 I guess my role was to do as little talking as possible during the session because we've got four quite distinguished, very distinguished panel members with a great deal of experience in our topic. The topic of today's webinar is the story of Open University in Europe and the world. I think what I will do is rather than introduce the panel members myself reading up their bios which can always be a bit embarrassing for the participants or the panel members, it might be just a little bit more authentic if I let you introduce yourselves. We have Liz, we have Joseph, we have Sarah and Antonio and I think we might just follow the videos panel that I've got in order so Liz that puts you number one on what I'm seeing. If I could hand over the microphone for you just to briefly introduce yourself and then we will take it from there and perhaps in introducing yourself, you might just want to give a little bit of your background in terms of the role you play currently and your previous experience particularly if it's relevant to working in an open university. Okay, sorry Mark, who did you say first, me? Yes Liz, if you want to start us off just a brief introduction. Okay, okay thank you, yeah my name is Liz Marr, I'm the Pro Vice Chancellor for Students at the Open University in the UK and I'm also President of the European Association of Students Teaching Universities. I've been in my current role for approximately two and a half months but I've been at the Open University for around ten years and before that I worked in a face-to-face institution but I'm really, really passionate about the Open University movement not least because my first I guess higher education learning experience after I left school was with the Open University when I had a small child and it transformed my life, it transformed my child's life as well and I'm really pleased to be able to work in that movement and with all the many other Open University aficionados across the world not just in Europe and I think I'm handing on to you Sarah now. Hello to everyone, hello to everyone, wow I hear an echo, you hear me well without an echo? Okay, I'm currently the Vice President for Academic Affairs but I started with the Israeli Open University already in October 1976 when I was a Master Degree student at the Tel Aviv University and at the time my professor to be the coordinator of the first education for the development of the Open University in Israel. My field of study is comparative and higher education with a special focus on distance education and distance teaching universities. In 1999 I published this pink cover book which followed and examined the development of five Open Universities, the UK Open University, in Germany, UNED, in Spain, at the BASCA in Canada and the Israeli Open University and they tried to explain how they developed very differently because of the academic culture that surrounds them. I spent several sabbaticals in UNUC, University of Northern Ireland, University College in United States, University of Vieta de Catalonia, visited many times the UK Open University, Open University in Portugal, UNED and others so I'm quite familiar with Open University. Thanks very much, Sarah and I think we'll hand over now to Antonio. Hello, good morning or good afternoon depending on the time that you're watching us. My name is Antonio Teixeira. I'm currently the head of the Department of Education and Distance Education and Learning at the University of Portugal which is equivalent to an education position. My role at university is currently that one although I've joined university in 1989 so for 30 years now I've been working at university at the Open University of Portugal. Well previously I've been also Pro Rector for Business Education and Innovation or Innovation and Distance Learning at the University and I had the role at that time of planning and leading the transformation, the transition at the Open University of Portugal from a business learning paper-based model of operation to a fully online one. So it was one of the first after the walk and the Open University of Ireland to complete its transition to a fully online model. Apart from it I was also President of Eden some years ago and I've been working in this field also in terms of research and of course I've been throughout this period I've been acquainted with most of the universities not just in Europe but also elsewhere. I've been for instance visiting professor at Korean National Open University also visiting the Open University of Japan and many others so this is a great topic to discuss today. Thank you Antonio and that leaves you Joseph too. Okay thank you very much. Hi everyone. Okay my name is Joseph Duarte. I'm professor nowadays at the Open University of Catalonia in Barcelona. I'm also working as a professor in the Educational Sciences Faculty and also I'm a research member and the director of the research group called Open Evidence which is also an startup of our university working on different European projects and also a research group focused on evidence research events methodology and I'm also working now in this moment in a huge research about the impact of the online universities on the society. This is a research led by Professor Manuel Castel which is working also in our university. I'm also a vice president of research in Eden and also an editor-in-chief, a co-editor-in-chief with other three editors of the International Journal of Educational Technology and Higher Education and from the past I've been working here in this University at the University of Catalonia almost of the beginning. I'm working here for 23 years. I used to be a director of the UNESCO 11 UNESCO chair. I was a founder director in 2002 of this UNESCO chair and also I've been a vice president of continuous education and post-reality studies at my university for seven years during 2006 to 2013. Well thank you panel members. As I said in your introduction we have a very distinguished group of panel members here for what is an event as part of Open Education Week and I suppose that's why we're talking about open universities and what we're going to do is just have a conversation around two or three questions depending on how much time we have. We have around about 30 participants it seems that have gathered so please feel free participants to add any additional questions you might have or follow-up comments into the chat box and I'll endeavour to ensure that we bring those back and likewise panel members you may wish to respond to those questions whilst one of the other panel members is talking. Probably without any further ado I just want to introduce the first question and this might seem self-evident but I think it's important for us given that definitions change and evolve and universities have certainly evolved over time to just reflect on what makes the Open University really unique from other universities particularly as it stands now. So I'm going to follow the same order but we'll reverse that order when it comes to the second question so Liz you're not having to be the first person to have to respond and similarly panel members feel free to raise your hand if you would like to rejoin a conversation so we have genuine discussion here. Okay thanks Mark yeah this is something that I've thought about quite a lot lately for a whole variety of reasons and I think it's what makes the Open University UK unique from other universities is three things in combination so the three things can exist singularly in other institutions but it's actually how they combine within the Open University that contributes that uniqueness. One of those is that most of our students are studying part-time now