from the New York Times
April 4, 1999
Distance Learning: The British Are Coming
By SARAH LYALL
MILTON KEYNES, England -- The campus of Britain's largest
university is spread over 30 neatly landscaped acres in this
efficient, prefabricated city about 45 minutes from London. Inside
its 30-odd buildings, work is proceeding apace. About 1,000 faculty
members are doing research in dozens of fields and preparing course
materials for more than 100,000 students in Britain and abroad. In
one low-slung building in the center of campus, members of a BBC
production staff are putting together television programs, videos
and CD-ROM's for use in the courses; in several enormous warehouses
off to one side, the materials are being divided into thick packets
and then mailed to students.
What is striking about the campus, though, is not what is here, but
what is missing. There are no dormitories, no sports fields for
students and no classrooms. In fact -- and this becomes clear after
just a few minutes, when you start to realize that the paths and
the well-manicured lawns are largely empty of foot traffic and the
air devoid of undergraduate hubbub -- there are no students here at
all. But that is just the point.
Photo credit:
Jonathan Player for The New York Times
Photo caption:
The Open campus, outside London, has no dorms, no classrooms and, in
fact, no students.
_________________________________________________________________
This is the campus of the Open University, which since 1971 has
provided off-site education to more than two million students who,
for reasons of financial necessity, class expectations or lack of
opportunity, have been left outside the traditional university
system. The university has done it through an acclaimed program of
courses combining television, videotape, printed material and,
increasingly, the Internet, as well as a strict system of
supervision in which students meet monthly with tutors at one of
more than 300 study centers around the country.
Over the years, the Open University has built up a presence
internationally, accepting students from the European Continent and
sponsoring or serving as consultant to programs in Asia and Africa.
Most recently, it has helped the state university systems of
California and Florida design distance-learning courses based on
its singular model.
And beginning this month, it is sticking its own formidable toe in
the American market by admitting the first students to the newly
formed Open University of the United States (www.open.edu or
www.open.ac.uk), which is awaiting accreditation. The earliest
students are to come from corporations that want employees to get
on-the-job training. In the fall, the university plans to admit
general-interest students in business, computer studies and liberal
arts.
The school will find itself competing with a number of American
distance-learning programs already in place. It will also find
itself fighting a cultural bias that sees such institutions as
places where "you pay a fee, they send you course materials, you
send in an exam and they mail you your diploma," in the words of
Gary Spink, the university's chief spokesman.
In Britain, where a Government assessment recently ranked the Open
University 11th of 98 higher-education institutions in quality of
teaching, it has already overcome that prejudice. Its eclectic and
far-flung alumni include Craig Brown, the manager of Scotland's
soccer team; Milos Kuzvart, the environmental minister for the
Czech Republic; Mena Zedawi, the President of Ethiopia, and Mickey
Dolenz, the former Monkee.
The average age of an Open University student is 37, but there
aren't any average Open University students. To put it another way,
an average student is one who enrolled because of highly unaverage
circumstances.
Ann Gall, a 53-year-old Birmingham resident, left school at 15, had
a family and worked as a secretary and personal assistant. In 1983,
she enrolled in the Open University and began a grueling program of
spare-time study: at 5 A.M., late at night when her children were
asleep, on weekends and vacations. The courses helped her secure a
promotion at work.
Mrs. Gall, who retired 18 months ago, is now a full-time student,
pursuing a Ph.D. in geology at the University of Birmingham while
taking supplementary mathematics courses through the Open
University. Eventually, she hopes to become a teacher. But when she
began, she had no inkling of the possibilities.
"I had absolutely no qualifications at all," Mrs. Gall said. "I was
one of the people the Open University was aimed at, to give them a
second chance."
The Open University was the passionate dream and legacy of Harold
Wilson, the Labor Party leader who was Prime Minister in the 60's
and 70's, and it was indeed designed for students like Mrs. Gall.
