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The Open University's Approach toLearningJ.J. SparkesPublished online: 17 Mar 2008.

To cite this article: J.J. Sparkes (1978) The Open University's Approach to Learning, EuropeanJournal of Engineering Education, 3:3-4, 183-193, DOI: 10.1080/03043797808548455

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European Journal of Engineering Education 3 (1978) 183—193 183© Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam — Printed in The Netherlands

THE OPEN UNIVERSITY'S APPROACH TO LEARNING*

J.J. SPARKES

When it began, the Open University was unlike any other in several aspectsof its approach to higher education, and many of its characteristics affect theway it teaches and the way students learn. How is the university organised,what educational methods does it use and what is the content and characterof its courses?

The Open University began with the appointment of a Vice-Chancellor atthe beginning of 1969. Its first courses were sent to 25 000 students in January1971. Since then, each January, between 15 000 and 20 000 new studentshave been accepted, the precise number depending upon the level of theGovernment grant. On the average, about 70% of those who begin a year'scourse complete it successfully. Most students continue their studies with theaim of getting a degree, but a few students only take one or two courses outof interest and then leave the system. At the present time, the university hasrather more than 55 000 students and about 20 000 have graduated.

The university offers modular degrees. A student who successfully completesone of the courses referred to above obtains a credit or half credit (dependingon the amount of work in the course); and to obtain an ordinary degree astudent must have obtained six credits (or its equivalent, with some credits ob-tained as two half credits). To obtain a degree with honours, a student musthave obtained eight credits, two of which must have been at honours-degreestandard. These honours courses are referred to as 3rd-level or 4th-level courses.

The courses that students take on entry are called foundation courses, andare introductory to university work in both content and character and inmethod of study. The courses appropriate to ordinary degrees are called second-level courses, though those studying for ordinary degrees can study for 3rd- or4th-level credits if they wish. The courses are named according to level ratherthan according to year (as in conventional universities) because students areallowed to take courses at their own pace — within limits.

The maximum rate allowed is two credits per year; the minimum, half acredit per year. On average, students study a little over one credit per year. Itseems that those studying for degrees, rather than for interest only, takecourses at a higher-than-average rate, so ordinary degrees involve about four orfive years study; and honours degrees, five or six years. It is also, however,

*This paper is reprinted by kind permission of Electronics and Power, published by theInstitution of Electrical Engineers, U.K., August 1977.

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possible to obtain up to three 'credit exemptions' as a result of successfulhigher education prior to joining the Open University, so that, for people withcredit exemptions, degrees can be acquired more quickly.

The university is divided into six faculties as indicated in Fig. 1, and eachfaculty is divided into disciplines. The disciplines in the Faculty of Technologyare shown in the Figure. Each faculty has been allocated a total number ofcredits that it can offer, ranging from ten to 17, depending mainly on thenumber of recognised disciplines within each faculty. The university has notyet reached its full, steady-state, provision, and when it does there will beabout 85 undergraduate credits to choose from, or about 130 courses, somefull credit some half credit.

Each credit, or half credit, consists of about nine months work running fromthe end of January to the end of October. A full credit comprises 32 units ofwork, each intended to occupy a student for about 10—12 h, and is regardedas a week's work. So each week for nine months, save summer and Easter holi-day periods, a student studying a full-credit course is expected to study oneunit of the course. Half-credit courses are taken at half the pace, each unit be-ing spread over a fortnight.

Thus a credit is nearly 400 h work (or more if a summer school is included),and an honours degree is about 3000—4000 h work, about the same as for hon-ours degrees in conventional universities.

Open University students are all part-time students working mainly at home,and the majority of them are in full-time employment. They are distributed allover the U.K., and each year for the last three years 50 000 have applied tostudy with the university, of whom we have had to turn away about 30 000.No entry qualifications (like 'A' levels) are required, though students are ad-vised about their likely success. Even if they are advised to study elsewhere,they may reject the advice and still apply. The university selects on a mainlyfirst-come-first-served basis, and expects a certain number to drop out or failin the first year.

