Higher Education 19:259-269 (1990) �9 Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht - Printed in the Netherlands

Review article

Open learning: its relevance to higher education

ROGER LEWIS Director of Services, The Open College, Manchester, United Kingdom.

Phil Race (1989). The Open Learning Handbook: Selecting, Designing, and Supporting Open Learning Materials. London: Kogan Page. 156 pp. s 16.95 Hardback.

Given the rapid turnover of education and training jargon, readers might well feel that 'open learning' ought to have had its day long ago. In fact the term has had a remarkably good innings, rising to prominence first in the late 70s. It owes its survival to two main influences: first, links with the development of currently valued qualities such as autonomy and enterprise; second (and more pragmatically), the government commitment to open learning via first the Manpower Services Commission then The Training Commission and now The Training Agency. Government funded the Open Tech Programme from 1982-1986, then The Open College. More significantly for readers of this Journal, The Training Agency is now funding the extension of open learning into higher education (HE) (via the Enterprise in Higher Education pro- gramme), further education (via the Mutual Development Fund) and schools (via the newly announced Flexible Learning in Schools project). In all cases the expectation is that open learning will become embedded in mainstream provision. These inititiatives are looked at again below.

What is open learning?

But what exactly is open learning? The question is particularly important in setting the scene for a review of this new book on the subject.

To some, open learning occupies a ghetto area outside mainstream pro- vision, catering only for 'new' audiences, unable to get to conventional classes because they cannot attend at the time or place at which the providing

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institution chooses to deliver. Open learning's flexibility and portability does indeed mean that educational providers can reach new groups of learners.

But this is a limiting view of open learning, avoiding a wider definition which would fundamentally challenge the customs and methods of mainstream teaching and learning. Further, it leads to a number of unfortunate miscon- ceptions about open learning: that it is a form of learning pursued in isolation from one's fellow-students; that it is the same as distance learning; that it is suitable only for cognitive learning; that it cannot be used to teach interactive or practical skills; that it is appropriate only for part-time adult learners. And - worst of all - that it is somehow inferior to conventional delivery ("Are you really sure you can't get to my lecture class on Tuesday evenings?").

To others, open learning offers more than mere convenience. It gives learners (and other clients, such as their managers) greater choice not only of the time and place of learning but also over what is learnt (content) and how (learning methods and style). Here open learning moves beyond issues of access to learning and into issues of control over the curriculum itself, empowering clients with choices hitherto reserved to the learning profession- als. Until recently, learners were given access to an existing curriculum, newly packaged; now learners can exercise choice over the selection, sequencing and structuring of the content itself. For example with Open College management courses, learners can built short, practical 30-hour packages, in any order, into a Certificate of Business Administration and choose their content within each package.

So open learning is increasingly seen not just as a more flexible way to deliver education and training but as a learning method that, through giving learners a wider variety of choice, builds the enterprising individuals needed to function in later 20th century society: through exercising choice, we develop autonomy. Hence, to return to the start of this review, The Training Agency's current interest in this wider definition.

Enterprise in Higher Education (EHE)

The three main objectives of EHE are:

- undergraduates shall develop enterprise competences; - each HE institution shall encourage the use of teaching and learning methods

that deliver these competences; - employers will have a stake in the learning process.

Figure 1 sets out some characteristics of the enterprising person. 2

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Monitors Progress

Influences Others

Displays Drive & Determination

X- .d' Enterprise

Characteristics

Displays Initiative

Makes Decisions

Manages Resources

Fig. 1. Creates and takes opportunities.

In the following figure the crosses represent what has traditionally happened; the ticks show what enterprise training is trying to achieve.

~ C r e a t e s X s~176 Sn:~ opportunities

Skills to rate wealth ~ Dependent

upon others V and resources

t C~ X Powerless to o use initiative take initiative

~ a d v Takes antage of " ~ Confused change ~ by change

Fig. 2. Traditional and enterprise learning.

The Supplementary Notes of Guidance for EHE stress the need to cultivate methods of learning that themselves develop these qualities. Thus, whatever

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they are learning - classics, cybernetics or computing - students can be systematically helped to develop their capacity to welcome and use choice - to, as the Supplementary Notes put it, "exercise and accept increasing respon- sibility for.., their learning".

Unlike the Open Tech Programme, EHE is not limited to the production of packages in particular curriculum areas. It is more about transforming mainstream HE:

There must be a clear commitment, as evidenced in curriculum and manage- ment accountability and in employer relationships, to embed enterprise skills, competences and aptitudes within the culture of the institution. (Source as above).

Open learning itself is mentioned in paragraph 11 f and paragraph 13 restates the importance of choice:

the implementation of an enterprise programme will lead to more, not less, choice for students.

