History of the OU

After PVC Alan Bassindale opened this colloquium on 8th July and John Wolffe welcomed everybody there was a keynote contribution from John Corrigan of Florida State University. He spoke on ‘Digital technologies and the spatial humanities’. See here. There were many presentations from staff from all over the University, and beyond, at the Digital Humanities colloquium and many distinctive and fascinating speakers. This colloquium is part of a wider debate about the impact of access todigital records and sources for thestudy of the Humanities. For example some academics at Kingston fear that archive data on commercial websites tend to be geared to family history rather than other research. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday 16^th August 2011 at 6pm, at Bishopsgate Institute, London there is a meeting of the Oral History Workshop. The forum will include talks by Hilary Young (who recorded many interviewers with OU staff and students and now works at the Museum of London) on ‘Old Guard v New Recruits: The Open University Oral History Project’. There will also be a talk by Owen Collins (University of East London) on ‘George Ewart Evans and the roots of oral history in Britain’. It is intended that informal group discussion afterwards from speakers and the floor will facilitate finding out what’s happening in oral history projects and local projects, discussing possible new directions in oral history and meeting activists/organisers from a wide range of history projects. There’ll also be opportunities to consider future co-ordination and collaboration of projects. This is a free event. All welcome.

 If you plan to attend, please RSVP to Stefan Dickers at [email protected] If you can’t attend please let us know if you’d like to be kept informed of future activities. Directions to  Bishopsgate Institute, 230 Bishopsgate, London, EC2M 4QH  here

Unlikely bedfellows – Margaret Thatcher and Jennie Lee

Full marks to Rachel Garnham and the Open University team which is encouraging staff and student memories to help create an interactive online history for its 40^th anniversary.

For more on this story see http://historycompany.co.uk/2011/07/01/open-university-history/

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.

During its early years there was some debate as to whether academic staff at the OU should engage in research. There was a victory for those who insisted that the tradition associated with Humboldt be maintained and that this was part of the job of central academic staff. The OU is now recognized for having produced some world-class research. The debate, about the value of a research-teaching synergy continues through the recent 79-page White Paper ’Higher Education: students at the heart of the system’. Read the rest of this entry »

David Willetts, Minister of State for Universities and Science today presented a White Paper ‘Higher Education: students at the heart of the system’. The BBC reports that the Open University will offer courses through local further education colleges. 

In his reading of the White Paper the OU’s Vice Chancellor Martion Bean noted the ‘numerous positive references’ to part-time study, distance learning and to The OU. He was also encouraged by the material on widening participation and noted that David Willetts said in the Commons that ‘we think that The Open University can be one of the main beneficiaries of the new flexibility with the 20,000 extra places.’ 

This idea of a network was mooted in the early 1960s when the OU was being planned. Jennie Lee, however, took the view that the OU should take the form that it did. She felt that it was only by being independent that it could hope to operate to the highest academic standards. Soon after it was opened the OU allowed modules to be presented at colleges in the USA.  The 2011 White Paper seems to suggest that institutions, (possibly including further education colleges & private providers) which charge tuition fees of less than £7,500 can bid for 20,000 student places. Perhaps OU modules are to be sold to colleges? Who would validate the modules, be responsible for assessment and quality is not clear and the implications of a shift towards providing teaching materials for full-time and quite possibly face-to-face and young students have yet to be announced. The White Paper mentions the OU twice, once pointing out that it does ‘consistently well’ in thesurveyof student satisfaction (p37) the other time to suggest that there could be more bodies with a structuere such as that of the OU (p52).  Read the rest of this entry »

Open University staff at Walton Hall have been informed that this week the RAF Hut on campus is to be demolished to reduce costs and carbon emissions. The RAF Hut came from RAF Cardington as a temporary building in 1969. It was finally demolished 42 years later in July 2011. Recently it has been used mainly for storage but the hut’s structural condition had deteriorated and it is no longer fit for purpose.

Several huts were erected as temporary accommodation in 1969 and 1970, but because of a shortage of capital funding ended up being in still in use many years later.

Visit the History of the OU website for more information about the history of the campus at Walton Hall.

In wishing a happy birthday to Eliza M Shardlow we acknowledge that the OU built on the work of other universities in accepting part-time and mature female students. The first of the 381 day students and 623 evening students who started their studies when, on 30^th June 1881 Nottingham University College (now  The University of Nottingham) opened its doors, Eliza, then aged 24 would be 154 today, 20^th June.

We’re still looking for alumni tales of starting studying with the OU. Do let us know your story.

Many books and film portray students as wealthy, careless young men. For example, Bertie Wooster, a character who appears in the popular novels of P. G. Wodehouse, attended Magdalen College, Oxford. As the stories have appeared on the radio, and in films and been televised his antics on boat race night will be familiar to many.  However, such representations are only part of the story. This film, funded by Student Volunteering charity, ‘Student Hubs’ illustrates some of the ideas about students which were perpetuated in the popular media through a combination of archival footage and animated sequences. Read the rest of this entry »