OZ 2009/4

M T 135 ORGANIZACIJA ZNANJA 2009, LETN. 14, ZV. 4 An example: The UK Open University Let me give an example that I know well: the UK Open University. I was the rector of that university during the 1990s but I shall cite recent figures for access, quality and cost. With 220,000 students in award-bearing programmes the UKOU has clearly expanded access. Furthermore this is not just in the UK since 60,000 of its students are overseas. Then there are a million students around the world taking UKOU courses embedded within local awards. Many of these courses derive from the Open Educational Resources on the UKOU’s OpenLearn website. I shall come back to those. I expect that you will be more surprised by the UKOU’s performance in national comparative assessments of teaching quality. This table dates from 2004, the last year when this type of assessment was conducted. However, as I note at the bottom of the slide, the UK government now conducts national surveys of student satisfaction with a very large sample of students and the Open University has come top three years running. Finally, the last time costs were compared the cost per graduate of the UKOU was 60 ‒ 80 % that of conventional universities depending on the subject. So the Open University has achieved the technological revolution of wider access, higher quality and lower cost. It has stretched the iron triangle. How has this been achieved? It has been done through the combination of Adam Smith’s technological principles. In the category ‘Machines and ICTs’ the UKOU offers a multi-media system of distance learning with strong student support. This multi-media system includes some of the world’s largest deployments of eLearning but the key issue is not the eLearning or any of the other media, but the focus on division of labour, specialisation and economies of scale. You could say that the UKOU divides the teaching and learning process into its constituent parts, gets different people to specialise in doing each part as well as possible and then puts it all back together again into an integrated system. The UK Open University, and the many other open universities around the world, operates exclusively through distance learning. However, a much larger number of universities – including, no doubt, some represented here, are now offering distance learning alongside their classroom courses on campus. These are what we call dual-mode institutions . How do they apply the principles of technology? Dual-mode institutions First, although dual-mode institutions do not have the same opportunities for economies of scale as open universities, they should aim to attract significant numbers. Investing in distance learning materials costs money and it makes sense to amortise those cost over as many students as possible. That is why some dual-mode institutions pick highly specialised subjects in which they have a national or international reputation and offer graduate programmes in those subjects. Examples might be Powder Metallurgy or Forensic Psychology. Since there will be few comparable offerings they can aspire to a worldwide audience. At the other end of the spectrum universities often prepare distance learning versions of large enrolment courses in the first year of the undergraduate programme, particularly those that many students find difficult and retake several times, such as Statistics. When they introduce dual-mode teaching universities often think that each academic can handle both distance and on-campus students and therefore they don’t need to bother with division of labour and specialisation. The move to using eLearning has reinforced this view. Experience shows, however, that what Professor Tony Bates calls the ‘Lone Ranger’ approach to distance or eLearning is short-sighted. If it wishes to make distance learning sustainable a university has to divide up tasks and have people specialise in doing them. The key functions of distance education Three key functions in distance education are: • Administration and Logistics (e.g. student registration, despatch of course materials); • Course development (preparing learning materials in various formats); • Student support. The university will already have systems for registering students, but it will not have a system for sending out course materials. But it makes sense to do this centrally rather than expecting academics to do it. Course development might seem a task that individual academics can do by themselves. However, with ICTs playing an increasing role in teaching – even in the classroom – it does not make sense for each faculty member to acquire all the skills need, specialist help should be available. The evidence from distance learning indicates that courses developed by teams of academics, rather than by individuals, are of higher quality than those developed by ‘lone rangers’. Finally, student support is an area that demands division of labour. Tutoring and supporting distance learners is