History of the OU

In addition to the formal use of OU materials by other institutions there has long been informal use. The joint OU and DES ‘Review of the Open University’, 1991, p52 noted the sale of packs to groups, the purchase by all but one of the UKs universities and polytechnics of off-air recording licences which permitted them to record OU broadcasts, the sales of 1,500 course units to 70 higher education institutions and a further 2,000 units to bookshops near campuses. Surveys indicated that academic staff at many institutions used OU materials. It was concluded that

It is generally recognised that the University’s materials have been widely disseminated within the educational world and that they have had a widespread effect on teaching in conventional universities.

As Rex Watson, a Tutor since 1973, recorded on the website in a piece entitled ‘Tutoring mathematics, some reflections’:

The standard of OU written and other material is rightly in my view regarded highly, as a general rule. I have myself learnt quite a bit of new mathematics, and have often pinched ideas to use in my other work!

If you have been inspired to make use of OU materials for activities beyond teaching and learning at the OU, do let us know.  Perhaps you can tell us of examples of modules (courses) which drew on OU ideas? You can comment on this blog or post on the website.

The OU made thousands of broadcasts with the BBC and between the two bodies there was a flow of information about how best to communicate and support learning. However, educational broadcasting predates the OU by several decades. It was these early broadcasts which provided many of the blocks onto which later broadcasts were built. Sometimes the BBC produced programmes whichwere criticised. ‘Outlook’ went out on the television in the 1960s. It offended the clear, and narrow, view of education held by reviewer J D S Haworth, writing in The Listener (17th Feb 1966, p. 255) it ooffered ‘instructional essays [which] cannot be thought of as wholly educational in purpose because they are not rendered through whatever  techniques as lessons’.  He went on ‘if this is strictly educational television it does damage to the vague idealism conjured up by the phrase ‘University of the Air’ whose plans we are awaiting with awe and cynicism’.

Looking further back is Allan Jones. An exploration of the role of one of the BBC’s first science producers, Mary Adams 1898–1984, who was active in BBC radio from 1930-36, has recently been written by Allan Jones, of the OU. Mary went on to work at Alexrandra Palace as the first woman appointed as a television producer. Allan’s paper, Mary Adams and the producer’s role in early BBC science broadcasts, should soon appear in the journal Public Understanding of Science, a peer reviewed, quarterly international journal covering all aspects of the inter-relationships between science (including technology and medicine) and the public. For an example of his previous work on Adams see here.

Eight years ago,on 16 July 2003, Lord Perry of Walton, founding Vice-Chancellor, died. Professor Walter Perry, Vice-Principal Edinburgh University was appointed The Open University’s first Vice-Chancellor. Part of his vision for the OU was that it could domore than teach Degrees to adults part-time.He saw that it could disrupt higher education: 

It wasn’t that I had any deep-seated urge to mitigate the miseries of the depressed adult; it was that I was persuaded that the standard of teaching in conventional universities was pretty deplorable.  It suddenly struck me that if you could use the media and devise course materials that would work for students all by themselves, then inevitably you were bound to affect – for good – the standard of teaching in conventional universities. 

In a review of Walter Perry’s Open University: a personal account (26.Nov 1975 THES) Asa Briggs suggested that it was to become

of great value to future historians and it deserves to be studied carefully now by everyone interested both in the Open University as a highly successful pioneering institution and in the operations of the British educational system as a whole. 

The popularity of distance education has increased considerably in the USA. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the number of students enrolled in at least one distance education course increased significantly between 2002 and 2006, from 1.1 million to 12.2 million–and the growth spurt doesn’t seem to be slowing down. The OU, once unusual in offering supported learning for degrees at a distance is now much more part of the mainstream. The history project aims otconsider its role as parent to many other institutions offering distance education. If you have experience of distance education through another body, perhaps you could share your story.

In 2009 the broadcast executive, with more than 20 years experience in the production of specialist education and e-learning materials, Andrew Law, moved from being Head of BBC Worldwide Interactive Learning to become Director, Multi-Platform Broadcasting at the Open University Previously responsible for developing educational media strategies for NGOs, the Department of International Development and the Ministry of Education in Kenya, Ghana and Ethiopia he shifted to helping the University develop sophisticated web 2.0 tools to help create multi-platform learning communities.

Today he is the keynote speaker at ED-MEDIA – World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications is an international conference, organized by the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education. In the abstract for his address, ‘Bringing the Social into Learning’ he recognises the importance of placing history at the heart of his account and his presentation illustrates the point that the OU has a strong tradition of supporting blended learning by including an image of the first OU broadcast.

 Edward Thompson was responsible for some significant developments within the field of history, notably The Making of the English Working Class. He also worked for the WEA and recently an article (possibly unpublished) for the WEA magazine, Highway by him, about the OU has come into my possession (thanks to Malcolm Chase).  Although undated there is a reference to the Sunday Citizen (Reynolds’ News as was) which ceased trading in 1967. There are other references which make it clear that the way in which the OU was to be structured had not reached the author’s ears (and indeed may well not have been devised). 

