Open U broadens its American expansion

Internet Strategies for Education Markets: The Heller Report, Sept, 2000

US Open University (Denver, CO, www.open.edu) is far from enjoying the prestige of its sister institution in the UK, but it is gaining ground as an important player on the American e-learning field. Open University, the original, 30-year old UK institution, has a well-defined pedagogy and business approach, both of which are being ported to the US with some adaptations.

Open U is consistently ranked in the top ten of the UK's higher education institutions. It has 170,000 students enrolled in Britain with another 40,000 around the rest of the world. US Open U has just completed pilots with about 90 students and has expanded its offerings to eleven degree programs and about two dozen courses. It is fast-tracked as a candidate for accreditation by the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools.

Open U, says Richard Jarvis, chancellor of US Open U, looks after the adult student who needs lifelong learning and wants to develop new skills and new interests. Jarvis explains that the institution is focused on offering degrees and courses for adult students who have already completed two years of higher education.

He points to America's strong community college system as a healthy environment for US Open U. The institution is creating partnerships with a number of community colleges which, in addition to recruiting students to US Open U, provide dual admission agreements, scholarship programs and faculty development programs.

The Faculty's Role

Goals of the professional development efforts are two-fold: teaching faculty to help students become independent learners and recruiting associate faculty for US Open U. In a model the Open U calls Supported Open Learning (SOL), associate faculty work directly with students, in a role much like a tutor, following a defined course created by senior faculty.

Jarvis explains that the traditional university model requires the highest paid employees, senior faculty, to spend an enormous amount of time with administrative work and other tasks for which they may not be the best qualified. The Open U model puts senior faculty into a team with instructional and test designers and graphic and computer design people to produce a package of course materials. The Open U has a long-term, government mandated history of creating television programs for the BBC. They also create print resources, CD-ROMs and audio resources (and sometimes they simply clear rights to existing material). Jarvis says these resources can take years to produce at a cost of up to $4 or $5 million for a single course.

The Students' Experience

Open U students receive a collection of resources at the beginning of the course, and then have asynchronous access to associate faculty and classmates via the web. Some courses have extensive interactive web sites with communications facilitated by FirstClass software, and others simply use the web to list assignments and to email messages. Computer media is delivered via CD-ROM, not online. A few courses require synchronous communications, or even brief residency requirements.

"We try very hard to not be technology driven," says Jarvis, "just technology supported." The courses are designed with expectations of slow modems and poor printers, but Jarvis hopes to work more with video streaming and other features as broadband access becomes a reality.

US Open U uses course materials created in the UK and adapts them for the US. That requires dividing them into smaller units. UK students are accustomed to 16-credit courses over a year and half of study; US students are more accustomed to three- and four-credit semester courses. There is also what Jarvis calls "the Queen and cricket problem," or the need to localize content and remove British references.

The majority of online learning offerings currently on the market focus on courses that a business will reimburse or which clearly advance an individual's job prospects. US Open U certainly has Masters and BS degrees in business and information technology, but it bucks the trend by also offering BAs in English, European studies, the Humanities, Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. Jarvis sees a strong demand for the liberal arts courses and degrees. In all disciplines, says Jarvis, demand for individual courses is roughly equivalent to interest in courses as a part of a degree program. The long-tradition of creating programming for the BBC is clearly a boost for liberal arts offerings such as Shakespeare.

In addition to community college partnerships, US Open U will be promoting its offerings through organizations with members forming communities of interests. They just struck a deal with The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE, www.ieee.org) for example, and they also have an agreement with The Folger Institute (www.folger.edu/institute).

Jarvis says that US Open U would also like to replicate the UK's Learning School Programme (www.learningschools.net) in the US. That is a joint venture between Open U and RM offering professional development courses to teachers. The Open U would like to find a similar partner for the US market and has begun a few preliminary discussions.