28 APRIL 1998
By
Sir John Daniel
It is an interesting time because universities are under more pressure than ever to become more accessible, less costly and more flexible. At the same time they face what many believe are unprecedented opportunities to further their academic ideals through the use of new technology.
I have explored these issues in my book Mega-Universities and Knowledge Media: Technology Strategies for Higher Education, which, I am glad to say, has just come out in paperback after going through three printings in hardback at an outrageous price.
Today I would like to explore three topics from that book with you.
First, I shall argue that the mega-universities, which are distance teaching universities that enrol over 100,000 students, are very important for the future of higher education all over the world.
Second, I shall talk about one of the pioneering mega-universities, the UK Open University, which I now hav the honour to lead. I shall show that it is successful and suggest why it is successful.
Since I am a relatively new arrival at the OU after spending nearly all my academic career in France and Canada, I think I can bring some objectivity to this assessment.
Third, I shall argue that today's new technologies, the knowledge media, present important opportunities for the mega-universities. I shall suggest some goals that we should pursue in using these technologies and give some examples from the Open University.
Here is a list of all the mega-universities. There are now twelve of them and new ones are joining the list at the rate of about one a year. You can see that they exist all over the world, although not in America, which is why people in the States know little about this most important development in higher education.
I believe that mega-universities, and the methods they use, are now very important to the world.
That is because, in most of the world, very large numbers of students will be seeking access to universities in future years. Only the mega-universities can combine flexibility, quality, low cost and high volume in the ways needed to solve this problem.
The mega-universities now have an opportunity to reinforce their leadership. Today's new technologies will allow the mega-universities to serve students even better.
The challenge is for the mega-universities is to use these new technologies on a large scale at low cost. Of course, campus universities are also excited by these new technologies. However, when campus universities use new technologies they face a challenge too. They are in danger of simply increasing their costs - which are already too high.
I'd like to think aloud about the challenges facing the mega-universities in the hope that these reflections may illuminate your own situation at GWU.
If the mega-universities are to use technology well they must have clear answers to two questions.
First, what explains the success of the mega-universities in the past? Second, what are the important goals that the mega-universities should aim to achieve in the future?
In short: technology is the answer, but what was the question?
To find out what the question is I shall look at the experience of the UK Open University.
The Open University was created thirty years ago with two aims: to increase access to higher education and to use new technology - which then meant television - for university teaching.
At first the idea was called the University of the Air - which is the equivalent of the term virtual university today - but it was changed to the Open University.
The new name stressed ends, not means; the purpose, not the technology.
Those who set up the UK Open University were ambitious. They were determined that the quality of the Open University should be as good as the best of the other universities. That is important. I believe that all mega-universities should have high ambitions for quality - and I shall show that those ambitions can be achieved.
The inaugural ceremony of the Open University was held in 1969, in the week that the Apollo astronauts returned from the first landing on the moon. It was a time when everything seemed possible. At that ceremony the aims of the new University were stated in a simple way.
The purpose of the Open University is to be `open as to people, open as to places, open as to methods, and open as to ideas'.
The Open University began operations and in 1971 with a first cohort of 25,000 students. It has grown steadily ever since and now has over 150,000 students in degree programmes.
The Open University has been successful in achieving the four objectives set by its founders. Let me look at them in turn.
Open to people
First, to be open as to people.
The Open University is by far the largest university in the UK. In addition to the 170,000 students in degree programmes there are another 150,000 taking adult education courses or occupational qualifications in other institutions that are validated by the Open University.
But openness to people is not just numbers.
On almost any measure of the profile of the student body: gender, disability, ethnic origin, or socio-economic background, the Open University has greatly expanded the diversity of students entering higher education.
I know that George Washington University has a similar commitment to diversity.
I am proud that the Open University we have 800 students aged over 80. I awarded a degree to an 85 year old woman at the first of our 23 commencement ceremonies. At last Saturday's two ceremonies the oldest graduates were 73 and 74, the youngest 23 and 24.
We also have 5,000 students who declare a disability of one sort or another. New technologies are particularly helpful for serving these students.
One route to achieving this diversity was to remove all academic pre-requisites for entry to the undergraduate programme.
The Open University has shown that people without the usual school qualifications can succeed very well in university study if they are motivated and the teaching and learning system is well designed. Each year this category accounts for one-third of the new graduates of the Open University.
