International Open Learning Conference 2000
Brisbane, Australia
7 December 2000
Generating Opportunities for Questions and Answers
by
Sir John Daniel
The Open University (UK) and The United States Open University
Introduction
It is a real pleasure to be in Australia again and a great honour to be the opening speaker at this conference entitled Open Learning 2000. This country has been a leader in opening up learning to those outside the normal formal settings. In the 19th century you were a pioneer correspondence education because the tyranny of distance that afflicted internal communication within Australia forced you to operate in new ways.
In the 20th century Australia became a leader in external studies as universities realised that they had to offer opportunities for people either to study on campus or to study in homes and communities far removed from the campus. You also, of course, created the School of the Air, which captured the imagination of people around the world. I remember coming to Australia for the 1985 World Conference of the International Council for Distance Education in Melbourne. My wife and I came to Melbourne early and embarked on a tour of the country. Australian colleagues were extraordinarily hospitable and we came back with wonderful memories. One of them was of arriving in Alice Springs, after a stopover to climb Ayer’s Rock, and seeing the inspiring reality of the School of the Air.
Given this background it is not surprising that, as we begin the 21st century, Australia is a leader in the world of online learning. In recent years I have frequently met colleagues from other countries who have returned from a visit to this country seriously impressed by the grip that you are taking on the e-world.
Your success in the contemporary methods of open learning is built on your long tradition of teaching at a distance. I believe that in order to achieve success with a new medium for distance learning you must root yourself in the experience of the past. Each new wave of infatuation with distance learning leads its fans quickly to the discovery that someone has been there before them and has important lessons for them.
This happened from about 1995 onwards, when distance learning suddenly became all the rage in the United States. In the US at that time the fad for distance learning was very much technology driven and the key technology was synchronous video teaching to a set of remote sites. It is worth remembering, now that the web is all-conquering, that this was only five years ago.
It is an endearing feature of Americans that they think of themselves as the inventors of all the modern benefits of humanity, from sex to root beer. Thus it was a great surprise, when Americans discovered distance learning, for them to realise that others had got there first. Not only that, but that some of those others were doing distance learning on a rather large scale. For the country that invented the word ‘big’ this was a revelation. At the Open University in the UK we had to expand our visits office to cope with all the visiting Americans who felt that they had to come and check for themselves that we really did have well over 100,000 students learning at a distance and were ranked alongside the leading traditional UK universities for the academic quality of this activity.
But a generation earlier, when Britain itself discovered distance education and created the Open University, the same process had occurred. The OU’s founders looked around the world and found that others, notably in South Africa and here in Australia, already had a long track record of teaching at a distance. They came to visit and were particularly influenced by a visit to the University of New England at Armidale where their hosts impressed on them the desirability of bringing students together from time to time. This was the origin of the OU’s commitment to residential schools for some of its courses, and for the optional tutorial meetings that are a feature of its teaching system.
Although I would argue that Oxford University, where I was an undergraduate, is essentially an institution of distance learning, it was not until 1972, when I did an internship at the infant Open University, that I became involved with a university that dared speak the name ‘distance learning’. Those three months at the OU were a revelation on the road to Milton Keynes. I returned to Canada no longer at ease in the old dispensation and very soon embarked on a new career with the Télé-université. Towards the end of the 1970s, as I was moving to Athabasca University, I tried to summarise what I had learned about distance learning in a paper entitled Independence and Interaction: Getting the Mixture Right. To my surprise this paper became something of a classic.
I remember particularly the enthusiasm of Kevin Smith, then Director of External Studies at the University of New England, for what I had to say. Kevin later succeeded me as President of the International Council for Distance Education at the conference in Melbourne that I referred to. By then both of us had become fervent advocates of proper balance or appropriate mixture as the key to successful distance learning. As I see today’s enthusiasm for web-based learning leading us sometimes towards a lack of balance I wonder if I should update that old paper and give it a new title: Online and Offline: Getting the Mixture Right, or perhaps E-world and R-world: Getting the Balance Right – the r-world being, of course, the real world.
I’m not going to give that paper today, although I do want to talk about issues of balance – balance between teaching and learning and balance between questions and answers.
Why universities?
