Mr. John D'Arcy:

I thank the committee for the invitation to attend today. We are delighted to be here.
The Open University has always been a distance learning provider. Open University will celebrate its 45th birthday this year, and throughout that time we have relied on various technological approaches to get to learners in far-flung places across the UK, Ireland and the globe. Earlier inceptions were television and radio, and with the development of PCs our world exploded and we moved into online learning.
Most of our courses are blended learning courses and are not all strictly conducted online. Learners still want face-to-face tuition at times; they want telephone and e-forum support, which we endeavour to provide. Increasingly, a lot of our learners use Twitter and Facebook to communicate with their tutors and peers in order to take their studies forward.
Open University is a MOOC provider and established a system called FutureLearn about two years ago. One of the reasons for doing so, as Professor Brown said in his presentation, is that MOOCs are allegedly a disruptive force in higher education. We felt that distance learning was something on which we had been a thought leader for a particular period and, therefore, we felt we should try to bring a degree of quality, standards and reputation to the MOOC environment. FutureLearn has been going for almost two years, with about 30 academic partners located largely across the UK but also on this island, including Trinity College Dublin and Queen's University, Belfast.
FutureLearn has been phenomenally successful in terms of student uptake. More than 750 million learners have signed up, and so far they have looked at well over 1 million courses. I am glad my colleagues from TCD are here today, because its MOOC has been one of the most successful in terms of student numbers, with well over 20,000 learners. Those learners have stayed with the course. That is down to the way Trinity has approached the pedagogy.
MOOCs are a bit unusual. People may wonder about free learning and wonder whether it is worthwhile. We have found that the partners we work with and our academics produce very high-quality courses of three hours learning per week for maybe 13 weeks. The retention figures show that around 22% of learners who start will finish their courses. That percentage sounds quite low, but in MOOC terms it is quite high, so we are very pleased with the results.
Aside from FutureLearn, which is a collaborative venture that is funded by the Open University, we also have an internal platform called OpenLearn. Since OpenLearn was set up in 2006, around 33 million unique visitors have used material from it. A lot of its content consists of previously run undergraduate and postgraduate material, so it is substantial learning. It is an area we are rapidly taking forward.
Over the next number of months we will introduce yet another acronym into the higher education environment, BOCs, or badged open courses. It will be a small attempt to put soft assessment into this free, informal and open-access learning option that any citizen in Ireland or across the UK and the globe can pick up. We will launch a series of ten or so courses between now and March of next year, including courses called Succeed with English, First Steps in HE and Digital Literacy.
One of the reasons we are keen to take forward online learning is that we think we owe it to students at whatever stage they are at. As educators, we feel it is imperative to get them into a digital lifestyle, because that is the way the world is moving. We would do a disservice to learners if we did not take them into that environment.
We have done some interesting pilot work on the badged open courses and discovered that students have found the initiative very useful. They can take the badge to things like LinkedIn. Some employers are also interested in the initiative because it could be useful for continuous professional development.
In the past year we have also introduced, as part of our online experience, an app that can be accessed by all of our students on registered courses. It is a mobile virtual learning environment called OU Anywhere, in which we have invested heavily in order to make sure it is as platform-free as possible. That means that whether one has an Apple iPad, an Android device or a Kindle Fire, one will be able to access material. Just by entering a student username, one will get all the course materials, which are portable. That means that if one is in Tralee or Cork or on a train travelling to Dublin one can access learning material. The app has already won two awards from The Guardiannewspaper in the UK. Last week we were fortunate to be awarded a higher education award by The Timesfor an initiative called the OpenScience Laboratory. It is part-funded by the Wilson Foundation and creates an online experience in which people can carry out real-time scientific experiments.
With MOOCs, OpenLearn, OU Anywhere and OpenScience Laboratory, we feel we are addressing the needs of students in a digital age. We are a very collaborative university and like to work closely with our sister universities on the island. We have demonstrated that with FutureLearn, which was done in collaboration with Trinity College and Queen's University.We are also keen to talk to other stakeholders on how to take digital learning forward.
MOOCs are part of a journey and they have gotten a lot of publicity over the past number of years. We see them as important at this time, but with the way assessment, learning and pedagogy will change over the next number of years, MOOCs are not the end of this particular story. I endorse what Professor Brown has said - that MOOCs are something that Irish education needs to get a handle on and fully buy into.
Perhaps members would like to experience some of these materials. Our office is on Holles Street and we would be happy to arrange an open day for members and colleagues if they felt it would be useful. Sometimes it is only when one touches a refreshingly designed beautiful app that one can see why people get excited about this latest stage of online learning.
I thank members for their time, and we are happy to enter into conversation with colleagues.