History of the OU

Teens studying at the OU is being promoted by the OU but it wasn’t always that way. Originally the OU was for over-21s only and there was some concern about allowing younger people to study through the OU. However, after the age of majority was lowered to 18 and when the Minister of Education, Margaret Thatcher, promoted the idea, a pilot group of younger students were permitted to study. They were the subject of close study in order to see if younger people should be encouraged. One of those who worked on the project was Alan Woodley, pictured. Over time attitudes towards younger students have changed and now they are welcomed.

With new research indicating the value to students of using the micro-blogging site Twitter the case for blending learning and for encouraging learning through to collaboration appears to be further cemented into place. The paradigm shift from teaching to learning did not occur because of the technologies but because of their application by those interested in innovative educational concepts and flexible learning modes. What part has the OU has played in the shift towards the mainstreaming of these ideas?

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Collaborate to compete. Seizing the opportunity of online learning for UK higher educationis a recently produced report to HEFCE by the Online Learning Task Force. The authors include OU Vice-Chancellor Martin Bean, Sir Alan Langlands, Chief Executive, HEFCE, a number of academics and representatives from Microsoft, Apple and also the President of Higher and Professional Education, Pearson Education Ltd. 

The report employs understandings of the history of the OU noting both that ‘this country set a world standard for distance learning by establishing, some 40 years ago, the Open University’ and that

The Open University has developed its own style of online learning called ‘supported open learning’ giving its 250,000 students flexibility to study when and where suits them best. This is in keeping with the university’s founding mission to be open to people, places, methods and ideas.

 The report also noted that

Learners are increasingly able to navigate high quality, open and online resources and can do this through social networks, which in some cases are more supportive contexts in which to develop skills. New broadcast and distribution channels such as iTunes U17, Youtube and Wikipedia demonstrate this trend. Learning environments and contexts are becoming increasingly participative and the learner’s contribution is highly valued by teaching professionals….The Open University, for example, has successfully attracted students by placing small segments of content for informal learning on iTunes U.

Can you help us explore the history of this trend of support for informal learning so that we can better comprehend it and assess the impact of the OU? (more…)

At many universities students sign up to read for a degree (sometime called a course)  rather than for a series of single modules (each one of which are sometimes called a course). At the OU students have to be enrolled not once for a degree but many times. How has this complexity arisen? (more…)

The first OU programme on Radio 3 was Arts Foundation Course 1, broadcast on 11 January 1971 between 7 and 7.30pm.  Open House, 7^th January, 1971, reported that the initial broadcast was repeated on Radio 4 on 17^th January. Professor Asa Briggs, then the vice-chancellor of Sussex University, told the story of how the Humanities had changed over the years and Professor Ferguson examined the OU’s interdisciplinary approach. Derek Hart raised some questions. (more…)

Wilson’s speech in September 1963 is often seen as the beginnings of the OU. It is called ‘Wilson’s vision’, here. But from where did he get his ideas? One source was William Benton. Benton sponsored Harold Wilson’s trips to the USA in 1960, 1961 and 1962,and Wilson felt that Benton’s ‘heart was in academics and in politics’ (Harold Wilson,  Memoirs: The Making of a Prime Minister, 1916-64, Weidenfeld & Nicolson and Michael Joseph, London, 1986). It was Benton who suggested in 1963 that Wilson and he have dinner with Geoffrey Crowther, the Vice Chair of the Editorial Board of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (EB) who, as chair of the Central Advisory Council for Education was responsible for the The Crowther Report – Fifteen to Eighteen (1959). Benton chaired EB. Crowther went to become the Foundation Chancellor of the OU.  The first Vice Chancellor of the OU, Walter Perry, argued that Benton was one of the men whose vision of education for all, through correspondence teaching and the use of the mass media contributed to the decision to found the Open University (Walter Perry, Report of the Vice-Chancellor to the council, 1972, The Open University, Milton Keynes, 1973, p. 30) (more…)

There was considerable coverage given to the fortieth anniversary of the first OU television broadcasts on 3rd January 1971. A local freesheet in Milton Keynes, MK News included an image of an early broadcast. There was also material based on interviews with Michael Drake, who made many of the early social sciences programmes and with Sally Cromptron, the current head of the Open Broadcasting Unit.  There was also a link to the timeline. The archives has more information about the content.

Although The Archers fan club has suggested ‘We don’t think that any character has studied with The Open University’, in recognition of the special interest group at the online Village Hall, Ambridge, where OU students meet, this blog is marking sixty years of the broadcasting of the soap by suggesting a connection.

As other postings have noted (eg 15th December 2010) many countries ran their own radio-inspired discussion groups for farmers and connected broadcasting to learning in ways upon which the OU could build. In the UK, however, the BBC opted not only for discussion groups but started to broadcast a radio soap, The Archers, in order to provide advice for farmers. In 1948 a farmer proposed to a Ministry of Agriculture meeting (held, according to one source, in Birmingham Council Chamber pictured) that a daily radio serial could help increase food production. BBC agricultural producer Godfrey Basely developed the notion and in 1951, the first episode of The Archers, including material from the Ministry of Agriculture, was broadcast. For an account see here. (more…)

While the OU has been associated with the construction and reconstruction of national identities, the idea of educational broadcasting helping to cement a notion of national identity did not originate with the OU. This note about Canadian broadcasts considers some of the precedents. There are some clips here. (more…)

The disruption resulting from academics and students expressing their concerns with the changes to higher education that the coalition government proposes may trigger important changes. Can disruption be useful as a way of understanding the OU?

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