Good morning, we will begin the next session, we have the speaker connected
Skype from the UK and is currently Professor and Professor Allan Tei
Emeritus of the Open University in the UK and the conference will be in
English and speak about 20 or 25 minutes on the role of universities
from distance. He has worked all his academic life at the Open University, the University of
Cambridge also knows many distance universities and open in
the world and an important international vision
He has been president of ADEN, European Society of e-Learging, like Antonio Teseira that
We also accompanied this morning, he has been part of the executive committee of ICD,
which it is the international consortium of ODL global level and there are a lot of things
you might say, but especially emphasize that it is a well-known person
and very dear in the field of distance education and there where you are going and always ready
like today and to share their experiences with the UNED. So when you want
Alan please be whenever you want thank you. Thank you thank you very much Ines
and hello to colleagues in UNED in Madrid I'm sorry I cannot be with you um
presently I meant it this II was but I'm happy to contribute today in this
virtual mode so I hope you can see my first slide and you can see from the top
that this is the unit for 5 TF anniversary of my own university the
Open University so it's a birthday year for the Open University and the theme
that I want to share with you is has a question mark Open University is a
technology for the 21st century so the first assumption in that question is
that open universities represent an institutional model around the world in
many different countries which is recognizable it has its different
characteristics but it's a recognizable distance teaching university model
designed for lifelong learning and you'll see that I put a
question mark there so Open University is a technology for the 21st century
cooked and Mark so Eve even though this is the year of celebration for us and
this is a birthday I feel I feel like that miserable guest that as a party who
because I want to ask some difficult questions as to whether the local
university model is sustainable whether for the next say 25 or even 50 years so
we can go to the next slide eNOS so this is a year of celebration you can see we
have a lot of events going on in the UK to celebrate our 50th anniversary it's
been I think it's been 15 very very good years we've changed the model not only
our own of course many other very successful distance teaching
universities not least who Ned which is also a very senior distance teaching
University in Spain I think established only two years after
the Open University in the UK so if we move to the next slide in US but there
are certainly many threats to my own Open University and I think that we are
not alone in having these so the last seven years eight years have been very
difficult for the Open University in the UK first of all the government in
England's not in the whole of the UK because the UK is made up of four
countries as colleagues will understand but England which is about 80% of UK's
population and economy if tuition fees for universities were trebles back in
2010 and this has meant to a big loss in students and the Open University has in
fact lost something around one third of its students in eight years an entire
cohorts have disappeared so the Open University UK now has more or less know
over 50 year olds studying with us the university is fighting back from a
major financial deficit and financial crisis in fact we can study I'm not sure
whether I should be sharing this number but anyway I put it on my slide so we're
managing at the minute something like an annual financial deficit of 13
million pounds on the plus side there is a very big fight back to manage this
situation to manage the reduced numbers of students inevitably this means
reduced numbers of staff and a major review of which programs are sustainable
why has this happened you might ask well it's because adult students in the UK
certainly feel much less willing to borrow the enormous sums of money which
eighteen and nineteen year olds are borrowing too for the privilege of
studying at university so we now have a market in England we have a market
centred and a market focused university system which has presented big threats
the sustainability of the Open University next slide unis next slide
yeah good so it's not just in the UK that we've had problems with open
universities in Europe for example it's worth noting that the universities have
been restricted to Western Europe so in the post communist countries of Central
and Eastern Europe no open university model has been adopted and I think eight
open universities in Western Europe to my own knowledge four have been
threatened with closure over the last ten years so the issue of this about the
sustainability of the Open University model in Europe is not alone happening
in the UK it's also been a big issue in at least four other countries and one
all those four countries continue with their open universities there have been
some crises there too but it's also we're saying that two open universities
and I think you ned is one of them are growing vigorously the other one being
the family diversity in Germany so the open university model is by no means
universally challenged but it is challenged and that is really my
starting point so going back to our birthday 1969 was a great year there was
the first man on the moon and the Open University was set up with that very
inspired mission statement over to people places method
and ideas um next slide eNOS and for those of you who are interested in
