Open Learning – Determined People with Tenacious Goals
The Open University learning environment is a technology-mediated communication role model. Even so, the OU still brings learners together for ‘real-world’ events. That has been the reason for a no blog posts this last week – I have been working my little socks off at Bath University, conducting research projects with a few hundred other people.
I was bowled over by the tenacity of my fellow learners. People who had been studying towards their degree for years, on top of their day jobs. People who were still 5-7 years away from getting their professional qualifications (which involve a PhD and chartering for some). This was a group of people who are committed to learning. There again, tenacity is at the very heart of the Open University.
The roots of the OU go back to the 1920’s, when educationalist J C Stobart envisaged a ‘wireless university’. Those words mean something different today – it sounds more like someone using a wifi enabled laptop in the back garden to do literature searches. However, back then it meant using the cutting edge technology of the day to create an open learning platform.
It look a few more decades for the OU to be born, predominantly driven by the tenacity of Jennie Lee (you can read the full story on the OU site). It’s that tenacity again. Today the OU continues a tradition of technology-mediated learning, using social software tools to connect students and tutors to form a gigantic learning organisation. It is the largest Moodle deployment in the world (Moodle is an on-line social-learning platform – think of a blogging, forum and content management system on steroids).
Non-technology industries work on different timescales. A couple of decades working in the technology industry has twisted me into believing that 2 years as a long-time, and 3-5 years is a time window beyond which predicting change is futile. Technology means that software and hardware develop rapidly, driving quick changes. Building institutions and companies takes longer. Much longer. When was the last time you took on a 10 year project? It takes tenacious long-term goals.
The long-term path of the start ups, now grown ups, I have worked with has been relatively predictable. Likewise, the major technology trends of the last few years have been too. Yes, 20-20 hindsight does make predictions simpler, but technology has strong homeostatic tendencies. After all, it is driven by people and people change slowly, if at all. Today, people drive (or hold back) technology, rather than the other way around.
The emerging web-browser and cloud computing model isn’t that different from my early experiences of computing with dumb terminals and mainframe computers. What is new this time around is a greater emphasis on people-centric design. The nature of application and systems design is being changed by rafts of new technologists with user experience qualifications (many of whom studied the same Psychological theories I was wrapped up in last week).
The area of science that I am most interested in doesn’t really exist yet, but it will, because it must. How does all of this technology change the way that we work? How can we build companies that make better use of technology, and technology that makes better use of people? We can’t do all of our learning at school or university anymore. Successful businesses and people will have to make continuous learning part of their very being, just to keep up.
There is still a long way to go in all of these things. It involves big goals. But tenacious long-term goals have always been how big things get done.
I couldn’t agree more. I spent five years doing an OU degree and I think it’s worth much more than the “regular” degree I got when I was 21. The sheer level of application that’s needed over quite a long time period makes it tough to keep going and tenacity is always going to have very high value.
Congratulations. In the hustle and bustle of modern life, it is all too easy to get caught up in short-term-ism. Reminds me of the boiler plate investment line: “be in it for the long run’.
Hi Benjamin
Great post.
You said, “The area of science that I am most interested in doesn’t really exist yet, but it will, because it must. How does all of this technology change the way that we work? How can we build companies that make better use of technology, and technology that makes better use of people?”
Work Organisation as a knowledge discipline is not is a unified area of science: it cannot be because it is cross disciplinary, taking in social psychology, systems thinking, complexity, strategic HR, strategic operations etc
But there is a huge existing body of practical knowledge. See http://www.ukwon.net. I have been part of this network for the past 8 years, and was project manager for a UK WON 26 partner, EU-funded research project on new ways of working. The network itself has strong links with EU work organisation practitioners, particularly in Norway, Finland, Denmark, The Netherlands, and Germany.
I met Dr Marie Puybaraud, my partner in crime at the Global Mobility Network, while we were both presenting results from research projects at a conference in Rome on New Forms of Organganisational Innovation.
Promoting new forms of working, through action learning, is what my Smart Work Company is all about. I am modifying my Moodle Smart Work Learning Place as we speak.
Looking forward to catching up with you.
[…] are a key component of building communities (as in the OU’s community model), but it is a good social software platform that creates the bridge between those physical events […]
Many thanks for the pointer and the comment, Anne Marie. I agree, it is an area of confluence. My engineering/technology background means I’m biased towards the bits and bytes – I like adapting the technology to the people, more than adapting the people to the technology.
Sir Tim’s Web Science initiative has caught my interest – http://redcatco.com/blog/technology/tim-berners-lee-the-innovation-edge/ – but I definitely want to learn from occupational psychology and work organisation.
Excited about what the Smart Work Company is doing with Moodle – taking learning on-line is going to me more and more important with the increasing numbers of remote workers.