History of the OU

Professor Devin Orgeron and Professor Marsha Orgeron (North Carolina State University) will lead a graduate seminar at the London College of Communications on 7 March and will deliver a lecture on ‘The Facts Behind Nonfiction: Educational Film and the Documentary Canon’ at 4pm on the same day. This is related to their recently published book, ‘Learning with the Lights Off: Educational Film in the United States’ (Oxford UP, 2012). They will also give a talk at the University of Surrey on March 9.

Educational film was a matter of considerable interest to William Benton, who owned an educational film company ans was an enthusiastic backer of Harold Wilson’s ideas for ‘a university of the air’.

The need for guidance for associate lecturers (tutors) was identified in 1969 and in 1971 a briefing and training policy was introduced. This focused on briefing of new staff but in 1972 Course Tuition was introduced and in 1973 Teaching by correspondence for the OU. In 1987 a Staff Development policy emphasised the need for continued professional learning. A set of Open Teaching materials was produced to support the policy, including Open Teaching a handbook on teaching and counselling. There was also a manual, The Open Teaching File and a set of ‘toolkits’ about a variety of topics including study skills and support for disabled students.  In 1993 Maggie Coats produced an evaluation of the Open Teaching materials and the student-centred Supporting Open Learning materials followed. These were widely used and developed. A fund for personal development was opened in 1987. In 1992 this was revised to encourage continuing professional development and it was revised again in 1997 to incorporate provision for peer mentoring. By comparison induction for full-time academic staff was introduced in 1995 and a programme of staff development for them introduced in 1998.In 1999 there were approximately 7.400 part-time associate lecturers of whom 10% had no other employment and 70% worked in educational institutions and 45 of them within HEIs. In 1997 the Dearing Report recommended accreditation for HE academics and the Institute of Learning and Teaching was established. At the OU a Centre for Higher Education Practice was opened. It ran courses and produced materials.

For more on this subject see Anne Langley and Isabel Perkins, ‘Open University staff development materials for tutors of open learning’, Open Learning, 14, 2, June 1999, pp. 44-51. We would also value hearing from ALs and students about supporting open learning.

On 10^th September 1963, the day after Wilson announced his plans for a university of the air, at the Labour Party conference (as part of his ‘white heat of technology’ speech) the Daily Mail’s Emmwood (John Musgrave-Wood) poked fun by reference to popular programmes of the period, including Coronation Street.

The Daily Mirror’s Stanley Franklin compared (image not featured here) the plan to the ‘hot air’ talked by the Tories, indicating if not the paper’s support for the OU then at least its continual deriding of the Conservatives. Vicky (Victor Weisz) in the Evening Standard focused on another concern of the period, violence on TV. The cartoons can be found in The British Cartoon Archive is located in Canterbury at the University of Kent’s Templeman Library and online here.

Isabel Hilton, ‘In Egham, knowledge rules’ Independent, 1 Aug 1992.

‘IT’S NOT like Educating Rita you know,’ said a middle-aged woman, between mouthfuls of spicy chicken spring roll. At first glance, she seemed to have a point. In the cavernous dining hall of Royal Holloway and Bedford College, near Egham in Surrey, some 300 students at the Open University’s week-long summer school were having lunch. Most were in their first year of the Arts Foundation course, others in their third year of an arts degree. Read the rest of this entry »

This from Bournemouth:  

Thursday May 3rd 2012 ‘Addressing the Audience: European Historical Perspectives’,  The Centre for Broadcasting History, Bournemouth University  

Broadcasting History and Media History more generally have tended to focus on institutions and production rather than the audience. There are obviously methodological challenges in studying audiences of the past but there is nothing to stop a consideration of how audiences were imagined and spoken to, and that will be our main theme. This informal one day gathering brings together British and European scholars to exchange ideas and research. It also reflects the ‘European turn’ in media history which has been a feature of recent research projects and publications. We have invited media historians from the universities of Utrecht, Lund, Hamburg, Maastricht and Roskilde to share research and ideas.  We invite papers on the history of audience address (British or European) however that is interpreted. The following key note speakers are confirmed; Patrik Lundell, University of Lund & Kate Lacey, Susex University. Contributions are welcome from academics and researchers interested in the history of broadcasting (radio and television but other media historians are welcome to join us) as well as doctoral students, archivists and curators.  

ABSTRACTS: Please send abstracts of less than 250 words before 2nd April to  

kmcdonald@bournemouth.ac.uk<mailto:kmcdonald@bournemouth.ac.uk> (Kathryn McDonald)  

This from Edge Hill:  

The Centre for Learner Identity Studies 4th Annual Conference, themed around ‘Identity, State, Education’ is to take place at Edge Hill University on July 11th-13th 2012. The call closes on the 28th February. See http://www.edgehill.ac.uk/clis/conferences  

We are hoping that the conference will provide opportunities for a wide range of issues to be discussed, ranging from curriculum and pedagogy to policies and structures. We welcome contributions from researchers at all stages of their careers and the call is for paper, symposia and roundtable presentation abstracts. The conference aims to explore the changing role of the state in the provision of mass education from national and international perspectives and to consider the impacts on structures of educational provision, delivery and governance of a range of pressures, including, for example, marketization, neo-liberalism and globalisation.  