Let’s go back to basics for a minute and ask what is the purpose and role of universities. Three years ago the UK set up a Committee of Enquiry under Lord Dearing to answer that question. It concluded that the role of universities is ‘to enable society to maintain an independent understanding of itself and its world’. Let’s unpack that statement.
It focuses on society, not the nation, because this is a global world. University teaching can now cross national borders in the way that research has always done.
It talks about maintaining an understanding, not communicating an understanding, because things change, each society is in flux, theories evolve, understanding develops.
The definition talks about ‘understanding of itself’ because the understanding reached must be widely owned and disseminated. Understanding is not the preserve of an elite, but of a learning society.
The word independent is there to capture the unique role of universities as creators of understanding. In a knowledge society many claim the right to help us interpret and understand the world. However, most of those claimants, the media, industrial and government research centres, and the new breed of corporate universities, cannot be independent of commercial and political interests. The individualistic and disinterested nature of the true university remains unique.
Finally, understanding means going beyond information, it means going beyond knowledge, it means knowledge acquired with the sense of responsibility for how it comes to be known that can make it the foundation for action.
If that is the role of the university what must be the style of university learning? It must not stop at the transmission of information, nor at the communication of knowledge. It means the development of understanding. That is an iterative process involving a dialogue with oneself and others that moves toward a shared understanding. That shared understanding carries with it a critical distance leading eventually to a personal perspective from which learners take responsibility for what they know, how they came to know it and where they may properly apply it. Put another way, knowledge alone is insufficient, university education implies an understanding of the nature of knowledge.
We must recognise that from this perspective much of what universities now do is not university work. I hasten to say that I do not blame universities for this. Our societies have urged us to inculcate simple skills and to transmit well-codified knowledge and we have eagerly complied. Such activities have, however, obscured the core role of universities and encouraged a host of new players, who may well be better than established universities at teaching straightforward skills and knowledge, to call themselves universities and move into the field.
Looking at the wider economy of universities it is easy to be worried by these trends. Some universities have made their books balance by charging a mark-up for teaching some of the simple skills and well-codified knowledge in areas like business and IT that help the economy along. No one pretends that this kind of teaching requires much independence of thought. Indeed, the individualistic and disinterested nature of the true university style may be a positive handicap. However, lots of individuals and employers want this kind of teaching and most of our universities are supplying it.
Today various new providers are moving in to focus exclusively on that kind of teaching. In some jurisdictions these new suppliers are making inroads into enrolments at existing universities. Because they have a tight focus they do a good job within their frame of reference and have low overheads. Because they had to prise open a market they have been very student-centred, giving students precedence over staff when it comes to parking and similar revolutionary moves. They have made themselves distinctive. Some of them positively boast about the fact that they care little about the nature of knowledge, disinterested enquiry, independent thought and nourishment of teaching by research.
Agenda for change
How should we respond to this development once we’ve got over the stage of calling these newcomers by rude names: cherry pickers, cream skimmers or worse? Clearly we must use this development as an incentive for change. As he ruminates on the 20-year accreditation relationship between his North Central Association and the University of Phoenix Steve Crow concludes: ‘The University of Phoenix is probably not the model of 21st century higher education, but it clearly is an important model for understanding how higher education can change’. I suggest three areas of change, in ascending order of challenge.
Customer service
The first is simple. If the for-profit, virtual and corporate universities are really providing better customer care and nuts-and-bolts services to students then there is a nice benchmark for us to match. That is neither rocket science nor an affront to our academic dignity.
Discourse
Second, if we believe what we preach about independent thought, understanding the nature of knowledge and the importance of discourse between students and active researchers then we should apply that. I mean apply it even – perhaps particularly – in those areas of the curriculum where we have slipped into contenting ourselves with basic knowledge and skills transfer.
Last year I was on the receiving end of an attempt to do that. I’ve been a student for most of my career. One of the advantages of heading a distance teaching university is that you can take courses from your own institution without embarrassing anyone when the vice-chancellor pitches up in class. Last year I took a web-based course entitled T171 You, Your Computer and the Net. I did it for two reasons. First, to make me a more sophisticated and confident user of the technologies I use every day – and slightly less dependent on my office staff when I get stuck. Second, to sample the kind of service we give to students and, in this case, to assess for myself the pros and cons of web-based learning.
