place-based learning

Making thinking visible

Roots of empathy

Social and emotional learning

 

 

This guide to teachers and policy makers interested in making the most of interactivity reflects the values of the Open University.

1. There is collaboration. The OU worked with the Centre for the Science of Learning & Technology (SLATE), University of Bergen, Norway.

2. There is co-operation. The authors include

Innovative pedagogy in the Legacy Garden, Walton Hall campus

Rebecca Ferguson,

Tim Coughlan,

Kjetil Egelandsdal,

Mark Gaved,

Christothea Herodotou,

Garron Hillaire,

Derek Jones,

Iestyn Jowers,

Agnes Kukulska-Hulme, Patrick McAndrew,

Kamila Misiejuk, Ingunn Johanna Ness,

Bart Rienties, Eileen Scanlon,

Mike Sharples, Barbara Wasson,

Martin Weller, Denise Whitelock

 

3. There is openness. The material is openly available on the web. Permission is granted under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this report freely, provided that attribution is made.

 

4. There are international links. There are versions in Chinese, Hebrew and Korean.

 

 

50 objects for 50 years. No 37. Conferencing software.

Posted on December 31st, 2018 at 12:01 am by Daniel Weinbren

 

The use of technology to promote co-operative and collaborative learning goes back to the earliest days of the OU. Despite initial complaints from the GPO, which ran the UK telephone system at the time, since 1973 telephones were used to support the physically isolated, the itinerant, the housebound and the shiftworkers who were often unable to attend tutorials. Expert strategies were developed and a pack produced. Advice was offered to tutors about encouraging students to gather around a loudspeaker telephone for self-help activity ‘with the added bonus of you taking part from a distance – like an academic Cheshire cat’. Soon audio conferencing, which could involve up to eight people on telephones in different locations, was  employed as were faxes, personalised audio-cassette messages and video-conferencing.

In 1988 the OU introduced courses which required students to have access to a desktop computer. It presented Information technology: Social and technological issues, DT200, (1988–94). This used computer conferencing. By 1990 about 2,000 students were using CoSy to communicate with tutors and with other students. Programming and programming languages, M353 (1986–99) required a home computing facility, while Matter in the universe, S256 (1985–92) provided computer assisted learning for home computers and employed interactive videotape. Students were given opportunities to buy or rent computers. In 1995 twenty courses, with a total of almost 21,000 students, required undergraduates to have access to an MS-DOS machine. Conferencing enabled students to select a time which was convenient to them to respond. This did not offer the immediacy of quick-fire debate but it did provide opportunities for reflective dialogue. The large-scale use of this facility on Information technology, DT200, helped to shift the focus within the OU away from the individual learner towards consideration of how best to support social interaction. Individual students were encouraged to construct personal meaning and to contribute to their own learning and that of others through online discussion.


Information technology: Social & technological issues, DT200 (1988–94) introduced many students to computer conferencing with this electronic map of a virtual campus.

 

A new text-based conferencing system was developed. In 1994 FirstClass was provided for undergraduate courses following successful trials of the collaborative learning activities that it supported. It was considered to be much more intuitive a system than CoSy and within a year 5,000 students were conferencing. By 1996 there were 13,000 and soon 50,000. Initially the conferencing facility was used for interactions previously carried out by phone or letter. Tutors offered advice and responded to requests via FirstClass. The house-bound and those overseas began to exchange ideas with other students, particularly if conferencing was structured and linked to assessment. The university began to devise guidance for tutors on conference moderation and ideas about conferencing were further developed for an online course You, your computer and the net, T171 (1999–2005), which enrolled around 10,000 students in its first year and had 12,500 students by 2000. In addition to access to an extensive website students received a CD-ROM of software and set texts.

As new ways of providing interactive and individualised support for learners became possible so the importance of maintaining face-to-face contact declined. The OU study centre had begun life as ‘a “Listening and Viewing Centre” with the express purpose of providing access to VHF radio and BBC2’. Used for counselling and other purposes, many initially cost little to rent. The increased use of home video players and desktop computing cast some doubt on the value of study centres.


Typical FirstClass screen, 1996

On Discovering science, S103, computer-mediated communication was optional for students but a requirement for ALs. They used FirstClass to access a national conference at least once a week and they could also exchange messages using conferences designed for the localities in which they were based. ALs were provided with guidance as to how to teach in the interactive seminars and offered practical advice which reflected the ethos of OU teaching practices. It was suggested, for example, that they ‘adopt an informal, friendly tone. Start a message with a greeting such as “Hello” … avoid the more formal “Dear Chris”.’ In addition, they were told that ‘CMC is a medium devoid of warmth and you need to compensate for this’.

Learning was integrated with practice and students were required to submit their work electronically. They communicated not only with the central computing facility but also with one another and their tutors. Groups of about fifteen worked collaboratively on projects in their own tutor-moderated conferences. Reflection was integral to the assessment. Students were required to provide evidence of participation in online discussions. The intention was to use the new delivery modes to ensure that the OU’s environment remained congenial and supportive of the creation of knowledge by learners.

Online conferencing enabled data to be recorded for later analysis of how students learn and which were the most effective teaching strategies. Illustrations from Morris, R.M., Mitchell, N. & Bell, M. Student Use of Computer Mediated Communication in an Open University Level 1 Course: Academic or Social? Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 99, 2, 1999.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Students studying ‘Environmental practice: Negotiating policy in a global society’, D833, used conferencing software Lyceum to represent different specific countries attending a virtual United Nations. They were given the problem of constructing a shared agreement through virtual UN negotiations. Negotiation was presented as an interactive dynamic, social activity and mutual learning process. Students were encouraged to understand both negotiation and how practi- tioners deploy theory through engaging in reflection on the simulation. They were also invited to keep non-assessed negotiation journals. An evaluation of the first presentation suggested that they appreciated the sense of community engendered and the support for reflection. Some of them said that they used the negotiation skills they had acquired in other situations and that they felt empowered by the course. While this module simulated a workplace, the United Nations General Assembly, other courses written for practitioners overtly tied their practical workplace activities to their studies. See David Humphreys, ‘The pedagogy and practice of role-play: Using a negotiation simulation to teach social science theory’, Proceedings of the International Conference on Computers in Education (ICCE) ‘Learning Communities on the Internet: Pedagogy in Implementation’ (Auckland, New Zealand, 3–6 December 2002).