{"id":2626,"date":"2013-07-31T11:04:08","date_gmt":"2013-07-31T10:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=2626"},"modified":"2013-07-31T11:04:08","modified_gmt":"2013-07-31T10:04:08","slug":"parliamentary-interest-in-ou","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=2626","title":{"rendered":"Parliamentary interest in OU"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>During a Lords<a href=\"http:\/\/www.publications.parliament.uk\/pa\/ld201314\/ldhansrd\/text\/130724-gc0001.htm#13072463000085\" onclick=\"javascript:urchinTracker ('\/outbound\/article\/www.publications.parliament.uk');\"> debate <\/a>of 24 July 2013 the contributors mentioned the OU\u2019s experience and dynamism in regard to part-time education. Lord Rees of Ludlow noted that while across the nation numbers applying to be part-time students had fallen by 40% over the previous year, \u2018the OU has to some extent bucked the trend\u2019. He also called it \u2018excellent news\u2019 that the Open University had established FutureLearn. Baroness Garden of Frognal called FutureLearn \u2018an exciting development\u2019. Baroness Brinton commended the OU\u2019s recruitment campaign and called FutureLearn \u2018groundbreaking\u2019, adding that \u2018the key is the OU\u2019s expertise in distance learning, which has been critical to getting this off the ground. These courses, and the way in which students interact with each other as well as with staff across the various institutions, is the learning environment of the 21st century\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During a Lords debate of 24 July 2013 the contributors mentioned the OU\u2019s experience and dynamism in regard to part-time education. Lord Rees of Ludlow noted that while across the nation numbers applying to be part-time students had fallen by 40% over the previous year, \u2018the OU has to some extent bucked the trend\u2019. He [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,183],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-curriculum","category-higher-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2626","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=2626"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2627,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2626\/revisions\/2627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2626"}],"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=2626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}