I’m pleased to say I passed. To have failed or dropped out, with my OU staff following my progress on the student record system, would have been ignominious. My major surprise was how much I was required to think. Indeed it was only after several weeks that I noticed the course had the subtitle Learning and Living in the Information Age. The course took seriously the fact that e-mail and computer conferences are new forms of human interaction and so we studied some of the relevant literature on transactions. It also assumed that the noisy information environment that is the World Wide Web requires its users to have the skills to sift and assess information and its sources so the course trained us in that too. Furthermore, the course insisted that technologies come with a history and makes us study the history of the PC and the Net in order to understand how we got to where we are today.
It would be perfectly possible to teach a course called You, Your Computer and the Net, even in a university, and be content with showing people how to use the hardware and software while throwing in some tips about good practice. As a university student, however, I found it appropriate that my course was subtitled Learning and Living in the Information Age and obliged me to think critically about the role and impact of this technology. I’m also glad I took the course because this year it has 12,000 students enrolled, so it is having a major impact.
The academic mode of thinking
The third area of change grows out of that example but has more far-reaching implications. I believe that we should expose our students much more explicitly to the academic mode of thinking because it will be a very important contribution to the betterment of society in this new century.
That’s rather sweeping so let me explain further and cite the evidence from the Open University that inspires this line of thinking. Three years ago Britain conducted a major survey of graduates with the aim of trying to define a concept called graduateness. The basic question was how does doing a university degree change someone? Graduates from all universities were included in the sample and, not surprisingly, the results did not differ greatly from institution to institution, except in one case. Graduates from the Open University, much more than graduates from elsewhere, said that university study had changed their lives.
That is odd. After all, the average age of OU students on entry is 34 so you would think their lives had achieved a degree of stability. Comments about not being able to teach old dogs new tricks come to mind. Conversely, you might think that the young, malleable students who study full-time after high school would be changed by the experience of university. No doubt they are, but they seem much less aware of it than our older OU students because it is mixed in with the general process of maturation.
Graduateness
How do Open University graduates say that study has changed them? Like all graduates they find that the degree has made them more employable. However, our mature students give greater importance to personal development than to employability. The American author Patricia Lunneborg has written two books, OU Women and OU Men, based on in-depth interviews with Open University graduates. They mention new careers, better job opportunities, more self-confidence, a sense of achievement, more opportunities in life and new friends as the results of their studies.
I particularly appreciated the man who told her, with a mixture of satisfaction and exasperation, that ever since doing a degree with the Open University he couldn’t see less than six sides to any question. That is what it is all about, the inculcation of the academic mode of thinking that makes hypotheses accompanied by the development of the systematic scepticism that examines the evidence. As young students gravitate increasingly to vocationally related courses and approach their university experience with more utilitarian and instrumental attitudes they may graduate with little proficiency in the academic mode of thinking and an attitude of credulity to authority rather than systematic scepticism.
On the evidence I’ve given it may be somewhat later, as lifelong learners, that they become mature students in both senses of the term: ready to seek understanding; more alert to the nature of knowledge; open to a discourse about what can be known.
Each year, at our twenty-five degree ceremonies, many thousands of Open University graduates comment to me individually about their studies. A surprising number do second, third and even fourth baccalaureate degrees. I hear the comment, ‘I’m now studying properly what I only did superficially as a young student doing my first degree’. You get my drift. University education, in its fullest sense, may well be wasted on the young. It is only later, as minds are matured by life experience, that they are ready for real university study.
Constructive and questioning engagement
But there is more. There is evidence that university study as a mature person makes a proportion of people more likely to get involved in the life of the wider community. I expect that Open University data is typical. 46% of our graduates report an enhanced interest in current affairs, reading non-fiction and watching more serious TV programs. 40% said that as a result of their studies they had become more interested in helping people in need. 20% had become more involved in cultural activities. 10% had become more involved in political activities.
These substantial percentages, applied to an OU graduating class exceeding 10,000 each year, are a contribution to a more cohesive society that becomes very significant if you add in similar proportions of the mature graduates from all universities. This assumes, of course, that engagement with the wider community is a good thing, but I plead guilty to that charge.
Thomas Jefferson said that humanity divides into two groups. There are those who fear and distrust the people and those who identify with the people and have confidence in them. It makes me proud that one product of Open University study is numbers of graduates who identify with the people and do something about it in the Jeffersonian tradition.