getting into the open University's history in more detail that those are
three volumes which I would recommend if you are interested the first is about
the University of London International Academy an external examination system
is very very interesting book about the way the open University's British
tradition about the ways in which the University of London back in 1868 broke
the link between study and place with this external examination system the
second book by Walter Perry the Open University is an account by the first
vice-chancellor who was really along with a team of senior colleagues the
inventor of opera in the UK at least and then much more recently in fact only I
think now two years ago a recent history by Daniel Wine Bren called the Open
University a history so those for those of you are interested in more detail I
recommend those three books so next slide 15 us so let me just talk about
what you could term first mover advantage so why won't you open
universities the Open University UK who net in Spain why were they so exciting
back in the 1970s and 1980s and I think it's because open universities were the
first to do some very important and innovative things and I've listed them
here you might have your own views about which they are but first of all I think
open universities had a new mission and a new vision and they said that new
kinds of people could be educated in universities so people came to
university for the first time from social backgrounds from families from
regions even that had never been to university before open universities were
committed to innovation in learning and teaching so while the model of learning
and teaching had been really unchanged for many decades and universities open
universities came in and because of their audience because of the new kinds
of people they were teaching they had to rethink how to teach and thirdly that
meant that they wanted to introduce innovation in technologies for teaching
and in the early days that was primarily around TV and radio
it was around printed course materials which were laid out using the pedagogics
of educational technology and fourthly and I don't think this is much talked
about I think it's very important there was innovation in what I have called
educational logistics that is the construction of sophisticated management
systems or providing services of high quality on time and this information
moves my fifth point at significant scale open universities were back in the
1970s and 1980s big they were surprisingly big and scale was something
that we claimed was a distinct part of the Open University model and lastly
there's what I would call embedded innovation that is innovation was
embedded across all dimensions of the open universities activity innovation
was positively celebrated and welcomed and none of these things happened
without significant opposition there was skepticism amongst other universities
about the nature of the mission why would you want to educate these sorts of
people there was skepticism about the way in which we reinvented teaching and
learning which and for example I can remember a lot of ridicule about the use
of TV and radio which were thought of with leisure activities rather than
serious activities for educational purposes the idea of scale was thought
of as the opposite of quality so in other words quality was exfoliated with
small-scale and exclusive universities not with large-scale universities that
were committed to inclusion but those I think were are at my account at least of
our first mover advantage back in the 1970s and 1980s
I'm coming over to the next slide but I think those first mover advantages have
been very much eroded in the last 10 to 15 years and they've been eroded in such
a way that I would say it is now dangerous over the universities to stay
as we are why do I say this well first of all because many established
universities now use what you can or blended learning
so in other words the great majority of universities in developed countries at
least use learning management systems but this is for their campus big news
the students are talking to their professors by email the students are
talking to each other by email the students are downloading their course
materials from the learning management system and they are sending their
assignments their assessed work electronically to the learning
management system and getting them back from the learning management system so
much of the use of technology is being adopted and established campus based
universities there are also new universities which only teach online
which have never been through that phase of development which you ned went
through in which the Open University led through that was the pre digital
distance teaching University that are a new entrance who've never had to engage
with that program of change that we have had to engage with and have gone
straight to online programs now some of those of course a private universities
and some of those have for-profit universities and in the United States
certainly over the last 25 years we've seen some very very big for-profit
online universities some of them good but sadly a minority of them very poor
quality and some of them have been taken to court by government in fact abusing
their students for recruiting them without helping them to succeed we've
also seen a lot of innovation with MOOCs and of course the MOOC from phenomenon
and I think there are something in excess of 30 million MOOC learners
around the world now that MOOC phenomenally did not start
with open universities and I can remember in the early days of MOOCs open
universities for actually none of them at least were quite angry that this
innovation of MOOCs did not come from them because we thought we owned