Since Open University students are to be found all over the U.K. and manyare in full-time jobs (including being a housewife and mother), it is not possibleto give them regular, personal, face-to-face tuition. A great deal has to be left

Faculties•

ArtsEducationMathsScience DesignSocial Science^^^^^Electronics Design and CommunicationTechnology ^**^ ' Materials

-Engineering Mechanics^Systems

Fig. 1. The faculties in the Open University and the disciplines within the Technology Faculty.

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to the student's own motivation and will to learn. The university's job is toplay a facilitating role; not just to present the knowledge the student must ab-sorb, but also to stimulate the skills and understanding without which know-ledge cannot be turned to new and unforeseen tasks.

Fortunately, the motivation of students who study at the Open University isquite outstanding for reasons that no doubt vary, but certainly include thefacts that they are all adults over 21, that many have discovered that educationhas real value, both socially and in cash terms, and that they have all paid signif-icant fees in order to study (£40 for a full credit plus numerous other expenses,e.g. travel and purchase of set books). But the reasons also include the nature ofthe teaching process used by the Open University, the quality of the teachingmaterial and the way in which personal contact with students is achieved inthe regions.

One of the factors in the Open University's success as an educational systemis its use of many communication channels. The various aspects of the way inwhich the teaching staff communicate with the student are tabulated in Fig.2,and each plays a different role in the pattern of teaching, so that the overalleducational effect is more than one might expect. The whole seems to begreater than the sum of the parts.

The principal teaching channel is the use of correspondence texts. These aresent in the form of slim, well printed books, size A4, of perhaps from 40 to 50pages per unit (remember that a full-credit course comprises 32 units). Theyare written by the university's academic staff and are very carefully structurededucationally. Each one is written as far as possible within clearly specifiedlimits of 'assumed entry behaviour', of 'aims and objectives' and 'student workload', and contains a good deal of student activity in the form of 'self-assess-ment questions' and use of 'home kits' etc.

'Assumed entry behaviour' is an explicit statement of what the student is ex-pected to know and understand when he begins a course, and, of course, his

1 Unit is about 12 hours work comprising:-

Always a correspondence textoften a TV programme (with notes)

a Radio programmeComputer marked assignmentsTutor marked assignments

sometimes Home kit workAttending tutorial(sometimes by teleconferencing)Using computer terminalAudio vision or radio visionSelf help groupsCounselling.

fig. 2. Various components of an Open University course unit.

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knowledge develops as the course progresses, sometimes rather linearly, as inmathematics or some aspects of technology, sometimes tangentially in broador complex subjects like history or in other aspects of technology.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

'Aims' are specific statements of what the authors aim to achieve in the units,whether it be changes of attitude, development of skills, improved under-standing or some steps forward in knowledge. 'Objectives' are much morespecific as far as the student is concerned: they are a list of new things thatthe student should be able to do when he has completed the unit. 'Self-assess-ment questions' are distributed through each unit and interrupt a student'sreading with questions to test his understanding so far. Model answers are givenat the back of the unit; and, together, question and answer prepare the studentfor the assignments he (or she) is required to complete from time to time duringthe course, and for the examination at the end of the year.

The correspondence texts are linked to t.v. programmes, radio programmes,audio discs, audio tapes, audio vision or radio vision. Broadcast t.v. is the onlyway of communicating certain kinds of visual material (e.g. of dynamic pro-cesses), and it forms a strong link between student and teacher. Broadcast radiois extremely cheap but is transitory compared with tapes or discs. The latter,whether accompanied by printed diagrams or calculations (as with audio vision)are more effective educationally since students can replay them. The amount ofaudio-visual material varies from course to course; some require more t.v., somemore audio vision and some more colour printing etc. Home kits accompanymany science and technology courses, and I shall describe a few for the subjectof electronics. They comprise, in general, specially designed apparatus toaugment, with practical experience, the teaching in the texts and the program-mes.

All the foregoing components of the system are concerned with conveyingfrom teacher to student that which is to be taught. The remaining componentsare concerned with enabling the student to interact with the teaching staff andso have any difficulties resolved.

Tutorials are held in study centres, about 250 of them, mostly located incolleges distributed around the country. They take place fortnightly for foun-dation courses but less frequently for higher level courses. The tutors are alsoexpected to give written help in response to written assignments. Counsellors,and counselling, are to help with any kind of study problems other than prob-lems connected with course content. Many part-time staff act as both tutorsand counsellors. Tutors and counsellors are recruited from amongst the localteaching staff of colleges and universities and from other suitably qualifiedpeople in the area.

