Reaching Non-Traditional Students
Challenges for the New Millennium
For the past 30 years, much of my experience of delivering higher education has been with the UK Open University. I began as a parttime tutor in the University's first teaching year, 1971, and have been fortunate enough to come up through the ranks to my present position as Director for Ireland. During this time, the region in which I have always been based has extended from a coverage of Northern Ireland only to include the Republic of Ireland also. Thus we offer almost the full range of the University's provision in all parts of the country with some 9000 students currently studying with us. We are the only higher education institution providing equality of access to learning opportunities throughout Ireland.
There is no doubt that The Open University, on its establishment, did not have to face the kinds of cultural and institutional problems/situations that currently challenge conventional higher education institutions. Our 'target' population was and continues to be new types of learners, non-traditional students: those who have been unable, for whatever reason, to enter tertiary education in the customary way. And there are many factors that prevent people from continuing their education beyond secondary level- financial difficulties, family commitments, remoteness, disability, poor achievement/lack of confidence, poor or no entry qualifications. Sometimes, The Open University has been described as the 'second chance' university but for many of our undergraduate students; we represent the first real chance they have had to study towards a degree. In 1969, the founders of the University declared its mission as being:
And that remains as pertinent today as it was then.
New types of students inevitably meant new types of arrangements and, from the very beginning, the way in which The Open University delivers its courses was structured in a radically different way from what was and, to a large extent, still is the case in conventional higher education institutions. We deliver distance education by means of Supported Open Learning. What does that mean?
Distance means that students don't come to us, we go to them. We send learning materials to students in the form of multimedia packs that include a range of elements such as specially written texts, computer software, video and audio materials. Most of this is simply sent via normal postal services but many of you will be familiar with the on-air broadcasting of teaching though our partnership with the BBC and, increasingly, we make use of electronic media such as CD Rom and the Internet. Therefore, you might say that, with a few frills around the edges, we are basically a correspondence college. Far from it; again, from the beginning, we recognised that, if we merely sent out all of this material to students and asked them to study for nine months and then sit an examination at the end of it, our success rate would be pretty abysmal. All students, especially those who haven't engaged in learning for some time, need support, reinforcement, encouragement and access to advice if they get into difficulties. Hence, each student is allocated to a personal tutor (and we currently employ some 400 part-time staff for this purpose) who provides academic support and who marks and comments on their on-course assessment, has opportunities to attend face-to-face tutorial sessions or dayschools and, for some courses, is required to attend a residential school.
But how do we reach these non-traditional students and who are they? On occasion, I am asked to describe the typical Open University student. Figures 1-8 illustrate a number of characteristics relating to Open University students in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland and compare these to the averaged data for the total student body. He or she (there is roughly a 50:50 gender balance in the University) is aged anything from 18 to 96 (our oldest student) with the majority in the 35-39 age-range, may be working, unwaged, unemployed or retired, has other domestic or social commitments, may have left school at 14 or already have another HE qualification, may have a disability - I could go on. No problems with diversity there!
What they do all have in common is a tremendous desire to learn and to develop themselves, either personally or professionally. And they are a joy to teach.
How do we select our students? We don't; they select us. We have no entry qualifications for the undergraduate programme. But we also recognise that not everyone will be able to cope immediately with study at this level so we offer personal advice on course selection, guidance on preparing for study, and on-going support and monitoring during their studies. What we continually strive to project in all of the information that we provide is that we offer a learning environment which is responsive, supportive and in which people can fulfil their potential.
Can we really say that we are Open? It is true that we can offer a flexibility in our method of delivery that enables people to continue with their existing commitments and it is true that we can cite innumerable examples of great success amongst our students, some of whom started with very little experience of education. We run two degree ceremonies each year, one in Dublin and one in Belfast. Dublin took place on 13 May and over 300 people attended to be presented with their qualifications. In Belfast next month we shall have another 240 there. But, in all honesty, there remains a sector of the population that either has no interest in studying at all, that finds engagement impossible because of personal circumstance, such as a disability, or is simply unable to afford the costs of study.
How to reach the former is something that continues to exercise the minds of many in the world of education and training and we need to think of ways in which we can make what we offer appear more attractive and accessible. Key to the achievement of this aim is the provision of realistic progression routes for people, starting with small, manageable chunks of learning that are immediately relevant to their personal or work related development. Linking these with some form of recognition or accreditation can bring an almost immediate sense of achievement and begin to build confidence and a desire to engage in further learning. This is what initiatives like LearnDirect in the UK and the recently launched series of pre-degree courses called 'Openings' from The Open University are trying to achieve.
People with a disability who seek access to learning can be facilitated in a variety of ways. For instance, The Open University supports students with special needs are by enabling disabled access to study centres, providing large print text, using signers for those with hearing impairment, assigning a personal helper at residential school and arranging for home examinations.
And there are ways in which we can reach those who simply can't afford to take up education opportunities. The issue of fee support for part-time students is currently being debated; it becomes especially pertinent as the boundaries between full - and part-time study become increasingly blurred as more and more students combine study with other activities. Just this year, the UK government introduced financial support towards study for part-time students who are in receipt of certain social security benefits. As a result, we were able to admit an additional 450 students in Northern Ireland who are having the full amount of their fees waived. To those who have influence over such decisions, I would wish to stress the cost effectiveness of such a simple step in widening access to tertiary level education and training.
