Think tank calls for wider online learning

Publish date	2008-08-04
Available Articles	Full articles without membership

An influential UK think tank has called for more universities to provide access to course materials through distance learning.

In a paper written for the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), educational researcher Leo Pollack says Britain’s universities should be doing more to provide degree-level programmes online, to a wider audience.

The Open University is currently the only UK institution offering distance learning programme modules free to anyone. Pollack says other universities must follow suit in order to strengthen Britain’s standing ‘as a beacon of intellectual development’.

He also suggests that the government should establish a central online hub where British university course materials could be accessed.

Pollack also says an Open Access Act could establish a new class of Open degree, achieved solely using online courseware. He argues that rolling out the provision of open source courses would add to the credibility of distance learning, while widening participation.

The UK has a chequered history when it comes to state-sponsored e-learning. Its flagship UKeU was launched in 2000 with the aim of attracting overseas students to study online with UK universities. However, despite £62m of public funding, the project was abandoned after it attracted just 900 students. A 2005 Government report into the fiasco found that the main causes of failure were that the project was driven by supply rather than demand and was too ambitious and too narrow in focus, in terms of the style of learning on offer to students.

Online learning has however come a long way since then and is now more widely accepted – and respected – by students, academics and employers than in previous decades.

The Open University followed the path of the likes of MIT by putting hundreds of hours worth of course material online via its Open Learn website (www.openlearn.open.ac.uk/). Postgraduate and undergraduate subjects including business, arts science, and computing are included in the project. The OU’s counterpart in Hong Kong followed suit last year and now regularly adds courses to its open source offerings.

Back in the UK, OpenLearn aims to make up to 5,000 hours worth of undergraduate and postgraduate study material available to everyone by the end of this year. The materials are presented as units requiring between three and 15 hours study time. Users can copy and distribute them so long as they do not do so for commercial gain.

Though they will be able to access all the material that an OU student would, visitors to OpenLearn will not be able to interact with tutors, nor will they be able to gain a qualification simply by following the coursework.

However, the project has been of special use to students enrolled in programmes elsewhere, as they may be able to use the information available to inform and supplement their studies. This is particularly useful for distance and online learners, who are already comfortable with studying remotely. The OU says some support tools enjoyed by its own students will be made available, as will access to discussion forums.

Modules of interest to MBA students include Managing Relationships, Strategic View of Performance and Introduction to the Context of Accounting. IT subjects made available thus far include Study Skills for ICTs and e-Government systems.

Professor David Vincent of the Open University said: “The philosophy of open access and sharing knowledge… matches the founding principles of the Open University and we can now extend these values into the 21st century.”

Professor Paul Leng, director of e-learning at the University of Liverpool, the foremost provider of fully online undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in the UK, says that other e-learning institutions could in future follow suit.

He said: “MIT has led in this respect and I think this trend emerges from a realisation that publishing high-quality courseware enhances the reputation of a University and that successful e-Learning depends on much more than courseware, so publishing it does not lead the University to lose out.”

Keywords: Distance learning, Institute for Public Policy Research, IPPR, Open University, government, Open Access Act, open source courses.

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