Telephone tutorials, involving several students and a tutor on a telecon-ference facility, are widely used by the Open University, and a number of new

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developments involving, for example, visual information displayed on a t.v.screen transmitted by telephone, are making good progress. The existence ofcomputer terminals in most study centres allows both the teaching of com-puter usage as well as the use of computer-assisted learning methods withoutthe involvement of a tutor. All these activities, involving interaction withstudents and the appointment of part-time staff, are handled through regionaloffices. The U.K. is divided into 13 regions as shown in Fig. 3, and each regionhas a regional office staffed by full-time Open University staff. They have theresponsibility for organising most of the student-teacher contact in supportof the courses.

Finally, there are the summer schools, which form a compulsory part ofabout half the Open University courses. They comprise, for science and tech-nology at any rate, an intense week of laboratory work supported by tutorials,seminars and lectures. A summer school plays a key role in helping studentswho are falling behind, since they are usually able to obtain just the kind oftuition they need to enable them to catch up with the courses they are study-ing. But in addition, where laboratory work is concerned, they provide thekind of supervised laboratory work that is often needed to augment the prac-tical work associated with home kits. It is sometimes said that the principalcontribution to educational methodology that the Open University has madeis the introduction of the 'course team' as a basis for writing courses. Since themain educational medium is the correspondence text, and since students in theOpen University system cannot immediately ask questions of an author if theyhave difficulty, it is clear that these texts must be written with great care. Ex-perience shows that students may struggle for hours trying to make sense of aninadvertent error or ambiguity. Similarly, serious misunderstandings can de-velop if explanations are not firmly based on prior knowledge.

Adult students, whose first encounter with words like force, work, stress,energy is in everyday life, find difficulty in accepting their technical or scien-

HeadquartersWalton HallMilton Keynes

13 Regional offices (eg London, Cardiff, Edinburgh etc.)Contain Regional Academic Staff and administration

StudyCentresin towns

Average20 perregion

Contain: TVradio, computerterminal,tutorial rooms etc.

Fig. 3. Diagrammatic representation of the regional structure.

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tific meaning. They are familiar with political and economic forces; with workas opposed to leisure; with stress as a synonym for strain: with energy as some-thing about which there is a crisis. New scientific meanings have to be intro-duced gently. It comes as more than just a surprise that science asserts thatthere is a universal law of the conservation of energy, when all the newspaperssay that we are running out of it!

Course teams therefore form a forum at which such problems are exposedand made explicit, at which the writings by each member of the team are sub-ject to thorough criticism by others and at which the educational strategyof correspondence texts is integrated with the t.v., radio, home kits, summerschools, and assignments etc., which make up a complete course. If you thinkof education as a process with inputs in the form of students, ideas and capabili-ties, and an output in the form of educated students who can understand, useand develop these ideas as well as display the appropriate capabilities, you cansay that the Open University system tends more towards being an open loopcontrol system than conventional universities.

Great care is therefore taken in the design of the 'forward path', since error-correcting feedback from students, though plentiful, is delayed. One of the dis-coveries that the use of course teams has made is of the frequent imperfections,even the presence of conceptual errors, in generally accepted text books. Con-ventional, face-to-face, teaching can tolerate more imperfections in the teachingprocess, since error correction is more readily available even though it is notused as often as it should be.

Tuition, counselling, summer school, assignments, letter and telephone callsall provide feedback to the teaching staff in the Open University system; but itis difficult to respond to it immediately in the manner of question and answerin a lecture, which is why so much care is taken over the units themselves.Despite the limitation on the possible uses of immediate feedback, the coursesseem to teach very effectively.