innovation in technology for learning and teaching and that is absolutely not
the case the digital revolution has as I say here
brought technology to all campuses and lastly on the question of vision mission
the vision of the mass higher education system which open universities in Europe
at least can be said to have initiated is now widely shared not
universally but is widely shared and so we have to say what's there now those
first mover advantages remain unique to the Open University model today and my
response is not much there's not much of the Open University model which remains
unique and that I think puts our model at risk can we go to the next slide so
today around the world there are more than 60 it depends how you count there
are more than 60 perhaps as many as 80 open universities in more than 40
countries in the Commonwealth at least there are 27 open universities with
something like four and a half million learners and it's difficult to count
that there are maybe 80 million Hope University learners Open University
students around the world the continent with a largest number of open
universities is Asia and then Europe follows that too with it with our eight
open universities there are interestingly some very important
exceptions of big important countries which have never adopted the Open
University model and it would make a very interesting study I think to
investigate why that is the first of those is the USA no you know Open
University of them secondly Russia a long long tradition of distance teaching
Russia but no Open University Australia and France equally have no Open
University plenty of distance and online education are all delivered from
dual-mode universities from universities which teach both at a campus and online
and lastly there are mega universities universities which are much bigger than
some open universities which a campus based universities themselves so you'll
find in India and in China there are universities which are at least as big
and sometimes bigger than open universities so open universities don't
own large scale as a phenomenon either anymore can we move to the next slide
and there's a lot of competition to aprea versa teas and other challenges
many open other universities now have a great deal more flexibility in their
part-time programs so that which we owned
flexible part-time study programs is now widely shared new entrants especially
online universities we continue to have in the sector of open universities what
I would call reputation and brand challenges now these differ from country
to country and so I don't know how the reputation
and brand who Ned stands up in Spain but I know that here in the UK if I turn on
the radio in the morning and somebody starts to talk about the best
universities in the UK I know which universities they mean they will always
start talking about Oxford and Cambridge and Durham and Edinburgh they will never
start by saying the best universities in the UK Oxford Cambridge and the Open
University we are never included in that category of the best universities even
though I think we are quite distinctly best as some things we are best at
inclusion best at providing access best are supporting new kinds of learners but
that aspect of high quality and reputation has not yet been one my open
the Open University here and I don't think this is the only country where
that continued to be reputation and brands challenges for open universities
and lastly certainly in the university UK which in many other open universities
around the world many many other open universities around the world we
continue to have low levels of student completions and qualifications a while
when the university study was provided with low fees in the past that was the
less of a challenge for students students could try and if they failed
they had their self-esteem Maggie dumbest but their money was not damaged
in it significantly where students are paying as much as 5,000 euros per year
in England and Spain they more than say a one in two chance of succeeding this
is now a major major issue how much does openness function in a
high fee higher education system can we get to the next 19 s now there continue
to be for some in some countries a major strengths open universities which is
really as the 1970s to be that is the Oakland University
this is for example Truman Indonesia the Open University has given them the short
position by governments and it is asked to do the distance and online teaching
in that country and other universities are not interested in doing it they are
not invited to do it they enjoy but even in those countries that protection for
the Open University as the one and only distance teaching University is the
threat even in the countries where that continues I don't think it's gonna go to
continue long can we move to the next slide in yes margin the digital
revolution has been a big chance for open universities in many many countries
I don't know how it's worked out it or dead I think we're through this
challenge at the Open University UK but it probably took us from 1999 1995 to
2010 because many of our staff continued to resist the digital revolution we are
using learning analytics but I would still say that there is more promise
than achievement with learning analytics only a minority of open universities
have produced books and a very small small number are actually including
MOOCs within their programs of study for credit while open universe is have been
highly involved in the open education resource movement um only one open
university has a major commitment to using application resources from
elsewhere in its own courts production and it's not my gun okay so my
