Students from the UK and around the world will have free access to some of the country’s top universities thanks to Futurelearn Ltd, an entirely new company being launched by The Open University (OU). The universities of Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, East Anglia, Exeter, King’s College London, Lancaster, Leeds, Southampton, St Andrews and Warwick have all signed up to join Futurelearn.
Futurelearn will be independent but majority-owned by the OU. It will:
- Bring together a range of free, open, online courses from leading UK universities, that will be clear, simple to use and accessible;
- Draw on the OU’s expertise in delivering distance learning and pioneering open education resources to underpin a unified, coherent offer from all of its partners;
- Increase accessibility to higher education (HE) for students across the UK and in the rest of the world.
Futurelearn has been warmly welcomed by UK government. The Minister for Universities and Science responsible for higher education in England, David Willetts, said:
"The UK must be at the forefront of developments in education technology. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS) present an opportunity for us to widen access to, and meet the global demand for, higher education. This is growing rapidly in emerging economies like Brazil, India and China.
“Futurelearn has the potential to put the UK at the heart of the technology for learning agenda by revolutionising conventional models of formal education. New online delivery tools will also create incredible opportunities for UK entrepreneurs to reach world markets by harnessing technology and innovation in the field of education."
OU expertise
Martin Bean, the Vice-Chancellor of The Open University, said:
“MOOCs represent an enormous development in higher education, one that has the potential to bring about long-lasting change to the HE sector. The OU has decades of experience in world-class distance learning – each year we teach around 250,000 registered students, with literally millions of others accessing our free, informal, online offerings. Futurelearn will take this proud heritage and work with some of Britain’s best-known universities to write the next chapter in the story of British higher education.”
Leadership
The University has recruited one of the key architects of the development of BBC Online, Simon Nelson, to head up the company as Launch CEO. Nelson spent 14 years at the Corporation where he helped set up iPlayer and its forerunner Radio Player and led all digital activities, initially for its radio division and then across all television content. He said:
“There has been rapid and widespread growth in open online courses but until now UK universities have only had the option of working with US-based platforms. Futurelearn will aim to bring together the leading UK universities to create a combined and coherent offer for students in the UK and internationally. I look forward to using the OU’s proud history of innovation and academic excellence to create something the UK will be proud of and the world will want to be a part of.”
Support
Futurelearn has been welcomed by ministers and education leaders from across the UK. Leighton Andrews AM, Minister for Education and Skills in the Welsh Government, said:
“The area of Open Educational Resources is a fast-moving field in which the power of the internet and information technology can transform access to learning globally. I have encouraged the higher education sector in Wales as a whole to engage with this in a serious way and I am delighted that this new initiative from the OU – an organisation which already has a pan-UK and global reach – takes a lead in charting an exciting path into the future from which learners in Wales will be beneficiaries. It is especially pleasing to see that the OU will be working with Cardiff University to explore new ways of providing learning opportunities that can take some of the best of HE in Wales to the world, and bring the world to learners and HE in Wales.”
In Scotland, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, Michael Russell MSP said:
“I am pleased to note that Scottish institutions are involved in this new initiative which has the potential to open up research and learning to a wider group than before and contribute to our objectives around widening access. This is an excellent example of universities embracing new technologies and teaching approaches, with the potential to share the benefits of higher education more widely.”
Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University said:
“Online education is becoming an important approach which may open substantial opportunities to those without access to conventional universities. This OU initiative is an exciting means to build on its established success and expand its mission.”
Futurelearn will announce future details of its structure and courses early in the New Year.
Comments
So, will this platform offer formal qualifications?
All I can say is, "it's about time". With the OU's established and already successful OpenLearn site, I'm not at all surprised.
Now we can join our American contemporaries like MIT's open ware program. I hope this succeeds, we need a way of spreading the higher education bug to a wider audience and now we can.
Well done OU for leading the way, I'm proud to count myself among your ranks.
There's one thing missing in this release: the business model. Where's the money coming from? How will it continue to be funded in the future? This is the big question that the whole MOOC sector is ignoring.
It's free. Great.
It's open. Great.
But it's not sustainable until it can generate the money for continued course development.
The current MOOC boom looks very much like the first internet bubble, where companies fought with each other to generate the biggest losses chasing "the internet". Most of those companies went out of business. With the crisis in education funding showing no signs of ending, why are our universities racing to be the first to bankrupt themselves?
One other thing worth mentioning here is a comment I've made all over the internet while talking about MOOCs: The Open University has made great leaps forward in the delivery of distance education -- revolutionary leaps. MOOCs are ignoring all the lessons that 40 years of open learning has taught us, and is delivering material with a very old, very boring "filmed lecture" format. Yes, they may be short "micro-lectures" and they may seem more personal without the big room full of students, but they are still lectures: one person talking at you and lots of "slides" appearing on-screen. (And Sebastian Thrun has the audacity to complain about his competitors simply filming lectures when his courses are really just lectures too.)
The OU doesn't do that any more, having worked out a long time ago that mainstream documentary techniques are far more effective in teaching at distance.
If FutureLearn follows the micro-lecture path of Coursera, EdX and Udacity, it will be a mark of shame on the OU. But until there's a business model, the cost of properly producing the quality of video material the OU is known for will simply be too much, and that material won't exist.
This is long overdue, considering the well established link with the BBC.
Let's hope the policy makers at the Open University keep an open mind, as the OU could really become OPEN.
As always you are to be commended, fine learning institution.