WHAT THE UNIVERSITY TEACHES

Broadly speaking, the Open University teaches the same kind of courses thatare taught in other universities, except that there are many fewer courses, andso they have to be more carefully planned. However, although there are fewercourses overall, students have a much freer choice of which courses they maytake since they are not constrained to follow one discipline once they havechosen it (e.g. philosophy or physics) as is common in universities which do notuse a modular system. However, those who have a particular professional in-terest usually do choose from a restricted range; but, still, a particular side in-terest in music or astronomy or electronics might be catered for by an isolatedcourse or two amongst a more coherent pattern. Because the range of choicesis so great I propose to confine my remarks primarily to courses in or relatedto the Faculty of Technology.

With adult students, many of whom are working in industry or in jobs re-

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quiring practical expertise, we have often found it helpful to integrate thetheoretical and analytical aspects of a particular subject area with the kind ofcomplex problems which confront students in their everyday lives. This is nottrue for all courses in the Faculty of Technology, but it is a discernible trendin many of them. This does not mean, as some assume, that engineering educa-tion as a consequence turns into training for particular jobs, since thegenerality of theory and analysis is preserved. What it does mean is that studentsare shown how to deploy their theoretical understanding in order to design so-lutions to real, complex problems, rather than stop short at analysis or atsolving idealised problems. It means that an emphasis is put on the design pro-cess in which theoretical ideas have to be balanced against questions of reliabili-ty, functioning in a non-ideal environment, cost, production feasibility and soon. (Here I am using the word design in its broadest sense; namely, creating orsynthesising a new solution to a current problem whether it be clearing a bottle-neck in a production line or designing a new computer).

TEACHING BY EXAMPLE

It is not that the courses deal with specific solutions to specific problems,because, even with the close relationship with industry that the Open Universityhas developed over the years in preparing its courses, it is not possible or de-sirable to recreate for the student the whole context of a complex problem.What is possible is to teach, through examples and exercises, how analysis canstrengthen the design process. Thus, for example, analysis of an amplifier's per-formance is dealt with in such a way that it is not only the gain, the two-portimmitances and frequency response that emerge, but also how to reconcilethese requirements with the rejection of signals on the supply lines, with com-mon-mode rejection, with power-handling economy of output stages, with tem-perature stability etc.

To put the same point another way: it is accepted that there is as muchdifficulty for an engineer in successfully turning a practical problem into onethat he can analyse usefully, as there is in the analysis itself and its reinterpre-tation. So these kinds of courses are concerned both with the modelling of realsituations successfully, taking both the context and the content of the probleminto account, as well as with the analytical manipulation of the mathematicalor scientific models that are involved.

This approach is adopted, to a greater or lesser degree, not just at the de-tailed level of circuits or mechanics; it is used in connection with engineeringsystems like computers, telecommunication and control engineering, with ma-terials and structures as well as with industrial and organisational systems,which incorporate technology, like the railways, air-traffic control and con-tainerisation. The context of each kind of problem is different of course; for acircuit it is primarily the physical environment and the overall electronic speci-fication that matters. For containerisation it is the pattern of trade, economics,problems of communication, the law, trade-union policy etc., which limit thescope of technological ingenuity.

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It is these broader management related issues that form the subject matterof the Faculty of Technology's systems courses. 'Systems behaviour' exposesthe ranges of complexity that characterise modern industrial society. 'Systemsmanagement' is mainly a detailed study of the management of one organisation,the railway system. 'Systems modelling' is concerned with the use of mathema-tics, especially statistics, for the purpose of modelling, planning and predicting-the development of complex systems. 'Systems performance' explains andanalyses what goes wrong, even following well laid plans, when the designerhas failed to integrate fully the many aspects of a complex system.

At the other end of the spectrum of courses, there are those concernedprimarily with content, with the theoretical ideas of physics, chemistry and theanalytical skills of mathematics. Both the science and mathematics facultiesproduce a number of courses of this kind, of relevance to technology. In addi-tion, the Faculty of Technology has co-operated with these other faculties inwriting a number of interfaculty courses that bear on technological problems.'Introduction to materials', 'Electromagnetics and electronics' and 'Images andinformation' are courses written jointly with the Faculty of Science. 'Modellingby mathematics' and 'The digital computer' are written jointly with the Facul-ty of Mathematics. 'Mechanics and applied calculus' is written jointly withboth the Faculties of Science and Mathematics. The range of courses producedby the Faculty of Technology includes courses relevant to each discipline as setout in the 'Courses handbook' of the University*.

