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The Story of ‘Open’

RIDE conference, Centre for Distance Education, University of London International Programmes, 2013

Alan TaitProfessor of Distance Education and Development

The Open University, UK

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3 themes

• Openness

• Quality and drop-out

• Commoditisation

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Gutenberg and open

• Moving type• c.1450• Massification of text

reproduction• Access to knowledge• Movement of

knowledge

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Railways and open to place

• Live and work in different places

• Daytrips• 1848:

Correspond-ence education

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1900: Speaking at a distance

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The search engine: opening up the world

• 1990: Archie

McGill University, Montreal

• 1996: AltavistaDEC, California

• As important as Gutenberg’s printing press?

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University of London

• 1858: University of London External Studies: first university to be open to place

• 1878: University of London: first university to be open to women

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‘The wireless university’

• 1926: J.C. ‘Jack’ Stobart, first Director of Education at the BBC proposed

‘the wireless university’

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Establishment of Open University 1962/1969

• Michael Young • Harold Wilson

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A woman made it happen:Jennie Lee, Minister of Education

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The Open University in 2013

• 240,000 students• Undergraduates: 185,000• Masters: 17,500• Doctoral: 500• Validated programmes 37,000• Qualifications: 320• Graduates: nearly 1 million qualifications

awarded• Academic staff: 1100• Tutors (Associate lecturers): 7000

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Pushing at boundaries

• Place

• Social class

• Gender

• Disability

• Wider or open entry to Higher Education

• Always those who say

‘no point in educating them’

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What has openness in education meant?

• Attack on notion that quality means exclusion• Reversal: quality means inclusion• Element in democratisation of society since mid

19th C in Europe• Disembedding of individual from the local

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Quality and Distance and E-Learning

The challenge of drop-out

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Drop out UK, Higher Education, all modes

• 21.6% failed to complete degree in 2010/11

• 32% at University of Highland and Islands

• 21.4% University of Bolton

• 1.4% University of Cambridge

• Improvement overall from previous year

HESA Non-continuation rates Table 3A and table 3E

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Leave HE after 1 full year of study UK

• Full time 7.4%

• Part time 35.1%

• Open University 44.7%

HESA Non-continuation rates Table 3A and table 3E

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HEFCE study of part-time undergraduate completion 1996-97

• Table 4 Outcomes of part-time first degree entrants in 1996-97 after 11 academic years p14

First degree awarded

No longer active

UK Higher Education Institutions (non OU)

39% 59%

OU 22% 75%

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HEFCE’s refinement of data

• ..around half of part-time entrants in the years 2003-04 to 2006-07 in this OU population begin first degree courses, and half begin modules for institutional credits.

• It is important to note this 50/50 split when considering earlier cohorts and, in particular, the results reported throughout this report with regard to entrants to the OU in 1996-97. If it is assumed that a similar split between first degree and institutional credits occurs in the earlier years of the OU time series, and that a large proportion of those embarking only on institutional credits do not intend to and do not gain a first degree, the true underlying rates of first degree completion for OU entrants are likely to be double the results reported in the following sections of this report.

p13

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Open access

• 45% of Open University students have one A level or less

• Less than minimum conventional university entry qualifications

Source : http://www.open.ac.uk/about/main/the-ou-explained/facts-and-figures

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Doing worse or doing more difficult things?

• With busy working students

• With ethnic diversity

• With less or no demand for previous Educational qualifications (OU)

• With less social and financial capital

• Less resilience

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What does drop out represent?

• Not status of university• Not Distance and on-line modes• But risk and challenges of openness and

inclusion• See Creelman and Reneland-Forsman:

EURODL 2013• Combined with competence in learning design:

integration of curriculum and student support

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What is to be done about drop out in e-learning?