university is very clean in promoting that other people use our resources but
in fact we don't use other people's resources we invent all are equi sources
we've seen open universities closing regional centres as the digital
revolution has made online study rather than face to face elements of study more
dominant and resistance to change has certainly been a problem in some urban
universities so managing the digital revolution has been a challenge for the
longer established open universities can we move the slide in us thank you so
let's look to the future we have UN sustainable development go
for which wants to see by 2030 is very important though achieved and they they
are looking these are my own words at the bottom of the slide they're looking
to complete the move to mass higher education in middle-income and even some
poorer countries so here in Europe we have massive higher education systems in
more or less all European countries now but in the middle income and the poorer
countries around the world that is not the case and what the UN is saying is
that this should happen by 2030 and this means an enormous program of expansion
it means to put numbers on it moving from something like 260 million
University students around the world today to something like 400 million by
2030 it's an extraordinary program of
expansion which is foreseen but next slide in it and I think the very
difficult questions is to say our open universities go to the core vehicles for
this expansion the priority areas of growth are not going to be Europe where
this revolution has by and large happened but are going to be China India
and Latin America what's absolutely clear is that this UN goal cannot be met
by campus building alone this expansion from new 60 million to 400 million
students around the world will not be delivered by building new campuses so
online and distance education is going to be a significant part of that
especially if part of it is to be delivered within a lifelong learning
framework as new at the UN says it should be but is the Open University
model the model that governments are going to look to to deliver that
expansion if we ask that question 20 years ago I think the answer would have
been yes but I think it's much less sure but the answer is going to be yes a day
so next slide so I think this leaves us with a very big question as to how we
reinvent the Open University model I don't think it is um at all wise to
say the Open University model as it is today is going to be the model or
innovation which must deliver this program of change in the next 15 to 20
years and core in the middle of this cloud of words you can see is the issue
of innovation and that is what I think has to be reinvented we have to sit back
and look at what we do and say how are we going to rebuild our reputation as
the most innovative universities in our higher education system so next slide
and I think those priorities for change can be organized around these ideas this
is my suggestion but you will have your own ideas and I'd be happy if we can
have time to discuss this of him I think it's absolutely essential that we
reclaim the status of being the most innovative universities in fact I if
open universities do not reclaim the status
I think our model will be under threat and I think core to this is the
development of leadership skills at international level if I look at the
wear open universities have not achieved their promise around the world sadly
there are too many open universities which have never delivered on their
promise I think the major failing has been inadequate leadership and I don't
only mean at senior level I mean the leadership dispirited sprout the
university at all levels and I think because in most country Open University
is there are only one or maybe two or four universities in a country we have
to work at international level to develop our leadership skills to take
open universities and innovation forward the major themes in my view for
professional development for open universities for the next period firstly
what you can call environmental scanning that is looking at the external
environment I think too often I see open universities internally focused and not
examining the external environment which has changed I still find colleagues in
my own university unaware of the extent to which technology
supported teaching is taking place in campus based universities other
universities have changed a lot and we have to look at that as has employment
opportunities and employment skills needed for the future secondly I think
we have to revisit the issue of quality quality is a contested notion and I
think we have to play a much bigger part in advocating for that the high quality
of open universities where we are first class for example in including new kinds
of students and in supporting them to success that does not generally speaking
form part of the day-to-day conversation about what the best universities are as
I've said earlier I think we have to play a part in defending the quality as
it is in our universities enhancing it and changing it for the better but also
advocating for what we regard as first-class quality in open universities
more widely in the internal environment I think in many open universities we
still have to embed the digital potential of the digital revolution on a
whole institution basis but they may not be so true in Europe where I think most
universities have gone through that revolutionary challenge but it's
certainly true in many open universities around the world and lastly while we
talk generally about innovation in how we organize them and teaching them
course the UN goals is the issue of sustainability I think there is a major