•'j'ig. 4. Home-kit generator-scope for the basic electronics course.

'Courses Handbook' (The Open University).

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As I have explained earlier, the practical work, where appropriate, associatedwith these courses is dealt with by demonstration on television, by supervisedlaboratory work at summer school or by use of a home experimental kit. Asummer school can provide about 40 h of practical laboratory work, and adegree with honours might involve four or five such summer schools, as well assome others (for example in mathematics) with less emphasis on laboratorywork. The time spent using home kits is difficult to estimate, and certainly al-so varies from course to course, but, since some of the kits are highly sophisti-cated and students have full personal possession of them for seven or eightmonths, they develop a real practical capability as well as the understandingthat many hours of practical experience brings.

For the electronics course, students are sent a 'Generatorscope', which is aspecially designed instrument incorporating an oscilloscope, a signal generator,a d.c. and a.c. supply (Fig. 4). The student constructs a multimeter and is thentaught how to analyse, design and evaluate several high-quality but relativelysimple circuits: a stabilised d.c. supply with current trip, a power-output stagefor a 741 operational amplifier, a time base with full control facilities and asimple operational amplifier and servomechanism (Fig. 5). Part of the circuitevaluation is done at summer school where better electronic equipment is avail-able. For the digital-computer course, each student is sent a small specially de-

Fig. 5. Operational amplifier and servomechanism that students are required to build andtest. The black rubber disc is driven by a small electric motor pressed against its rim so thatit follows the setting of the input knob.

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Fig.6. Home-kit digital computer sent to students of the basic computer course.

signed computer (Fig. 6), which he learns to program and operate first byswitches, then by a keyboard after first inputting a loader, and then by simula-ting it on one of the computer terminals at a study centre. The kit for theimages and information course includes a laser, holograms etc.

Thus for each course the key pieces of apparatus, by means of which theessential subject matter can be exemplified, are designed and sent to eachstudent, so that he can learn from practical experience as well as from theother communication channels in the Open University system.

PROFESSIONAL RECOGNITION

Many Open University students hope to obtain professional recognitionfrom the engineering institutions through gaining an Open University degree.Only recently, however, has a combination of courses emerged which may even-tually qualify for recognition. Courses take a long time to write, and one ortwo of those listed earlier are not yet available although they are in preparation.

Recently, the British Psychological Society agreed to recognise Open Univer-sity degrees provided that 'the courses of which they are composed were chosenfrom a range of courses related to psychology written by . . . the Faculties ofSocial Science, Education and Science'. In the same way, there is reason tohope that before long, the engineering institutions will feel able to name a setof Open University courses from which a student can choose, and which on

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successful completion, will give him (or her) exemption from the institution'sown qualifying examinations. At the present time, several institutions are sub-mitting our courses to a careful scrutiny with a view to reaching a decision asto their suitability.

CONCLUSION

I have tried to explain how the Open University is organised to teach remote,home-based independent learners, how the courses are designed to meet theparticular needs of adult students, to exploit the particular opportunities of-fered by the Open University system as well as to deal with its constraints. Onesuch opportunity is the chance it offers to build strong links with industry.Many firms support their staff as students of the Open University, as well asallowing their experts to contribute spoken or written material for our coursesor permit their activities to be televised (we televised the instrumentation atFlixborough before the factory exploded). We are also able to engage their ex-perts as assessors of our own written material. In addition we are affordedequal co-operation from leading academics from universities and polytechnics,whom we can engage as assessors and external examiners. Thus I believe wehave achieved high academic standards as well as 'a new synthesis of the theo-retical and the practical' (to use a phrase borrowed from educational thinkingin W. Germany), both of which are fully in accord with present developmentsin engineering education in this country. Indeed I believe it will be difficult tosay of Open University honours graduates, as the CBI does of graduates ofother universities, that*:

'there is a growing proportion with only poor or mediocre talent. This is illustrated interms of such factors as poor personal motivation and little professional commitment;a lack of flexibility, breadth of vision and creativity in problem solving; need of closesupervision; and deficiencies in interpersonal and communicative skills.'

3rd report from the Select Committee on Science & Technology entitled 'University-Industry relations' (Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 26th October 1976).

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