One of the benefits of exploring the history of the OU is that it opportunities arise to meet colleagues from overseas. When Katja Varjos, from Lahti University of Applied Sciences, Finland, visited the OU she said something about her teaching experiences.<\/p>\n
Her university is a little younger than the OU and, in common with the OU, Lahti prides itself on its range of partnerships and company projects and its versatile and practical teaching methods. The institution accepts students of all ages and they are all funded by the state with grants. While much of the contact is face-to-face, Katja Varjos intends to develop the university\u2019s engagement with elearning.<\/p>\n
Finland has a tradition of adults using university sites for studying in a way akin to OU summer school for around a century. In the 1970s there was some small-scale regional open education in Finland. In the 1980s Finnish universities (there are now 28 universities of applied sciences and 20 other universities) were encouraged by the Ministry of Education to establish centres for extension studies. Finland has, like the OU sought to learn from industrial production when it comes\u00a0to running universities in an efficient manner. The chief administrator of the Department for Education and Science Policy at the Ministry of Education in Finland, Mikko Niemi once called the modern mass university a huge production plant which could be used to promote social goals. At the OU, perhaps as a strategy for coping with such large numbers of learners, mass industrial processes were developed, with \u2018lines of study\u2019 rather than faculties and \u2018production\u2019 of \u2018units\u2019 of teaching materials. The first Dean of Social Sciences argued that The Open University was \u2018the industrial revolution of higher education\u2019. In the 1990s, in order to reduce youth unemployment, the Finnish system was expanded. As with the UK there were tensions between the engagement with open access and academic values. Like Lahti University of Applied Sciences the OU has had to adapt to changing economic circumstances and with the convergence of aims and methods which is now being experienced by both \u2018distance\u2019 and \u2018face-to-face\u2019 universities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the benefits of exploring the history of the OU is that it opportunities arise to meet colleagues from overseas. When Katja Varjos, from Lahti University of Applied Sciences, Finland, visited the OU she said something about her teaching experiences. Her university is a little younger than the OU and, in common with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[183],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-higher-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2511","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=2511"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2512,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2511\/revisions\/2512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2511"}],"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=2511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}