This from Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa: 

Since its inception in 1998, the Higher Education Close Up (HECU) Conference has distinguished itself among conferences with a focus on higher education for its interest in research methodology, in particular qualitative approaches which afford fine-grained analysis of higher education practices. Over the five conferences themes have included: assessment, academic literacies, professional development, management and change, quality assurance and the student experience. Consistent with this focus, HECU 6 is an opportunity to reflect upon higher education research from a theoretical and methodological perspective.  

Higher Education Close Up 6 Conference, 11 – 13 July 2012. The theme of the HECU6 conference is ‘Challenging Dualisms in Higher Education Research and Practice’.  Research and practice in higher education abounds with dualisms, in the HECU 4 conference, for example, Paul Ashwin identified problems associated with the dualism of structure and agency, other such dualisms include quantitative/qualitative, essentialist/non-essentialist, macro/micro, academic/vocational.  At this conference four dualisms are considered in the Thinkpieces of the keynote speakers: 

Theory/practice 

Reason/Emotion 

Essentialism/Social Constructionism 

Culture/Agency 

Conference participants are invited to submit abstract that speak to these dualisms in the Thinkpieces. https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=HIGHER-EDUCATION-CLOSE-UP 

This from Saint Andrews:  

Function, form and funding: What are universities for – and who should pay for them?.  An international conference hosted by the University of St Andrews, UK 29 – 31 August 2012  

To mark the 600th anniversary of the foundation of St Andrews University, the School of History and the Institute of Scottish Historical Research are joining with the International Commission for the History of Universities to host an international conference on the theme of ‘Function, form and funding: What are universities for – and who should pay for them?’  

The conference theme is intended to allow for an exploration of both the historic and contemporary function of university education and the extent to which its academic purposes have been, and still are, driven by broader economic, social and political issues.   

Details: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/ishr/ICHU/index.htm  

Changes proposed to how the OU organises its student support in Europe have made for some controversial headlines in the Times Higher and has led some to ask about the roots of The Open University’s operations there.

Some information about the University’s overseas activities are available on The History of the OU website.

The OU has been teaching within the UK since 1971 and in other parts of Europe since 1972. The arrangements for teaching students outside the UK have undergone several changes in that time.

Between 1972 and 1992, the University served three broad categories of student studying within the wider Europe: those starting their studies in the UK, those admitted under ‘special schemes’ in the Benelux countries and in the Republic of Ireland; and Services personnel and their families admitted under special schemes in Germany and Cyprus. In 1992 when the European Single Market was introduced, the University extended direct entry to any person domiciled in the EU and in other parts of western Europe. Read the rest of this entry »

Within a few years of OU broadcasts starting the BBC broadcast two half-hour sketch shows entitled ‘Half-Open University’. Written by Andrew Marshall, David Renwick and John Mason these parodied Open University programmes. The first one paid homage to an OU ‘Environmental Science’ course. The cast consisted of Timothy Davies, Chris Emmett, Christine Ozanne and Nigel Rees. The writers were Andrew Marshall, John Mason and David Renwick, and the producer was Simon Brett. It was broadcast on Radio 3 during a Bank Holiday weekend on 25 August 1975. Characters included Dr Fiona Parody and Professor Jim Einstein. You can hear part of it here. The second broadcast which mocked the presentation of history, was broadcast on 1 December 1976.  

Was this affectionate mockery one of the first signs that the OU was on its way to becoming a national treasure? If you have other examples of the OU as the butt of humour, do let us know.    

Duncan Campbell has recently contributed an article about an OU student to The Observer, 22 January 2012.  Graham Godden was sent, aged 12, to a home for “maladjusted boys” for attacking a teacher. Later he became an addict and an armed robber,was featured on Crimewatch as the ‘M25 Bandit’ and called by the Sunday Mirror ‘Britain’s most wanted robber’. He was imprisoned and is now on an Open University degree course in criminology and social sciences. He admits to have being influenced by a film about another OU student. I used to look at the film McVicar [about the robber John McVicar] and think: ‘My God, I wish I was like him.’

Have you got an OU story? You can upload your OU story on the website.

Perhaps owing something to ideas often associated with The Open University the Occupy movement has invited academics to Tent City University, a marquee in London, and also to the Bank of Ideas which meets in a disused office block owed by UBS bank. One newspaper report explained that under the motto ‘Anyone can teach, everyone can learn’, there have been discussions led by academics on a variety of topics including international banking, philosophy, theology, the Arab spring and central Africa’s pygmy hunter-gatherers. Evictions seem likely to occur in the near future.