Readers who wish to have more details of EHE, and of the activities of those EHE institutions receiving government funding under the terms of the scheme, should write to the address given at the end of the article. 3

Parallel developments

This move of open learning from sidelines to mainstream, from special groups (new learners, the disadvantaged, adults) to all learners, is parallelled in other areas of education and training. I look briefly at three here: schools, further education and Employment Training.

Schools. 'Access' alone is no problem in schools, where the target audience is all too captive. In the Flexible Learning Project open learning is to help children develop autonomy by exercising choices over what and how they learn and who helps them.

Further Education. The Mutual Development Fund offers resources "to help LEAs/colleges implement flexible and open learning systems particularly in mainstream provision". 4

The further education open learning bible - Implementing Open Learning

in Local Education Authori ty Institutions 5 _ advocates open learning for its capacity "to promote improvement in the quality of the learning process" by "assisting learners, whatever their age and ability to develop independence" (p. 35). The same source points out - and the statement will apply equally to

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HE - that "all staff need to see open learning not as a marginal activity but as an accepted and effective mode of delivery within their own repertoire"

(19.22). Employment Training. Here clients are involved in "decisions about their

own training programmes, with the aim of encouraging them to take responsi- bility for their own learning". 6

New assessment methods. All this is backed up by new methods of assess- ment and award of credit, based on the National Council for Vocational Qualifications competence model, closely parallelled by developments in the Council for National Academic Awards. Since NVQs are independent of any specific course or programme they open the way to learning through experience and to open learning, in addition to more conventional programmes. Credits can be accumulated over varying periods, in different locations and through differing modes of learning. The resulting modular programmes inevitably create a demand for more flexible provision: "all this points towards the need for comprehensive counselling and guidance services and individually tailored programmes of learning... Open learning will certainly grow". 7

Higher education is also currently developing new modular programmes not only in its mainstream provision but also in collaborative access schemes with other educational institutions.

Whatever one may think of the political implications of some of the initiatives outlined above they offer a real opportunity to re-examine curricular and pedagogic practice. Open learning - with its emphasis on proactive learning - has a great deal to contribute.

The author's experience

In many ways Dr. Race is ideally placed to write on open learning. He has practised at first hand nearly all the necessary activities: writing and editing packages and computer tests, training writers, tutoring (for the National Extension College and the Open University), training tutors. He is the author of a number of science open learning texts (for example, Studying Science Successfully) and guides for learners (for example, How to Win as an Open Learner). He has for many years run workshops for learners on increasing their study skills, and has organised events for lecturers to help them facilitate learning in their classes.

Dr. Race has spent the bulk of his working life in an institution of Higher Education (Polytechnic of Wales) and this, together with his science background, leads both to the strengths of this book and to its weaknesses. Broadly, it is excellent as a manual for HE lecturers, and particularly for those working in science and technology, to help them broaden and enrich their

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current provision by incorporating elements of open learning. The book should help HE staff consider how to embed open learning within their courses, an area which - with Training Agency funding - will be a fruitful and urgent one for institutions to tackle. Dr. Race does, though, seem to assume existing curricula, concentrating on more effective delivery of existing content through open learning methods. New developments have a more dynamic stance than this.

For a number of reasons the book is not suitable for industrial training - whatever the blurb may say (and it is time publishers ceased carrying out a disservice to their authors by claiming that books can fit all contexts equally).

A book of advice

What kind of book is it? Like many others, this is a 'how to do it' text on open learning. It is full of advice on how to implement each and every aspect of (cognitive) open learning - writing objectives and self assessment questions, writing in a friendly style, composing tutor marked assignments and computer marked assignments, tutoring, editing (and one or two other topics as well, some sitting rather oddly, such as the chapter on adult entry to science and technology).

I suspect many interested readers may be rather weary of books with this prescriptive purpose. For some reason, open learning attracts authors who have an unstoppable urge to tell their colleagues how to do things. It would be interesting to read a book on open learning that neither tried to sell its virtues nor tell people how to implement it. Why has nobody attempted a philosophical justification (or otherwise) of open learning; or provided intelli- gent, detailed analysis of how an institution is setting about the complex task of embedding open learning; or discussed the costs of open learning?

