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Employing secure and effective technologies with the best possible user experience

As the UK’s leading provider of supported distance learning, we need to stay at the forefront of technologies that help our students to learn and succeed as well as invest in the best technologies available to support our professional services. We need our technology to be reliable, user-centred and fit-for-purpose, including supporting new and better ways of working.

Over the next five years we will enhance in measurable ways the digital experience of our enquirers, students, learners and employees to make use of our resources easier, faster and more enabling. We will test, roll out and enhance existing and new innovations such as digital assistants, automated assessment, collaboration spaces, our OpenSTEM Labs, the OU study app, and virtual and augmented reality learning resources. We will develop our analytics capability to personalise interventions and experiences and improve cybersecurity.

Our students and partners trust us to keep them and their data safe. This requires a sophisticated and well-resourced commitment to the highest standards of confidentiality, integrity and availability of our digital assets, information and systems. 

Over the next five years we will:

  • introduce new and better student systems, incorporating student management, student intervention, exams and assessment, academic policy management and curriculum solutions.
  • complete the roll out of People Services system, integration and identity solutions.
  • take a systemic approach to deploying artificial intelligence incrementally and ethically in administrative and academic applications, creating an ecosystem of agents that can work with students, learners and colleagues.
  • renew our processes for course production to reduce timescales and incorporate student behaviour, enabling greater re-use and licensing of assets, more flexibility and personalisation, instant access to research outputs and institutional resources, and safe storage of assets for compliance and re-purposing.
  • ensure our colleagues have the digital skills needed to realise the potential of our technology investments.
  • meet the highest standards of information security for our students, learners and partners so that they can work and collaborate in a trusted and protected environment, gaining ISO 27001 certification.