A Guide to Basic Open Learning

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David Baume, Open University

Introduction

Producing and running an open learning course¹ can be a large, complex, expensive task. It can cost several million pounds to produce a single 60-point course.

But the core ideas and practices are very simple. You can produce a good basic open learning course in a few tens of hours.

Before you decide to develop the course...

...you² need satisfactory answers to these questions.

What particular subject expertise do you have?
What persuades you that there is an unmet demand for an open learning course in your areas of expertise?

The basics

To learn, students need:

A sense of direction, of goals. Answers to questions such as 'Where will this course take me?' and 'What will I be able to do at the end of it?' Clear and attractive statements of the aims and the intended learning outcomes of the course are necessary.

Appropriate things to do. Learning is an active business. It is tempting (and very common) to plan a course as a sequence of content to be taught. Better, much better, to plan it as a sequence of activities which students will undertake. Plan what the students will do that will help them to develop the necessary knowledge, capabilities, ways of thinking and working.

Frequent feedback on what they do. Feedback, may come from:

The course materials themselves, with the classic open learning line "Now that you have answered this question, here is how we addressed it..."
Other students on the course, if they have (perhaps with your help) formed self-help groups.
Tutors, through written feedback on student work (perhaps with marks or grades).

Content. This can take two main forms:

Existing books and other sources including on line resources (I shall encourage you below to make maximum use of existing sources); or of course
Specially-written content (which is slow and expensive to produce to a suitable standard)

Structure, framework, schedule. Studying by open learning can lack many of the features which give shape to face-to-face study, such as lectures, classes, day-to-day contact with peers, hand-in schedules. You need to put equivalents for these into your open learning if participants are to feel to be part of the course and are to stay the course. (You may be able to include some face-to-face contact - in the evening, for a day or a weekend or longer. If you can, do. It is usually very highly valued.)

Planning the course

You need to answer these questions and take these steps.

Market

Who is the intended audience for the course? What do they want to learn, to become able to do? How can you reach them to tell them about the course? What will they want to know about the course in order to decide to take it?

Budget

Income: What price will the market bear? How many places will you sell at that price?

There are two main headings of expenditure; production and operation. Production involves academic and administrative staff time to design the course process and to write the study support materials. Operation includes academic staff giving feedback to, and otherwise tutoring (see below), the students, and monitoring and evaluating the course process to inform changes to materials and process. Administrative staff will be involved in materials production and distribution and in student record keeping.

Open learning is inherently neither more nor less expensive than face-to-face teaching. But the costs are differently distributed, with more initial investment required.

Producing the course

The advice given under 'the basics' leads to this format for a basic open learning course:

Study Guidance: This describes aims, learning outcomes, other learning resources, the course schedule and process, contact details.

Questions and activities: The single most important feature of good open learning is good questions and activities for students to answer and undertake.

Engage the student's interest
Link to the student's own aspirations, to what they want to get out of the course
Let them practice abilities and use knowledge relevant to the course outcomes
Help the student confirm that they have understood what they are learning
Build on what has gone before
Prepare them for what is to come

This may sound difficult. It is. The good news is that good teachers are already good at doing these things. Further good news - you can pilot questions during the development of the course, to see if they work and how they can be improved.

Course content: Many attempts at open learning founder because the course authors try to write all the content. This is understandable - we are interested in the content we teach! But it can wreck the economics of the course.

It is not enough to convert lecture notes into 'open learning' material, even by adding some questions and activities. Lecture notes are designed to support lectures. Open learning materials by contrast must work without a lecture. There will probably be a textbook or collection of papers (some of which you may have written) or some web sites that contain much of the course content. Use these. Critique them if you need to, but use them.

If your subject expertise is at the heart of what you are selling with this course, and you therefore must write some of the course content, then allow lots of time.

Running the course

Planning

An effective and economical way to plan the operation of the course is to construct a hypothetical diary or log for a tutor, an administrator and a student on the course during one cycle of presentation. This will identify most planning and operational issues and needs.

Administration

The administration of an open learning course needs to be immaculate. You will need to plan and track and follow every stage of the operation - registration of students, despatch of materials, deadlines for return of work, actual return of work, feedback by tutors ...everything.

Tutoring

Giving feedback to students on their work is a vital part of the teaching on an open learning course. Cost it into the process - half an hour, more if you can afford it, for the tutor to give detailed individual feedback to each student on each assignment, to ask the student questions, to suggest how they can improve their work for the future. You may be able to add telephone, email or even face-to-face contact.

Studying by open learning can be lonely. One-to-one student/tutor contact overcomes this, and is essential.

Monitoring and evaluation

Pilot early sets of materials and questions on students. Get and use their feedback. This will iron out many possible difficulties. Also pilot the course processes, including tutoring. Find out what students like and don't like, what works and what doesn't. And make the necessary changes.

Similarly while the course is running, ask for feedback from students, from tutors, and from the course administrator. Evaluate little and often. Act on the results of the evaluation, and show how you have done so - this will increase the response rate for future evaluations. If you don't know what questions to ask, ask the course participants what questions you should be asking them.

Conclusions

The intended message of this short guide is that it is possible to produce and run a successful open learning course without huge financial resource, as long as sustained attention is given to the key issues described here:

A focus on student learning and its support;
Excellent administration at every stage; and
Willingness to seek and use feedback.

Footnotes

¹ A course in which most or all of the students' study is undertaken without face-to-face input and support.
² 'You' could be you as an individual, you and a small group of colleagues, a department, or an institution.

Short bibliography

Race, P. (1994), The open learning handbook: promoting quality in designing and developing flexible learning, London, Kogan Page.
Rowntree, D. (1990), Teaching through self-instruction: how to develop open learning materials, London, Kogan Page.