As a book of advice, and again like many other similar resources on the market, The Open Learning Handbook makes great use of the checklist. There are countless of them; indeed the book could be subtitled "The Apotheosis of the Checklist". There comes a point where checklists are self-defeating: the reader simply cannot take any more. On p. 39, second in a list of 12 general suggestions we read: "Don' t list too many (objectives) at a time. It's said that we only notice half a dozen things from a list, however long...". Unfortunate- ly, the author does not follow his good advice, for example there are 19 criteria listed for evaluating open learning materials (pp. 21-25), 11 purposes for self assessment questions (pp. 45-46), 13 suggestions for writing multiple choice questions (pp. 47--48), 12 arguments for and against using informal language (pp. 75-77), 11 criteria for designing tutor marked assignments (pp. 85-86), 13 kinds of help a tutor can give (p. 110), 17 criteria for written feedback

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(p. 112) and - the ultimate - 64 key questions to help judge the quality of open learning materials (pp. 135-138). The reader can but feel overwhelmed; the checklists need shortening and rationalising, with repetition pruned out.

Much of the advice in the book has appeared many times before. Where the book comes into its own is when the author applies it to the area he knows best - conventional higher education delivery in cognitive areas - and it is to that I now turn: what has the book to offer a science or technology lecturer in HE?

Help for the HE lecturer

The Open Learning Handbook is full of useful advice for such lecturers concerned to deliver academic material. Conventional teaching would be transformed if lecturers put into practice even a few of the suggestions for setting and marking assignments: giving full feedback to learners, not just a mark and a brief comment; making explicit the criteria behind their marking; attending to the psychological as well as academic content of their comments; using some of the suggested techniques for encouraging learners to focus on feedback comments rather than only on the grade; piloting their assignments first and then continuing to seek learner comments on assignment effective- ness; marking assignments promptly. The sections on computer marked assign- ments are equally useful though, as with the material on self assessment questions earlier, the assumption is that the subject-matter is heavy on content which the learner has to understand and manipulate: some of the advice would not apply in, for example, arts subjects, where question setting is inevitably less scientific and more open-ended, or in subjects with a practical emphasis.

There is excellent advice on preparing interactive handouts for use during conventional lectures (pp. 119-120), effectively demolishing the comfortable view that open learning is just another name for distance learning. Again, were the author's advice here to be applied, the experience of learners in mainstream education would be transformed, and here Dr. Race is realistic: lecturers in HE are far more likely to carry out modifications to existing handouts than they are to plunge into the preparation of full-scale open learning materials of the kind described elsewhere in the book. Another valuable chapter is that titled 'Open Learning: A Catalyst for Staff Development' where the author sets out ten ways in which getting involved in open learning can develop skills of use in HE generally, i.e., with benefits beyond the open learning develop- ments themselves.

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Style

Unfortunately many of those in HE who ought to receive these valuable messages will in fact not do so. There are two main reasons for this: first, that attitude change rather than advice is needed; second, the approach and style of the book.

To use open learning successfully many staff will need to make the journey from provider's perspective to that of the client, from concentration on the lecturer's input (teaching) to focusing on the student's output (learning). This will not be easy for those staff strongly socialised into the performance role of 'lecturer' and 'subject-matter expert', both of which open learning could be said to challenge. It will take more than advice, prescription and friendly jollying-along to accomplish this, though the ideas on staff development workshops (chapters 14 and 15) and the approach through benefits (chapter 8) provide useful back-up for the interactive processes needed to change attitudes.

Secondly, the approach and style the author uses will immediately antago- nise those very staff who most need the advice he has to offer. The author consciously adopts a non-academic approach and what to him appears to be an open learning style: informal and chatty. He argues that academics should themselves develop this style, in order to communicate with their learners both in the lecture room and on paper. Here he takes a risk: my own experience of discussing open learning with polytechnic staff is that they are looking for intellectual rigour and research evidence to support the use of what to them appears a new and unproven, as well as threatening, learning method. You have to talk to them on their own terms.

The author gives no sources for his references and no suggestions for further reading, because (he says in the Foreword) "the literature is now so big - and often disagrees with itself! Too much of it has been written by people whose feet are some way from the ground. Besides, if you spend all your time and energy reading the literature, you'll have none left to get moving with open learning". This seems to me to be special pleading. The academics who will find this book most useful are well able to find their way through the literature and decide for themselves what to follow up and how much time to spend doing so. They might welcome the opportunity to explore alternative approaches. In refusing to provide references, and an annotated resource list, the author is making it unnecessarily difficult to do these things.

There is also a lack of research evidence. This is particularly dangerous when statements such as the following appear, entirely unsupported: "I t 's reckoned that, on average, for more than half of the time learners spend on conventional training courses, they're being taught stuff they already know!" (p. 16)

The style itself is as the author puts it in the Foreword 'informal, user-

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friendly' (hence 'stuff' in the above quotation). Dr. Race goes on: "if you don't like plain-speaking, and prefer things to be written in sophisticated language, this book isn't meant for you'. Unfortunately the author gets the tone wrong, falling into writing that the target audience is likely to find patronising. The following examples are typical:

(With an open learning package) if anything is totally irrelevant, the open learner can skip it. (Much less embarrassing than going to sleep during an irrelevant bit of a live session!) (p. 17).

