e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: open university

  • WWW-based online education turns 20 this summer

    I’m a little surprised that this hasn’t gotten any press, but Internet-based online education turns 20 this summer. There were previous distance education programs that used networks of one form or another as the medium (e.g. University of Phoenix established its “online campus” in 1989), but the real breakthrough is the use of the world wide web (WWW), effectively creating what people most commonly know as “the Internet”.

    To the best of my knowledge (correct me in comments if there are earlier examples), the first accredited school to offer a course over the WWW was the Open University in a pilot Virtual Summer School project in the summer of 1994. The first course was in Cognitive Psychology, offered to 12 students, as described in this paper by Marc Eisenstadt and others involved in the project (the HTML no longer renders):

    In August and September 1994, a Virtual Summer School (VSS) for Open University undergraduate course D309 Cognitive Psychology enabled students to attend an experimental version of summer school ‘electronically’, i.e. from their own homes using a computer and a modem. VSS students were able to participate in group discussions, run experiments, obtain one-to-one tuition, listen to lectures, ask questions, participate as subjects in experiments, conduct literature searches, browse original journal publications, work in project teams, undertake statistical analyses, prepare and submit nicely formatted individual or joint written work, prepare plenary session presentations, and even socialize and chit-chat, all without ever leaving their homes. The term ‘Virtual Summer School’ was used to mean that the software packages supplied to students emulate many aspects of a residential summer school, but without requiring physical attendance. As with many other Open University activities, we feel that face-to-face tuition and peer group interaction would still be preferable if it could be achieved. However, there are sometimes circumstances which preclude physical attendance, so we want to provide the best possible alternative. Virtual Summer School was a first step in this direction. This year, it was only an experimental option for a dozen already-excused students, which gave us a low-risk entry in order to assess the viability of the approach.

    There is even a concept video put together by the Open University at the end of 1994 that includes excerpts of the VSS course.

    And now for your trip down memory lane, I have taken the paper, cleaned up the formatting, and fixed / updated / removed the links that no longer work. The modified paper is below for easier reading: (more…)

  • Open University in the UK, 40 Years After First Graduation

    There’s an interesting three-minute video produced by the BBC that covers the Open University at 40. It was a ground-breaking idea, and to date over 1.8 million students have obtained degrees. The current educational technology boom and interest in online education, including the MOOC phenomenon, owes a great deal to the Open University.

    As it’s too hot today to do much yard work, I might as well add transcription.

    Corduroy and calculus, kipper ties and chemistry.

    The Open University was a curious, groundbreaking mix. Forty years ago, in June 1973, its first graduation ceremony took place. Frederick Lavendar is now 87 years old [was part of first graduating class].

    Lavendar: “It was challenging, but it was exciting, too. Because everyone was in the excitement together.”

    The Open University was a radical concept. No qualifications required, no student campus, learning materials sent through the post, lectures broadcast on the BBC2.

    Professor Craig Mahoney: “The Open University provided access for students who didn’t typically have access to higher education at that time. Distance education was seen very skeptically, and people weren’t very supportive of that. So there was a big challenge.”

    (more…)

  • Online Learning: Where is the Money?

    MIT offers their MITx online courses and certificates for a price, Stanford offers some online courses free, and Utah State University professor Wiley provides successful students with letters confirming course completion. But offering online learning has failed many using these business models. Cambridge, Chicago, Cornell, Michigan, New York and Oxford, Stanford, Temple and Yale Universities, University of Maryland University College and the London School of Economics all terminated their online courses for financial reasons. They were all started assuming student tuition and fees would pay for both the cost of operation and for developing very effective, high quality course materials.

    As Case Western Vice President for Information Services Lev Gonick summarized: ”University presidents got dollars in their eyes and figured the way the university was going to ride the dot-com wave was through distance learning.”

    (more…)