This presentation at the Hellenic Open University Symposium on Open Universities in November 2015 sets out an argument for concern that the forward march of open universities in Europe may be threatened. The need for capacity for Higher Education in the developing countries, proposed by the UN Sustainable Development Goals, will need a radical transformation of quality and student success in order for ODEL and open universities to play a full role.

1. Massification, quality and student
success: challenges for Open
Universities and the SDGs
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‘Alles Ständische und
stehende verdampft’
‘All that is solid melts
into air’

2. Key question
• Are the open universities the key mechanism
for massification of Higher Education for the
period of the UN Sustainable Development
Goals (SDG’s) 2015-2030?
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3. Post secondary needs for SDG period
2015-2030
• Higher Education places to grow from 200m to
400m by 2030
• For universal primary education we will need
globally 25.7m new primary teachers by 2030
• Need yet further numbers for junior
secondary following ‘UPE’ achievement
• Growth nearly all concentrated in still
developing countries
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4. UN Sustainable Development Goals
17 SDGs and 169 targets in total, 2015-2030
• Sustainability runs through most
• Also ‘safe, secure and resilient’ societies
• For all countries, only only poor countries
• Agreed by UN September 2015
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6. So…
• Are Open Universities the solution for major
expansion of Higher Education for 2015-2030
as they were in period 1970-1990?
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7. Field identifiers for open universities
• Flexible opportunity for adults
• Scale
• Learning off campus at a distance
• Technologies for learning and teaching
• Access and inclusion
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8. Open Universities
• Perhaps 60 in world?
• 7 in Europe
• In all world regions: Latin America, Canada,
Africa, India, Asia, Arab
• Not in significant countries, e.g. USA,
Australia, France, Russia
• New ones still being proposed: Ghana, Kenya,
Botswana, Namibia
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9. Student success in ODEL
1 Student success rates are widely reported to be
lower for part-time than fulltime students, and
lower for ODEL than for part-time students as a
whole.
2 There is an imperative to improve student success
rates firstly for the sake of students who invest their
self-esteem, time and money in ODEL programmes,
3 and also for the reputation of ODEL’s contribution
to educational systems and of the institutions who
teach significantly or entirely using ODEL methods
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10. Where is the data?
• Module pass rates?
• Qualification completion rates?
• Variable of openness of entry qualifications
• Much written about quality but achievement
of student success still very variable
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11. The poles of explanation
The characteristics of
• students in ODEL
• ODEL as a collection of methods for learning
and teaching
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12. Students in ODEL
Students on Open, distance and e-learning (ODEL) programmes are more likely to be
adults or post-experience, in the sense that they have not come to study directly
from school
• be studying in the post-secondary sector
• be part-time students with family or work responsibilities, or both
• gained access to programmes of study that are more open than those of the elite
universities
• In addition, students on ODEL programmes may to a greater or lesser extent
depending on the educational culture and history of their country come from
families with less or no history of postsecondary education,
• and to come from lower socio-economic demographic cohorts than those in
traditional universities or programmes
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13. Success rates in ODEL
• It is certainly widely though not universally the
case that student success in part-time modes of
study is less than that of full-time students,
• and within the part-time cohorts students on
ODEL programmes generally do less well in terms
of qualification completion than part-time
campus based students.
• Exceptions to these generalisations have been
recorded…
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14. Institutional mission
Open universities who seek to admit and serve
these students take a deliberate and purposeful
risk in doing so, in accord with their mission and
values
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15. Competing narratives of excellence
institutional missions that are focused on access
and inclusion are in conflict with the mission of
those institutions who developed narratives of
excellence based on selection and exclusion, and
who widely dominate accounts of excellence
and hierarchy in education
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http://icde.typepad.com/student_success/

17. Student success in open, distance and
e-learning
• Learning design as framework
•Pre-study information, advice,
guidance and admission
•Curriculum or programme for
student success
•Intervention at key points and in
response to student need
•Assessment
•Personalised support
•Information and logistical systems
•Managing for Student Success
http://icde.typepad.com/student_s
uccess/
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18. Open Universities: a mixed picture
• 1970’s: Open universities new powerful actors, pushing
aside commercial correspondence schools
• 1970-1990 Open Universities the paradigm of
innovation for access, scale, and technologies for
learning
• Achievement and reputation?
• Some have grown, some not
• Some have achieved high reputation, some not
• Some have better records of student success than
others
• Rhetoric of quality versus reality of student success
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19. From distance education to open
education
• All campuses have learning management systems
• Learning resources available on campus through
LMS
• Students on campus Email with lecturers
• Assignments submitted electronically
• MOOCs within modules
• Learning decentred from campus
• c. 100 of 160 UK Universities offer some Masters
teaching online
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20. MOOCs from 2008: who stole our
cheese?
• 2012 move out of pilot projects to major phenomenon, 15-
18m MOOC learners
• Scale innovation from research based universities such as
MIT and Stanford
• Major MOOC platforms not from open universities
• E.g. expertise in University of East Anglia MOOC
• Painful for self-image of Open Universities:
-- ‘Access, pedagogy and completion are poor! ‘
– and
– ‘How dare ‘conventional universities’ lead in innovation in TEL?’
– FutureLearn and European MOOC initiatives now reclaim
innovation
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21. Open Education
• MOOCs
• Open Education Resources
• Will Open Universities dominate space for
innovation with technology, scale and access
in future?
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22. Open Universities: a solution for the
time?
• UK 1971, HE participation rate 6%
• UK 2015 HE participation rate 42%
• Pool of non graduates now ? Half what it was
• So need for large-scale solutions in still
developing countries 2015-2030
• Need for undergraduate programmes in Open
Universities in developed countries?
• Would move to Masters and Professional
updating be an adequate mission?
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23. Conclusion
• Do we need to rethink role of Open
Universities in developed countries?
• How will we assure quality and student
success, including for open universities in still
developing countries with so much to do
2015-2030?
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