Thompson argued against the OU (which he consistently referred to by its older name of the University of the Air) because it appeared to him to offer centralised lectures, not ‘the essential mutuality of the teaching relationship… the controlled dialogue between teacher and class’. He suggested that

The limitation of the television screen is not only that the student cannot question it or answer back; it is also that the man on the screen is blind (more…)

One of the ways in which the OU has had an impact is in helping learners transfer their skills and apply their formally assessed learning within the informal sector. It has enabled the production of knowledge outside the academy through a commitment to communities of ex-students. Students, many of whom had never met one another, have been encouraged to go on to form informal, voluntary, convivial, educational communities of practice based on those studies. These have enabled them to achieve together that which they could not separately. There are many OU examples of partnerships and traffic across what has been characterised as a ‘moving frontier’ between the state and civil society.

Between 1976 and 1985 a second level module, Art and environment, did not offer practical skills in painting or sculpture nor did it offer art criticism or cognitive skills. Rather it dealt with ‘the processes and attitudes of art’ and sought to develop ‘strategies for creative work’. Members of the society created by former students of the module, ‘share skills, experiences, ideas and knowledge of creativity and personal growth’.

Created, in 1998, by students and staff from an interdisciplinary third level module, The Family & Community Historical Research Society has conducted a range of connected local historical projects, encourages links between institutionally based and independent researchers and offers its own Continued Learning courses. This society is formally registered as a charity.

A first level digital photography module which was first presented in 2007 encourages students to upload photographs and discuss them online. Former students have established their own online groups in order to continue to collaborate.

In September 2010 the work of 36 OU students was collated into a book by fellow student Esther Clark At home with words includes 72 short stories and poems, many written for A215 Creative Writing but others written especially for the book. All profits from the book will go to Cancer Research UK which was also sponoired by a specialist letting company, Leaders.

If you know of a course which inspired people to go on learning together, please contact us.

Although before it was opened it was known as the University of the Air and although it has been responsible for thousands of television programmes, in its support for learning the OU has always thought well outside ‘the box’. This is not to associate it with Britain’s most despised business term in 2008 (see the report of a YouGov poll Daily Telegraph 28 November 2008) but to recognise that the OU has been facilitating networks of learners far beyond the campus  and indeed beyond the airwaves for decades. (more…)

21 February is the birthday of Leslie Wagner (here in black and yellow gown) formerly of the OU. When it first opened the economic efficiency of the OU was assessed. The OU produced data on a variety of aspects of the OU’s activities including how much it cost to produce a graduate, the cost to individuals and to the public sector. A study made in 1971 by an economist at the OU, Leslie Wagner, indicated that the OU was cheaper than other universities. The identification of fixed and variable costs, and deciding which costs ought to be allocated to teaching, which to research and which to ensuring that the university was also for the ‘storage of knowledge and maintenance of cultural standards’, was open to discussion. Wagner concluded:

It would be imprudent to draw any very definite conclusions from these figures. There are too many conceptual and statistical problems for that sort of exercise. Nevertheless, the gap between the Open University and the conventional universities’ figures is too large to be ignored

There were further studies, most of which largely agreed with Wagner’s assessment but in 1978 John Mace attacked the case that the OU was cheaper. He concluded that the idea that the OU ‘outperforms conventional universities in terms of openness and costs per graduate… is a dangerous myth. The studies suffer from serious methodological shortcomings’. The debate then took a turn towards another aspect of economics: output. To make a comparison in regard to attainment the same questions were set for students at the OU and for students at a conventional university. Overall, Lumsden and Alex Scott concluded, ‘the academic standards of the OU compare well with conventional universities’.

References:

Leslie Wagner, ‘The economics of the Open University’, Higher Education, 1, 2, May 1972, pp. 159-183;

Charles F Carter, ‘The economics of the Open University: a comment’, Higher Education, 2, !, February 1973, pp. 69-70

Bruce Laidlaw and Richard Layard, ‘Traditional versus Open University teaching methods: a cost comparison’, Higher education, 3, 4, 1974, pp. 439-467;

K. G. Lumsden and C. Ritchie, ‘The Open University: a survey and economic analysis’, Instructional Science 4, 1975, pp. 237-291;

Greville Rumble, ‘The economics of the Open University of the United Kingdom’, Open University mimeo, 1976

Leslie Wagner, ‘The economics of the Open University revisited’, Higher Education, 6 1977, pp. 359-381.

John Mace, ‘Mythology in the making: is the Open University really cost effective?’, Higher education, 7, 3, August 1978, pp. 295-309

Keith Lumsden and Alex Scott, ‘An output comparison of Open University and conventional students’, Higher Education, 11, 5, September 1982, pp. 573-591.