OPEN HOUSE – November 2000
VC's Column
2001 – Objectives and Priorities
Towards the end of each year my senior colleagues and I discuss and formulate our key aims for the year ahead. This requires us to assess the trends in the external environment that will have an effect on the OU and to make judgements about how we should set priorities for our own work. We are now able to put the results of this work on the OU Intranet which has three advantages over circulating them on paper. First all staff can easily see what my colleagues and I are up to by going to http://intranet.open.ac.uk/vcom/shared/.
Second, since we can update these pages directly as circumstances change, you can be sure that you are looking at the current version. Third, we have included links from items in our statements of priorities to relevant documents and websites both inside and outside the OU. This means that you can readily explore items of interest in more detail and find out the state of play in particular projects.
We have arranged our objectives for the year under seven themes. A first task is to develop our courses, programmes and awards. Academic offerings are the lifeblood of the University and our curriculum continues to expand and diversify. Our set of Named Degrees still needs refinement and we are only in the early stages of designing a set of Foundation Degrees. A programme of short courses is under development, as is a new approach to initial teacher training and a bid to offer the first two years of a medical programme.
The second theme is serving students in the e-world. With 200,000+ people studying with us online (110,000 degree students and 100,000 in our Learning Schools Programme) we are the already the largest e-university. Our ambition is that the OU should also be the best University on the web and many exciting developments are under way to achieve this goal.
More prosaic, but equally important, is the theme of strengthening and diversifying the University community. This means reinforcing our equal opportunities policy, developing services for disabled students and widening access and participation.
Theme four centres on partnerships that will expand and enhance our impact. This includes our important link to the BBC, working with the British Council on the teaching of English, and multiplying our partnerships with further education colleges, notably in developing Foundation Degrees.
To achieve all these aim we will need to extend our innovative capability. This requires continued investment in developing our academic strengths in teaching and research and improving the sharing of know-how between units.
Success in all the above areas will position the OU as an important national and international academic force, the sixth theme of our objectives. The UK is experiencing both devolution and globalisation. Both present challenges and opportunities.
Finally, the seventh theme, managing the business, pulls the operational implications together. I hope that colleagues will find this website will be a useful point of reference.