Its mission, Wilson said, was "to widen the opportunities for
higher education by giving a second chance to those who can profit
from it, but who have been, for one reason or another, unable to go
to a university or college on leaving school."
The University of the Air, as it was originally called -- the name
was discarded because it conjured up the unwelcome image of people
"sitting in front of the telly to get a degree," said Jennie Lee,
Wilson's arts minister -- was meant to throw the university system
wide open to anyone, regardless of social background or previous
education. To this day, anyone can enroll in the undergraduate
courses, regardless of prior credits. (There are prerequisites for
graduate programs.)
In those days, Britain's higher education system was rife with
snobbery and exclusivity. Only a tiny proportion of the population
-- about 130,000 people in 1963 -- went to college at all. (Today,
the figure is more like 1.75 million.) Politically, the notion of
an enormous populist school without classrooms was an idea before
its time, meeting with heavy opposition from an establishment whose
collective educational background leaned heavily toward Oxford and
Cambridge. The Times of London wondered derisively in an editorial
whether there would be any demand for it. Iain Macleod, the
chairman of the Conservative Party, dismissed the idea as
"blithering nonsense."
Photo credit:
Jonathan Player for The New York Times
Photo caption:
Ryland Lee teaches a workshop.
_________________________________________________________________
But Wilson and Lady Lee persevered, and in 1971, the new university
accepted its first 24,000 students, who completed the audio-visual
portion of their learning by watching Open University programs on
the BBC. The BBC still broadcasts courses, but television is
rapidly being supplanted by videos and the Internet. Today, 125,000
undergraduates and 40,000 graduate students are enrolled.
Seventy-five percent of the school's financing comes from the
British Government, and the rest from student fees, which start at
several hundred dollars a course.
At the beginning of each course, students receive a fat package of
textbooks, workbooks, videos and CD-ROM's (including a simulated
CD-ROM microscope for science). Students are required to turn in
work to their tutors, who return the material along with comments
and grades. People who fail to do assignments fail the course.
"These students are committed to learning," said Roland Kaye, the
dean of the business school. "And because they are going through
their courses as a group, with a timed schedule, supervision and
peer pressure, there's a high success rate." Seventy-five percent
of the students enrolled in any given course, he said, complete it
successfully.
American academics seem impressed by the school's consistently high
standards. "If they keep the same quality here in the U.S., Open
University will provide increasing competition for our traditional
institutions," said Robert Zemsky, the director of the Institute
for Research on Higher Education in Philadelphia. But, he added,
"They will have to translate their pedagogy to the U.S. market. If
they get 'Americanized,' and get lost, it will be a real shame."
Richard Lewis, an interim chancellor of the Open University of the
United States, says two things distinguish the program from Most
American distance-learning programs. First, courses are tailor-made
to their purpose. "Our courses are designed to be offered at a
distance," he said. "We put a considerable sum of money -- a couple
of million dollars -- into each course. They're not adaptations of
existing courses."
Second, Lewis said, students are given personal support. In
Britain, this has taken the form of the regular tutorials; in
America, because of sheer distance, it will be hard to replicate
the face-to-face system. But students will be assigned tutors, and
the Open University is working on ways -- perhaps through classes
held in real time via the Internet -- to bring the same level of
interaction to its American program.
Lewis said he hopes the Open University can lure students who have
abandoned schooling. "The American system is a populist, mass
higher-education system, so you're likely to find more people who
have part of a degree and might want to complete it," he said.
The Open University is also appropriate for older students with a
yen to learn. (Its oldest graduate was 94-year-old R.T. Gage, who
earned a B.A. in 1974.)
Frank Longworth, a retired civil servant, has been studying with
the university since 1984, and has earned undergraduate degrees in
biology and air sciences. Now he's going for a law degree.
"I've had to struggle a bit with some of the subjects," said
Longworth, who is 68. "The actual learning of facts becomes harder,
but your understanding of process gets easier as you get older."
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