One of the criticisms made of The Open University and, indeed, of widening participation initiatives generally, is to say that if we take any student, irrespective of whether or not they have normal entry qualifications or the equivalent, then this must have an effect on standards. The success demonstrated at Open University degree ceremonies referred to earlier is clear evidence that, given the right teaching, support and facilitation, almost anyone can successfully complete a programme of study, many with outstanding results. The Open University is funded on the same basis as all other UK higher education institutions and is subject to exactly the same quality assurance standards and monitoring. We have achieved excellent results in all of these assessments and are now rated amongst the top fifteen teaching institutions in the UK. We simply can't afford to deliver anything less. Our materials are published and available to anyone who wishes to look at them and therefore they need to be produced to a very high standard. And our learning support services need to be such that our students can gain the maximum benefit from their studies.
In many ways, the whole approach of The Open University has been to provide lifelong learning for all. And this opens up a whole new cohort of non-traditional students. Rather than taking the traditional route of moving straight to post-graduate study after completing a first degree, there are many people who move into the work environment after completing a primary degree but who, after some years, decide that they wish to acquire a higher or professional qualification or to update themselves in a particular area such as ICT or languages. Of those who graduated this year from the Open University, around 40% did so with higher degrees. Lifelong learning tends to be thought of a solution to a need at the lower end of the skills development range, but while this is an important aspect of learning, there is a wide spectrum of lifelong learning needs that is not adequately being catered for, by the sector in which we operate. We would be wise to focus greater efforts on learning about such needs not only from employees themselves but also from the perspective of employers. Some work that we have been doing with Queen's University, Belfast, and with the University of Ulster (1) indicates that foremost amongst the skills that employers look for are a continuing willingness to learn; an ability to communicate effectively and a readiness to adapt to new working practices.
The cultural and institutional challenges facing The Open University over the next few years are probably not dissimilar to those facing everyone at this conference. Interestingly, one of these which might not be immediately evident is that of customer satisfaction. Once, a teaching institution could adopt a 'take-it-or-leave-it' attitude to prospective students. 'This is what we offer and how we offer it.' But this is no longer the case. Our students are our customers because, often, they have a choice to make as to how they meet their learning objectives. We may not all be comfortable with this perception but there is little doubt that we need to give much more consideration to what students want to study and how and when they wish to do so. We need to be responsive to need both in terms of the curriculum and of the provision of services. We need to communicate with students as they would wish in writing - (traditionally, our main means of communication) by telephone, by email, on the Internet, by means of interactive television, or even via a Sony Playstation. Thinking about students as customers is a real challenge for many traditional academics!
I spoke earlier about the challenge of offering access to non-traditional students but another challenge is that of accompanying them as they progress through their studies. We are comfortable and familiar with our non-traditional platform of printed materials and tutorial support but we have now moved into the provision of additional support by bringing students together virtually in computer conferences so that they can have access not only to their tutor at all reasonable times but also to each other, so that they can form mutually supportive study groups. A facility like this can reduce the sense of isolation felt by the distance learner and enable them to feel a greater sense of being part of an academic community.
The provision of student support by electronic means is paralleled by developments in the delivery of teaching electronically and, this year, we launched our first totally on-line undergraduate course; all aspects of teaching and learning are provided on line, materials, support and assessment, and the course has attracted an overall recruitment total of some 8000 students. Here lies a real challenge. We are only beginning to learn about the pedagogical implications of learning in this way - How best to deliver the learning, how best to enable our students to cope successfully with it and how best to enable our academic staff to adapt to teaching in this way. Many of you will be aware of the recent announcement made by the UK government about the establishment of an e-university with the ability to deliver higher education completely outside traditional channels.
And here is a really significant challenge for us all. Being able to deliver teaching on the net means that teaching can be delivered anywhere in the world. The Open University offers a Masters in Open and Distance Education qualification which made its first awards recently at a virtual ceremony with graduates from Taiwan to Iceland. Accessibility to learning from non-traditional providers brings with it an implication that, in the future, we might expect to be in competition not only with each other but with Microsoft or with Sony.
I hope that I have been able to give you an impression of how The Open University has responded to the challenge of widening access. But this is just one way of doing it. Each of our institutions has its own features and strengths and there are niches for us all. The way that we deliver will be right for some. The way that you deliver will be right for others. The way that Bill Gates may decide to deliver may be right for yet more. The big challenge for the future is to find ways of working together in partnership so that, together, we represent a range of opportunities to suit all needs and interests. Together, we can create a tertiary education sector that ensures flexibility, accessibility and a wide range of provision and makes the possibility of lifelong learning a realistic and attractive one. A conference like this can provide an environment in which these synergies can spawn and flourish. I very much welcome the opportunity to be part of it and look forward to hearing the discussions and the ideas that spring from them.
Undergraduate Entrants - Gender - Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland
Undergraduate Entrants - Qualifications - Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland
Undergraduate Entrants - Occupations - Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland
Undergraduate Entrants - Ages - Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland
(1) Personal Development and Graduate Skills for Employment; NIHEC, December 1998