Respond to major factors in drop-out

• Time pressure• Self-management• Family• Logistics and support (including technical

support)• Curriculum relevanceStreet H (2010) Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 13:4

• Plus educational preparedness

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Three main student support models at OU

• 1976-2000

Tutor-counsellor, embedded in local study centre for whole qualification, plus tutor more or less local, plus Regional Centre staff

• 2000-2012

Tutor, more or less local, plus Regional Centre Advisory staff

• 2014 on

National Student Support Team on qualification basis, plus tutor more or less local23

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Regions and NationsEngland1 London2 South (Oxford)3 South West (Bristol)4 West Midlands (Birmingham)5 East Midlands (Nottingham)6 East (Cambridge)7 Yorkshire (Leeds) 8 North West (Manchester) 9 North (Newcastle) 13 South East (East Grinstead)

10 Wales (Cardiff) 11 Scotland (Edinburgh) 12 Ireland (Belfast and Dublin)

13 OU Regions/Nations

Milton Keynes (HQ) 24

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Open University Study Experience Programme

• Overall aim: to move OU qualification completion rates to sector average for part-time students

• ‘a new study experience that will be coherent, personal and targeted’

• Integration of student support and curriculum• Coherent student journey through qualifications• Study support teams• Improved careers service and employability

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Study Support Teams from 2014

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National Student Survey UK

• Feedback from ‘Final Year’ undergraduates

• ‘feedback on what is has been like to study their course at their institution’

• Open University in top 3 universities in 2006-2012

• 2012 Open University ranked FIRST with 93% satisfied with taught course

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Re-assessing student support in ODL

• In second generation DE, place meant separation of Student Support, curriculum and assessment elements in some OU’s

• Technology now permits their reintegration in curriculum lines

• Learning design subordinates ‘Student Support’

• Learner analytics supports intervention in radically improved ways

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Is openness and inclusion worth it?

• Is inclusion important?• Rights-based approach: Social justice• Skilled and knowledgeable society• Always pushing at boundaries• Often dismissed as ‘blithering nonsense’

(Ian Mcleod, Chancellor of the Exchequer 1970)• No way back to elite• Way forward through integrated curriculum and student

support reform• ICT central for learning design and learning analytics

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Other contemporary ‘opens’

• Open source software: anti proprietory ethos

• Open access publishing

• Open educational resources

• MOOCs

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Open access publishing

• Challenge to dominant journal business model

• New entrants, IRRODL, EURODL, TOJDE, JL4D

• Books published in both modes, e.g. Weller on Digital Scholarship

• UK Government and publisher response ‘Green model’

• Uneasy settlement

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Focus and Scope

The Journal of Learning for Development provides a forum for the publication of research with a focus on innovation in learning, in particular but not exclusively open and distance learning, and its contribution to development. Content includes interventions that change social and/or economic relations, especially in terms of improving equity.

JL4D publishes research and case studies from researchers, scholars and practitioners, and seeks to engage a broad audience across that spectrum. It aims to encourage contributors starting their careers, as well as to publish the work of established and senior scholars from the Commonwealth and beyond.

www.jl4d.org Editor-in-Chief Alan Tait

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Open Educational Resources

• 2001: Creative Commons license

• 2012: UNESCO ‘OER’s as a means of promoting access, equity and quality in the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’

• 2005: OECD ‘Giving knowledge for free’

• Now thousands of OER’s

• Critique of quality and outcomes

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Journeys from informal to formal learning through open media

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Open Learn Visitors since launch: 22 million

Visitors 2011/12: 5.4 million

I Tunes Visitors since start: 2.9 million

Visitors 2011/12: 63.3 million

You Tube Visitors since start: 16.8 million video views

Visitors 2011/12: 2.7 million video views

iTunes U

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Observations on MOOCs

• Passion for learning on huge scale• Drop out huge: but is universal completion the

aim?• Quality of pedagogy improving• Have created radical conversations in research-

led universities about online learning• Enhanced potential for ICT in higher education

futures• Response to price barriers in USA and UK

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http://futurelearn.com/

• Platform for Higher Education, mostly UK research intensive universities

• Free

• Will be social in nature

• Facilities for discussion page by page

• Will embed notion of ‘followers’, relating to students and tutors

• Designed from start for tablet and mobile

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‘Closed’ continues

• Neo-liberal approach to higher education as commodity and private good

• USA tuition fee debt: 1 billion $USD

• England: tuition fees now £8,600 per year

• England total residential experience for BA/BSc: ? £50,000

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Battle of ideas

• Education a contested domain as private or public good

• Commodity or tax supported/free• As locus for private for profit investment or

tax supported public service• For those who can afford it or those who

want it• ‘Market society or society with a market’• Openness at heart of battle