opportunity for open universities to innovate with curriculum with our
programs of study especially with the issue above all with the issue of
sustainability which is too often restricted to programs of study in the
field of environmental sciences but actually there are very few programs of
study where sustainability could not be a core element for example should we
have any graduates in Business Studies who do not have a good understanding of
sustainability if we think about the humanities the relationship between
humanity and nature has been caught for many many aspects of
of the arts and that could be stuck I'm equally um the law I think has a
obligation to look at how sustainability should affect legislation in the future
in other words I think there is a major opportunity which the rest of the sector
has not adopted look at how sustainability could be
adopted in our curriculums across the board um next one so the background
question to what I've said is how we move from an elite to mass higher
education systems across the world and there are some very difficult questions
to be answered its demand to be open or managed when we open for student numbers
and open to a range of programs can open demand be sustained through a tax base
or has the market got to decide who can afford to study which is essentially
what is happening in England if it is going to be managed will it be through
competition for places or will it be through fee level where higher fees
exclude certain kinds of people or will it be through both a very good question
and a very difficult question I think for continental Europe it's whether the
low tuition fee model which is broadly the case outside England in Europe is
going to be sustainable or whether we will see gradually a system of high fees
introduced more widely in Europe and whether the contribution of flexible and
online education will be driven by open universe is or whether we will find our
model superseded by dual-mode universities who continue their campus
based operations but build online and flexible systems in addition and lastly
what role the government see for private for-profit universities the role has
been very considerable in the USA and the results have I must say been very
mixed but the consensus which we find in Europe that higher education is by and
large free or nearly free and organized through not-for-profit or
state-sponsored universities is not universally shared at all these issues
are going to be faced are being faced in China India and Latin
America and I think we could from Europe help propose some answers to those
questions so next slide in essen movie towards the
end this is another way of posing the questions that I asked open universities
were born broadly speaking out of what can be
called social democratic social models and economies in Europe they were born
to offer social justice to try and support access and inclusion the
neoliberal model which we have established now in England at least and
to some extent in Ireland is not about social justice it's about opportunity
for those who can pay and my question really is whether open the Open
University model is built for sustainability under a neoliberal
political framework you'll see on the right the ways in which I think it
differs from the ways in which open universities were established and work
well so the neoliberal model has no restrictions on who can come but it has
no support for people for reasons of social class of a gender or disability
or reality or ethnicity and so on the near little liberal model says the
university education benefits the individual that the individual should
pay that is the explicit rhetoric of the government both governments from
somewhere Italian in the last 20 years in this country so I think there is a
difficult question and I know this is a difficult question in Spain also as the
extent to which what you can call the social democratic models of society and
neoliberal models of this society are in conflict with each other and I think
it's a very difficult question to answer is how the Open University model
survives in the neoliberal model rather than the social democratic model where
it was conceived next slide Enis so this moving towards my conclusion
colleagues is what I would call a strength and analysis of strengths
weaknesses opportunities and threats universities today and I hope and this
might provide some food for thought for you so you can see in the top
after screen in the yellow screen there are very considerable continuing
strengths for open universities our commitment to openness and flexibility
and access gender friendly recruitment which is nearly universal in open
universities around the world and our commitment technology enhanced learning
and scale learning and teaching but we also have continuing weaknesses too I
would say in our completion and graduation rates continuing weaknesses
in our reputation and brand and I would say I am worried by our capacity for
innovation today I think it is slow and there is continuing staff resistance to
moving from the established Open University model on the positive side in
the green you'll see I think there are very considerable opportunities the
commitments of a major expansion of higher education around the world is
something that we in Europe could contribute to I think we should and
indeed we must re-establish the concept of quality the mass higher education
systems and remove the rhetoric that quality is all about elitism and
exclusion and I think also as I've said we should pioneer a curriculum for
sustainability but lastly in the pink you'll see I think there are some
threats there is evidence that some governments have become disenchanted
