{"id":218,"date":"2010-06-09T20:19:29","date_gmt":"2010-06-09T19:19:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=218"},"modified":"2010-06-14T09:05:43","modified_gmt":"2010-06-14T08:05:43","slug":"open-to-methods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=218","title":{"rendered":"Open to methods?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_260\" style=\"width: 85px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/poles-apart.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-260\" class=\"size-full wp-image-260\" title=\"poles apart\" src=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/poles-apart.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"75\" height=\"100\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-260\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Are the OU&#39;s methods poles apart from those of other educational insitutions? And should they be?<\/p><\/div>\n<p>It has been argued that the course team, with its mix of academic and other staff, was a distinctive method of producing teaching materials which was pioneered by the OU. W Stewart, <em><em>Higher education in postwar Britain<\/em><\/em>, Macmillan,\u00a0London , 1989, pp. 116-117, contextualised this development as one of many novel aspects of the OU when he argued that the university was innovative in nine ways.<\/p>\n<p>1\/ It was not part of a national plan.<\/p>\n<p>2\/ It was a political decision.<\/p>\n<p>3\/ It came not from the UGC in collaboration with the CVCP local authorities and academics.<\/p>\n<p>4\/ There was considerable opposition.<\/p>\n<p>5\/It was the largest single university institution.<\/p>\n<p>6\/ In academic administration and in teaching technique it was unique in the UK.<\/p>\n<p>7\/ It had the lowest student unit costs.<\/p>\n<p>8\/ &#8216;in several overseas centres the OU has been closely examined to ensure that it may travel&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>9\/&#8217;its students have never been generally eligible for manatory grants&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>Others took a different view. David Harris was at the OU, 1970-1973 and wrote a book about it. He argued that \u2018The teaching system was shaped as much by administrative and political pressures as by any particular educational goals and in three short years (1970-1973) it had already become institutionalised, reified and unmodifiable in essence\u2019 (David Harris, \u2018Educational technology at the Open University: a short history of achievement and cancellation\u2019, <em>BJET<\/em> 1, 7, Jan 1976, pp. 43-53, p. 44).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It has been argued that the course team, with its mix of academic and other staff, was a distinctive method of producing teaching materials which was pioneered by the OU. W Stewart, Higher education in postwar Britain, Macmillan,\u00a0London , 1989, pp. 116-117, contextualised this development as one of many novel aspects of the OU when [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,67],"tags":[66],"class_list":["post-218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-of-the-ou","category-methods-history-of-the-ou","tag-methods"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=218"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":283,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions\/283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}