Alan Tait

The Open University (UK) · Department of Education

Why is Openness in Education important, and why is it critically needed at this moment? As manifested in our guiding question, the significance of Openness in Education and its immediate necessity form the heart of this collaborative editorial piece. This rather straightforward, yet nuanced query has sparked this collective endeavour by using indiv...

Why is Openness in Education important, and why is it critically needed at this moment? As manifested in our guiding question, the significance of Openness in Education and its immediate necessity form the heart of this collaborative editorial piece. This rather straightforward, yet nuanced query has sparked this collective endeavour by using indiv...

In 2020, because of the COVID-19 pandemic the higher education sector, in the United Kingdom and internationally, transitioned to online assessment, at a speed and scale which might have been unimaginable under normal circumstances. The priority in the sector was to ensure that fundamental principles of assessment, including integrity, were support...

The shift to online assessment during the pandemic has generated debates on academic integrity, also highlighting good practice in supporting students and staff. Academic integrity is commitment to six fundamental values: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage and academic misconduct refers to practices that are not in keepi...

En Visiones en educación sin barreras ni fronteras participaron para su elaboración más de 35 importantes y reconocidos académicos como autores provenientes de toda Iberoamérica, solo por mencionar algunas personalidades que se unieron a este libro homenaje nombraré algunos maestros como Claudio Rama, Julio Cabero, Marta Mena, Santiago Acosta, Fran...

In 2020, the Higher Education sector, in the UK and internationally, had to move to online assessment because of the Covid-19 pandemic, at a speed and scale which might have been unimaginable under normal circumstances. By upscaling and accelerating the adoption of digital assessment practices in distance and online education across the world, educ...

Ethical issues relating to applications of learning analytics (with a focus on open, distance learning) in higher education

This paper sets out the ways in which technologies for learning have been at the heart of education for development for millennia, not as is sometimes thought only in the last 30 years of the digital revolution. Short case studies of the University of London External System and the Open University UK set out the development outcomes of these major...

I am grateful for the opportunity to add a commentary to Anne Gaskell’s very effective summary account of open, distance and e-learning in the UK. First of all, looking backwards so to speak, it is remarkable what a significant contribution major UK theorists have made to this field. The UK can claim Michael Moore, who was born and educated in the...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report on research on the views of Presidents and Vice Chancellors of Open Universities of current threats and opportunities for their institutions as the author marks the 50th anniversary of the first Open University in the UK established in 1969. The paper offers a historical account of the development of...

The aim of the research is to design the framework of technology enhanced learning integration into organisations. The aim of the research is divided into the following objectives: 1. To create a framework of responsible and responsive technology enhanced learning integration into organisations. 2. To implement the framework of technology enhanced...

This research paper addresses the issues of integration of technology enhanced learning (TEL) into an educational organization. Good practice experience cannot be directly transferred to new organisations due to different contextual conditions. The TEL integration depends significantly upon a very rapid development of services and information commu...

This article examines the impact of digital technologies on student support in distance and e-learning, drawing on the case of Open University UK. Giving a historical perspective on the use of technologies in learning over many centuries, it argues that the dominant paradigm of geography -which has defined the structures for student support service...

This article reviews the discourse of mission in large distance teaching and open universities, in order to analyse the theories of development and social justice that are claimed or may be inherent in them. It is suggested that in a number of cases the claims are unsupported or naive. The article goes on to set out the nature of Amartya Sen's capa...

The rushed development of information and communication technologies and their impact on the world of learning in the last decade have profoundly changed the paradigms, scenarios and values at all levels of education. The professionalization of tools and practices, in addition to the consolidation of academic and practical knowledge, has been a maj...

Trends towards greater flexibility are to be found in the reform of post-school education and training around the globe. They are part of a wider profile of changes to workplaces and labour relations within which greater flexibility is pursued. This paper charts our journey, through which we have sought to locate flexibility as a globalizing and gl...

Including abstract, bibl. This article proposes a framework within which the question as to the purposes of open universities should be examined. It argues that the question has become submerged over time through the establishment of so many open universities that have become natural elements in a higher education landscape rather than remaining ra...

The research project reported here arose out of questions we had in relation to time pressures, increasingly heavy workloads and concerns that we were, it seemed to us, neglecting our families and friends. We kept on asking ourselves: how do people manage? Open University students, for example, most of whom are working full-time, have families and...

This is a very interesting moment to reflect on Student Support in Open and Distance Learning (ODL). After some 10 years of the radical intrusion of a range of technologies, principally those grouped around what has been broadly termed ICT, we have the chance to see if and how the world of ODL has qualitatively changed. I suggest that those of us w...

This is a very interesting moment to reflect on Student Support in Open and Distance Learning (ODL). After some 10 years of the radical intrusion of a range of technologies, principally those grouped around what has been broadly termed ICT, we have the chance to see if and how the world of ODL has qualitatively changed. To begin with a historical p...

Incl. list of contributors, index

This paper examines the various factors that need to be taken into account in the planning of student support in open and distance learning systems. The factors discussed arise from the characteristics of the students, the demands of academic programmes and courses, the geographical environment, the technological infrastructure, the scale of the pr...

The hitherto widely-held assumption that the counselling interaction should be conducted face-to-face, while other activities within the overall guidance process could be supported by computer, is re-examined. Recent computer-mediated information and communications technologies are reviewed, and their implications for guidance and counselling as a...

The key questions this article seeks to address are to establish what policies for open and distance learning for post-secondary education have been developed in the European Union over the last 10 years; how they have come into being; what explicit intentions they embody; what implicit and underlying roles in terms of social process such policies...

This article describes the change of the Open University of the United Kingdom during the 1990–1993 period from being a domestic to an international organization, with the expansion of its provision throughout the whole of the European Union and a range of other European countries, including Austria, Bulgaria, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, a...

The author examines the background and purposes of open learning in Great Britain. Political motives are emphasized. The distinction between distance education and open education is made. The author calls for more focus on individualizing instruction in distance education. (CH)

The theme of this article concerns the extent to which distance education is allied to democracy. The industrialised model of distance education first advanced by Peters (1983), accurately identified the nature of the operation that, through its ability to fulfil large scale educational plans in the most cost effective way, made it very attractive...

This chapter reviews the change of factors both internal and external that makes imperative a review of the ways in which learners are supported in the OU UK, and by extension more widely in open and distance learning. The factors include, from within the institution: declining retention figures; the nature of learner expectations in the change of...