with the Open University model they were excited 30 years ago where they're no
longer excited now threats from other universities interested in digital
learning and from other universities offering part-time programs which are
blended mixture of campus and online study there are new online universities
and there are foreign entrance and open higher education markets in many
countries so that's my my analysis of where we sit not just in the UK but more
widely for the Open University movement around the world I don't know whether
that makes sense in the context of Spain that will be for you too
I'd be interested to know your comments and so if we move to the last slide in S
thank you very much you can find an account of what I've said in an article
published late last year in the Asian Association of open universities and the
article was entitled open universities the next things
so thank you very much muchas gracias I told us it turnes happy to take some
questions
mono karaoke Turlock la pantalla pero no sé como se hace Thank You Alan for your
insights we have time short time for questions
shalinka 3 una pregunta in an English or battle team espero suppose I said in
English mejor can you listen to the
maybe let me you could repeat the question asked no not sure yeah si si
there's are particularly suited for that strategic advantage which I completely
concur but I I'm very I would be very happy to to listen to his laboratory
guard how are we better suited or why are we why would we develop this a
strategic advantage recently the other universities that are competing did you
listen yeah III think I think I heard most of that so thank you to my I didn't
catch my colleagues name but thank you for the question I think on the comment
um yes III think we do have strong advantages continuing advantages I think
particularly in our commitment to the ways in which is the ways in which
learning and teaching are organized in particular with regard to our vision and
our mission that is we don't seek to exclude students we seek to include
students I think that is still unusual in in many universities I certainly in
the UK the Open University is the only University where students choose the
University every other University or 150 universities in the UK the university
chooses the student so we have reversed there's a fundamental dynamic which we
have reversed the student chooses us so I think there are some positives but the
big challenge which I've tried to explain is that I think we are not if we
say our Open University model is now 50 years old that's more or less true for
ned in spain it's - now for the o u UK we have not got enough energy going to
rethinking how we remain innovative too many - toot-toot there is too much
culture in might do if i dare to suggest if i dare to suggest in saying what we
did the revolution in the 1970s and 1980s is done I simply don't think
that's adequate I think the ocher university has to remain an innovative
university rethinking what is the next phase of innovation
in higher education where is higher education going to grow because the
other universities have in very significant ways caught us up they've
caught us up some of them have actually gone past us in some regards so I think
we have to rehab to put innovation back at the center of what we do and
embedding innovation in an organization is not easy I'm not pretending it's easy
it's a really difficult job how you embed innovation in an organization and
you will find resistance some people who resist it because it don't want their
ways and working their working lives to change but I think it's a core
characteristic of open universities that we are innovative
not that we were innovative but that we are and continue to be innovative so
that's I whether that provides not liquid I've tried to give one Allen also
his his question he's a professor in sociology and environmental issues and
his question is was also about the role of open universities in this new
curriculum for sustainability I said you said you we have an advantageous open
universities in that role for sustainability if you can go deeper on
that thank you thank you yes well it's my observation but I don't know whether
it's I haven't done any research to see whether it's universally true but it's
my observation that the curriculum challenge of sustainability has not been
taken on adequately in universities yet it's too restricted to the basics where
it's obvious though clearly there our sustainability is discussed in programs
of environmental protection um it ought to be core to any study of economics it
ought to be caught of the study of business and while we don't usually
discuss curriculum innovation in open universities we talk more about
innovation in our vision in our mission we talk about innovation in our learning
and teaching I think there is a major opportunity and in fact a major
obligation to show how we can innovate with curriculum for sustainability if
syste mean ability as an issue is as important as the UN which represents all
of our governments this is not some alien body
and represents all of our governments if it is important as they say and I
personally believe it is I believe it is centrally important then how is the
University study adapting to equip our graduates to understand and deliver
sustainability in the future and it cannot be restricted to a small number
of programs in my view it could be central to many many programs much more
widely than we believe so I think this is a real opportunity for us to show the
way okay thank you very much sorry we don't have more time for for questions
so thank you I really thank you and we all thank you for for this session and
hopefully we'll meet sometime again soon all right