This week’s Times Higher Education Supplement contains an article by Derek Rowntree, the former Professor of Education Development at the Open University, on the methods by which that institution has achieved its success. Expert academics and first class course materials naturally feature strongly in his analysis. But the main key to the O.U.’s record in educational provision lies, in his view, in its network of part-time tutors who teach its courses, mark its students’ assignments and are available by telephone, e-mail and via the web to guide each group of students through the courses they have chosen. There is far more contact and positive feedback to students than in conventional universities. This innovation, he believes, “is crucial to its success”: other universities should consider recruiting part-time tutors as “a cost-effective means of providing” personalised contact.
Current and former Open University tutors or associate lecturers as they are now known will recognise the nature of this panegyric all too well. For the truth is that they have provided and do provide over-worked and under-paid teachers to this institution. They represent a kind of academic proletariat whose enthusiasm for teaching wanes quite rapidly as they come to understand the implications of submission deadlines, the propensity of students (most of whom are admirably motivated) to seek contact at inappropriate times and a growing willingness to challenge marks that the student considers to have been far too low. The introduction of electronic marking on a widening range of courses has doubled the time it takes to mark assignments without any compensating financial reward.
