The open university is taken to task for promulgating a passive curriculum and for obscuring the dynamic structuring of knowledge by teachers and learners that ought to be at the heart of university scholarship. The "package tour" approach to knowledge that characterizes introductory courses is blamed, in part. (MSE)

Observing that distance teaching so far conducted at Britain's Open University is based on an authoritarian model with teacher-developed multimedia programed courses, the author proposes a new approach to such correspondence-type courses in which a framework is provided for students to organize their own learning using their own methods. (JT)

The activities of Quebec's Tele-Universite are described and compared with those of Britain's Open University from which it differs in emphasis on cooparation with other organizations and on regional study groups. Now one of the ten units of the University of Quebec, it offers continuing education programs for teachers and an adult education…

Reports a 1974 survey of the 12,800 students taking courses in Britain's Open University to determine viewing and listening figures for each course and to compare the figures for different transmission times and the different faculties (disciplines). The average student watched about two-thirds of the TV and heard about half of the radio programs…

Care must be taken to select technology appropriate to the teaching task in distance education. Five principles of media selection are: increasing student-system interaction, matching the medium with the materials, reducing duplication, choosing the most direct channel, and developing user-friendly systems. Interactiveness and efficiency of…

An Open University tutor in the arts describes the experience of conducting conference call tutorials for groups of up to eight students taking a correspondence-type course. Specific techniques are discussed: initial approach designed to make individual students at ease, ways of getting all students involved in dialogue, etc. (JT)

A study in which British open university students were asked how they came to be studying the social sciences foundation course is reported. The students' approaches to learning are analyzed and their orientations (vocational, academic, personal, and social) are compared to those of students in a conventional university. (MSE)

A course on distance study for part-time teachers for both initial and retraining is described and evaluated. It emphasizes the preparation, exchange, and study of written materials as well as the conventional broadcast and face-to-face delivery. (MSE)

It is shown that Open University students are psychologically able to sustain an independent (i.e., student-centered) program of learning and that the Open University degree structure is sufficiently flexible to incorporate truly independent study into its structure in the form of a project credit. (Author/LBH)

Describes an experimental correspondence course in Britain's Open University, an upper division biology course in ecology. The course differs from most others in that individual research study projects are substituted for the study center tutorials that supplement correspondence work in most other courses. (JT)

A staff tutor in mathematics in Britain's Open University illustrates three types of communication breakdown due to language factors that occur between the team developing mathematics correspondence courses and their students. He concludes that the traditional teaching language of university mathematics is not entirely suitable in the Open…

Describes the two and one-half year process of developing a genetics course for Britain's Open University. The final package of print, television, radio, home experiments, summer schools and a number of assignments and examinations is a product of the course team of Open University staff, British Broadcasting Corporation production staff, and…

Describes the membership, responsibilities, problems, and group dynamics involved in the team approach to the design and development of courses for Britain's Open University. The team selects content and creates teaching materials using various media (correspondence texts, television and radio programs, summer school, home experiment kits,…

Continuous student assessment in Britain's Open University courses is based on CMAs (computer-marked assignments) and TMAs (tutor-marked assignments). To insure common standards are applied by all tutors, TMAs are monitored by two methods: staff inspection and statistical procedure. Use of the latter for standardizing grading is described fully…

Characteristics of both successful and unsuccessful tutors at the Open University are illustrated, based on first-hand observation of staff members. Areas covered include: knowledge and handling of subject matter, general teaching skills, classroom skills, social competence, values and work rate, administrative competence, and style. (LBH)