Open to places
In pursuit of its mission to be open as to places the Open University has become an increasingly international institution.
In 1998 there are more than 25,000 students taking Open University courses outside the UK.
The largest concentrations are elsewhere in the European Union, the former Soviet bloc (where courses are available in local languages), and Singapore. There are also growing programmes in Ethiopia, Eritrea, South Africa, India and the USA. At the Open University of Hong Kong taking UK Open University courses within their OUHK curriculum.
As far as I know we are the only University that has had a head of state study for a degree with it whilst in office. The President of Ethiopia, along with most of his cabinet did our MBA course over the 4 years from 1992 to 1996.
The ceremony in the government palace in Addis Ababa at which I conferred their degrees upon them was a memorable event. I should add that President Meles Zenawi was a brilliant student who achieved distinctions on every course he took.
Open to methods
In his address at the Open University's opening ceremony in 1969 Lord Crowther, the first Chancellor, made a strong statement about the Open University's openness to technology:
Every new form of human communication will be examined to see how it can be used to raise and broaden the level of human understanding.Today the TV programmes broadcast on the terrestrial channel BBC2 are still the most visible expression of the Open University's openness to technology. They have millions of regular viewers among the general public.
The success of TV broadcasting has been due to the University's partnership with the BBC. The lesson for using today's new technologies is to go for the highest level of professionalism in the use of each medium.
But alongside broadcasting and print the University has made increasing use of the evolving personal media, a term I use to mean equipment such as audio and video cassette recorders and personal computers owned by students.
A growing number of Open University courses require students to have access to a computer at home. In 1998 this number exceeds 60,000. An increasing proportion of these students are able to link their computers to the Internet.
This year over 30,000 of these students are networked from home to the Open University and to each other and you can see how rapidly that figure has increased. But note that it still leaves many students who are not networked. We must not forget them.
The figures for the use of networking by students are staggering. At the moment OU students are sending 25,000 messages every day and reading 180,000. Most of these messages are from student to student. They like this form of communication very much.
Open to ideas
The final element of openness is to be open to ideas. This is the raison d'être of any university. People in universities should relish new ideas but approach all ideas with systematic scepticism.
The Open University has fulfilled this goal through a commitment to research and through its practice of developing courses in teams.
All faculties of the University house research of international calibre. A notable example is the work of the OU's Interplanetary Sciences Research Unit, which is a major European centre for investigation into the possibility of life on Mars.
The Open University practice of developing course in teams also generates many ideas. This gives the courses an intellectual vitality that you don't get as often when a single faculty member is responsible for a course
It operates at a lower cost than the other universities.
The UK has a quality assessment scheme for all universities.
In these measures the Open University ranks 10th out of the 77 English universities for the quality of its teaching. The Open University is an an elite group of top UK universities where most programmes are rated as excellent.
That should encourage all distance teaching programmes to have high ambitions. Time was when distance education, in the form of correspondence education, had low status - often deservedly. Some recent attempts to use television haven't been brilliant either.
But the Open University has shown that distance education can be as good as the best of campus universities and better than the vast majority.
In the international distance education community student completion rates are considered to be the most important performance indicators. The Open University also performs well on this criterion, both for course completion and graduation.
With half the students who complete the first course graduating within eight years, graduation rates at the OU are similar to those for the US higher education system taken as a whole.
The four keys to its success are 1) well-designed multiple media teaching materials; 2) personal academic support to each student; 3) efficient logistics to serve students; and 4) faculty who also conduct research. A word on each:
Good course materials is obvious. They are the key to making study interesting and enjoyable.
Good support is equally vital but less often provided. Each of our students has their own tutor for each course. The tutor comments extensively when marking their assignements and holds group meetings from time to time.
Logistics is vital too. Getting the right materials and information to the right people at the right time is not a trivial challenge when you have more than 100,000 students all over the world.
And I've already spoken about research.
The Open University uses the term knowledge media (Eisenstadt, 1995) to describe the technologies that emerge when we bring together computing, telecommunications and the cognitive sciences. We use this term because it reminds us that these technologies may change the relationship between people and knowledge.
Anything that changes the relationship between people and knowledge has very important implications for universities.
But as well as these profound issues I believe that we all share four general practical aims in using the knowledge media.
The Open University has already made some use of CD-ROM technology in its courses.