The suggestions I've made above may look rather demanding. However, the intention is that objectives should be a useful tool - particularly for your learners themselves. Let's summarise the main points we've explored in the form of a checklist... (p. 40).

If you're now beginning to think that the responses are actually more important than the questions themselves, well done - so do I! (p. 44).

Nor do lecturers in HE need to be told on computer marked assignments: "o f course, the computer doesn't design the responses! Human skills and ex- perience are needed for that!" (p. 92).

So though he strives for simplicity and directness, Dr. Race will in fact irritate many readers. The colloquial style - full of abbreviations, exclamation marks (two or three per page), cliches ('pull all the stops out ' / 'under their own steam') and rather heavy-handed humour will alienate those very staff who most need to take most seriously the messages, and advice, contained in the book.

I would also want to take issue with the style the author seems to advocate for open learning materials. In industrial and management training, for example, I encounter significant numbers of people who have rejected open learning precisely because they associate it with a chatty, homespun approach which, to them, is the reverse of professional. A careful study of more recent open learning materials will show that, for some learners, the tone needs to be quite different - consciously neutral, concise, almost clipped. The author's view of language is in fact far too simple: "there's nothing wrong with writing as one would speak... The art of writing in an informal, user-friendly style is simply the art of writing as you would talk" (p. 77). Language does not work in this way; writing that seems informal has in fact to be carefully crafted; transcripts of people talking never make effective learning material.

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How contemporary?

Things are changing rapidly in open learning as in other parts of education and training and in some ways the book, though published in 1989, is already out of date. Developments summarised at the start of this review are moving open learning into a new era - from a concern with the transmission of knowledge to the development of competence, from 'study skills' to 'enterprise skills'. The book still occupies the earlier phase. This is seen in the advice given on how to make the learning materials interactive. The author concentrates wholly on self assessment questions, whereby learners can be helped to process information and get feedback from the material on their degree of success. The treatment of these is very good, with many ingenious ideas on how to retain the learner's interest. But the text is very light indeed on those devices now used to develop skills and competences, the ability to apply learning in the real world, often requiring the learner to carry out activities that involve working with other learners or interacting with agencies outside the institution, such as employers. This less predictable, more dynamic learning environment is one increasingly needed by new developments, such as the EHE initiative (which is never explicity mentioned, though the Training Agency's interest in Enterprise skills is briefly referred to (p. 145)).

The author also seems to presuppose that learners are locked into the world of traditional assessment. He refers frequently to exams as on p. 81: "(As- signments) are an essential ingredient in preparing learners for formal exams, upon which their future careers depend". This reinforces a limited conception of open learning as a new route to an unchanged curriculum whereas, if new developments continue, the curriculum itself will be changed and along with it methods of assessment, requiring the student to demonstrate skilled perfor- mance rather than to pass traditional examinations.

There is no mention of the Certificate in Open Learning Delivery which offers staff in HE the chance to gain a competence-orientated qualification in open learning, whether they are tutors, administrators, managers, counsel- lors or carry a responsibility for marketing. 8

Some at least of these emphases and developments should have found their way into the book. As it is, academics new to open learning, and wishing to use it within traditional curriculum provision, will find much of immediate interest. Ultimately of the two words 'open' and 'learning' the latter matters more. If this book, and developments in the open learning industry, help educational providers focus on learning then they are justified.

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Notes

1. Enterprise in Higher Education. Supplementary Notes of Guidance, December 1988. Sheffield: The Training Agency, Moorfoot, Sheffield, S1 4PQ, U.K.

2. Martucci, Joan. (1988). 'Enterprise in YTS', Media in Education and Development 21: 101-105. (Figures 1 & 2 are reproduced by kind permission of The Training Agency).

3. Higher Education Branch, The Training Agency, Moorfoot, Sheffield, S1 4PQ, U.K. 4. From information papers on the Mutual Development Fund, published by The Training

Agency. 5. Dixon, K. (1988). Implementing Open Learning in Local Authority Institutions. London:

Further Education Unit/Open Learning Branch of the Manpower Services Commission. 6. Achieving Quality in the New Adult Training Programme. (1988). Sheffield: The Training

Agency. 7. National Vocational Qualifications. (1988). London: FEU/NCVQ 222, Euston Rd, London,

NW1 2BZ, U.K. 8. For more information on the Certificate in Open Learning Delivery, write to Hilary Whiteley,

Training & Development Manager, The Open College, Suite 470, St. James's Buildings, Oxford Street, Manchester, M1 6FQ.