Those who have confidence in the people have always argued that consciousness is the key to improvements in the human condition. However, our power structures usually see the consciousness of the citizenry as a danger which must be lulled and channelled towards the inoffensive and superficial. We each have our views on where to raise the consciousness of our fellow citizens. The point of producing graduates who engage with the community is not to channel its concerns in a particular direction but to encourage the general civic consciousness that is the foundation for decent democracy.
For me a persuasive analysis is that of the Canadian author John Ralston Saul. In his book Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West he argues that since the Enlightenment we have perverted the use of reason by confusing it with technocratic expertise. We have become a society that wants instant answers from experts to each new question. Saul argues that a mature society should often prefer to live in doubt than to put its faith in such instant answers. I hope that my Open University graduate who cannot see less than six sides to any question will contribute to a society that is comfortable with doubt.
Such graduates provide a vital counterweight to the false certainties of the experts. Saul recalls that for the Romans sensus communis meant humanity and sensibility as well as common sense. Our more restricted use of the term common sense is, as he puts it, ‘the narrowing effect of a civilisation which seeks automatically to divide through answers when our desperate need is to unify the individual through questions’.
How do we follow through on such precepts? In particular, how do we react to the new technological forces of change? The response should recognise that these forces present threats to universities as well as opportunities. What are they?
First, new technology makes it easier to access information. But remember that university teaching is much more than this. Second, technology tends to drive the curriculum towards skills rather than knowledge and understanding. Third, technology is best exploited by teams whereas universities emphasise the creativity of the individual academic.
What is the best response to the opportunities and the most effective answer to the threats posed by technology? I distinguish between hard technologies and soft technologies. Hard technologies are bits and bytes, electrons and pixels, satellites and search engines. Soft technologies are processes, approaches, sets of rules and models of organisation. If you want to use the hard technologies for university-level teaching and learning that is both intellectually powerful and competitively cost-effective then you must concentrate on getting the soft technologies right.
These technologies are simply the working practices that underpin the rest of today’s modern industrial and service economy: division of labour, specialisation, teamwork and project management. But these are not the traditional working practices of universities. Although universities specialise and divide labour as between disciplines, the habit in teaching is for the same individual to do everything: develop the curriculum; organise the learning resources; teach the class; provide academic support; and assess student learning.
This robust, cottage-industry model does not require much organisation. However, it also does not allow us to reconfigure the eternally challenging triangle of cost-access-quality in the directions of lower costs, greater access and higher quality. I believe that the success of the Open University in reshaping that triangle in large measure on its adoption of working principles that are somewhat new to universities, division of labour in teaching and the notion of the course team being the most important of those principles.
How do I sum all this up? Very simply. Success in the coming era requires a radical change of focus. The tradition in universities is that the individual teacher teaches. The future is that the university teaches. This does not mean that the individual becomes unimportant. On the contrary, our experience at the Open University, where we now have 100,000 students online, teaches us that individual academics, the thousands of associate faculty that we call our tutors, are vital to the effectiveness of e-learning.
The sad fact is that when students work together online they can create confusion as well as clarity. My colleague Gilly Salmon has distilled the results of our experience of online teaching at scale in her recent book E-moderating: The key to teaching and learning online. I commend it to you. She shows that when properly organised online communication can be a powerful vehicle for the academic mode of thinking.
So the radical change of focus that I propose actually takes us back to the roots of universities in medieval times. It reinforces the notion of a community of scholars acting collectively while at the same time increasing the importance of the individual teacher in inculcating the academic mode of thinking. This new balance of power between the university as a collectivity and the individual academic as a creative teacher will help society to maintain an independent understanding of itself and its world.
References
Crow, S (1998) Ruminations on the Commission’s Relationships with the University of Phoenix, unpublished essay.
Daniel, JS and Marquis, C (1979) Independence and Interaction: Getting the Mixture Right. Teaching at a Distance Vol 14 pp 29-44
Lunneborg, P (1994) OU Women: Undoing Educational Obstacles, Cassell, London
Lunneborg, P (1997) OU Men: Working Through Lifelong Learning, Lutterworth, Cambridge
Salmon, GK (2000) E-moderating: The Key to teaching and learning online, Kogan Page
Saul, JR (1992) Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West, Penguin