However, the 1998 version of the first level Science course S103 uses the full multimedia capabilities of CD-ROM on a large scale. This course includes seven CD-ROMs which engage the 4000 students on the course in some 40 hours of work.
The University considers that for the next few years CD-ROM is the only technology that can bring the advantages of interactive multimedia into students' homes.
This is because the overwhelming majority of students who are networked to the University use regular domestic telephone lines which do not allow multimedia materials to be downloaded quickly and conveniently.
Computer Conferencing
Computer conferencing has been the most successful application of the knowledge media in the Open University so far. This is because students enjoy being able to communicate with each other.
They also like the ease of communication with their tutors and with the University generally. For this reason the Open University makes extensive use of computer conferencing systems. In 1998 more than 30,000 students are active in over 6,000 computer conferences.
Tutors can assemble conference groups on the network and students can create their own computer conferences for various social and professional purposes. The Open University Student Association plays a very helpful role in organising and policing these conferences.
Tutoring
Tutorial support to each student is a key element in the Open University's success. Our 7,500 tutors - what you would call adjunct faculty - are the human link between the OU and its students. The University is eager to discover, in particular, whether the knowledge media can help to provide tutorial support even more effectively.
For example we are testing techniques for handling student assignments electronically. Each year the Open University handles over one million student assignments and has sophisticated monitoring and quality assurance arrangements for this activity.
The assignment handling process is so important to the quality of the University's teaching that we cannot introduce new methods for this process until we know that they are reliable to operate and popular with students.
Home Experiments
Many science and technology courses are not academically credible unless students do laboratory work. On way of satisfying this requirement is to provide kits for students to do experiments at home. New packaging technologies now allow these home experiment kits to be smaller. In some cases they are now disposable whereas before students had to return them at the end of the course.
The World Wide Web
The Open University does not believe that the World Wide Web now provides the complete answer to the challenge of distance learning. In twenty-five years the University has learned that there is no magic single learning medium.
Its plan is therefore to integrate the use of the Web into the University's multiple media learning system; not to move all teaching and learning activities onto the Web.
Why are we cautious? First, there is the copyright problem. The University's most precious capital assets are its intellectual property,
Second, text is - and will continue to be - a substantial component of university courses. So far Open University students express a preference for printed paper as a main vehicle for study texts. They do not like reading a lot of material from a screen.
Third, this is partly because many Open University students study on the move (e.g. in commuter trains, during air travel and in hotels). The older media are still more convenient in these situations.
Fourth, most students' homes do not yet have computers at home and very few have the high bandwidth connections that allow the Web to be used to full effect.
However, the University sees exciting opportunities for combining the use of the Web with broadcast television. Broadcast television remains a core element of the Open University's academic strategy.
Broadcast television is about to undergo a digital revolution that will increase the number of channels and offer interactive programming.
The Open University and the British Broadcasting Corporation see exciting possibilities for combining the strengths of broadcast television and the strengths of the Web. Broadcasting can reach large audiences and create interest in a topic. The Web allows individuals to explore the topic interactively and in greater depth.
Logistics
The Open University operates on a large scale and depends on the efficiency of its logistic and administrative systems for serving students well. This is an area where new technology can help to improve service levels by giving staff and students up-to-date information - wherever they are.
The University has just spent $16 million in a five-year programme to redevelop its computerised record and logistic support systems. It has taken advantage of this project to modernise many of its business processes.
The Knowledge Media Institute
In all these developments the University is greatly assisted by its Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) which was set up in 1995.
Its purpose is, first, to be at the leading edge of developments of the Web, the Internet and on-line communication. Its second task is to scale up the use of the resultant technologies so they can benefit large numbers of students.
In a short time the KMi has become a focus for the collaborative development of teaching technologies by all faculties of the Open University. Since research and development institutes often isolate themselves from the mainstream of their parent universities I am particularly pleased by what they have done.
The Open University became famous for applying technology and media to higher education on a large scale. We are proud that so many other distance teaching systems have found our example to be inspiring.
I assure you that the Open University intends to remain the leader in the vital enterprise of large scale distance education.
By applying technology on a large scale - with close attention to quality - the Open University will help higher education find a way through the crises of access, cost and flexibility that we find all over the world.
We look forward to dialogue about the use of the new technologies with all those who share the aims of high volume, low cost, and high quality. Those must be our aims in this era of lifelong learning.