they can study part-time at most institutions in the UK but the majority of ours are studying part-time although we are seeing some people who are flexing their study intensity so they might do full-time for a little while and then go back to a part-time mode. The second element is they're studying at a distance and so we don't see our students very often other than through technology and the third thing is that we are open access so no prior qualifications required for entry. So some other universities in the UK are doing what's known as making unconditional offers to students so they're saying what you actually don't need to demonstrate that you can meet the qualification requirements to come in but that's still quite rare and I think we're pretty unique in that but additionally unique because of that combination with distance and with being part-time but I was contemplating whether to add digital in there anywhere and whether online was an important element of this. It's not unimportant but I don't think it's what makes us as unique necessarily and in fact I think some of us are still some open universities are still using a combination of online and printed materials so and as do we in some instances so the the digital element I don't think is makes us particularly unique but I think in combination with these other things and the way in which we use technology there is kind of a there is something that sets us apart so I think that's my view of how we're unique. Thanks very much Liz that's interesting that last comment in particular around where online fits into this and other panel members may have a thought. If we just follow with Sarah and we'll in this round stick to the standard sequence we had and then we'll change. The book I have mentioned before that they're published in 1999 I have a special chapter dealing with eight unique features of open universities that I will mention here only four main ones. First of all obviously democratization of higher education open access right now there are around 60 higher distance teaching universities worldwide but very few adopted an open access quality UK open university also at Abadka also Israel and in this sense it was a revolution of higher education when the opening of 2015 Britain I know was established in 1969 only 8% of the relevant age group participated in higher education in Israel it was the case of 12% and right now in the OECD countries fluctuates between 50 to 80 percent so definitely the open universities that were established in the 70s there were some that were established before but the huge number were established in the 70s they really evaded to the democratization of higher education. A second point is the iron triangle which Danielle presented that they succeeded to find the balance between admitting huge numbers of students at a lower cost and offering high quality materials produced and developed by teams which was a little bit contrary to the academic freedom of some countries in which which is really cherished like in Germany in Israel it was also a problem that we still develop our courses in a team and these high quality materials were used by students not only of open universities but by higher education institutions in their national jurisdictions most important in countries where English is not the tongue language the national language so it was a useful solution for high quality study materials in their higher education jurisdictions. A third point harnessing advanced technologies includes their learning teaching systems. When they were established it was in the radio now it's the digital technology it also creates huge problems transforming the distance teaching university based on the industrial model model of printed materials so the digital age I will talk about it later on and the fourth point that I will mention here is the ability to teach huge numbers of students in Juragandhi University who had more than four million students open university China has two and a half million students and John Daniel also coined the term mega university teaching over 100,000 students but many universities teach already many more than 100,000 students so it was really a huge contribution and I will stop here. Thank you very much Sarah so four very interesting dimensions to what perhaps makes the open university unique. Antonio. Okay thank you Mark. Well actually several of the points that I would make have already been made by Liz and Sarah. If I can in a way reply to the question in a broader sense I would say that what makes the open universities unique are a combination of a mission of their mission their vision their strategy and their experience in the sense that of course one of the main aspects is that differentiates open universities is of course the inclusion aspect the social it's the specific interest and attention to the social inclusion cultural inclusion digital inclusion so these social role of the open universities which are played it's specifically by them not that the others don't play it as well but these are institutions that have been designed specifically for this. Another important aspect related to this is the attention to social groups at risk being of course people with special special needs being incarcerated students whatever migrants well another important aspect as well deals with the commitment to educational innovation as Sarah has already pointed out these universities have been designed as innovative institutions and still are driven by the need to innovate the educational process related to that is of course an important factor which is the fact that these institutions although designed differently from traditional universities or higher education institutions this they're specifically designed to be flexible themselves so they are much more flexible than other universities and are much more prone to transform and to reshape as technology pathology or other important aspects evolve in terms of the scientific community and of course university education another also important aspect deals with internationalization the open universities have been the first institutions that actually have committed to internationalize and to achieve a global outreach and this is something that most of the open universities have a great experience of internationalization and multicultural education which is important and should also in a sense makes part of these uniqueness of the of these institutions of course Sarah has given some figures which are important and I would just say that for instance the open university of Portugal is responsible for over 90 percent of the total number of the degrees and and student population involved in formal education so this gives you an example also of the in terms of online provision so these refers also to the importance of these institutions as drivers of the field especially in the in new areas of development as is it is filled digital education and online education and I'll stop here and give the again the aspect the critical aspect of the research element as well open universities have committed throughout the years to research in educational innovation and these is also an important aspect that they have back to you Joseph so thanks very much Antonio I just to pull out a couple of points that you've built on from previous panel members I think that importance that you mentioned of flexibility and internationalization which was is something that is quite different from globalization and then your last comment about contributing to the research being shapers and makers of the research not just consumers of that research I'm just making the job harder for you now Joseph so oh hey is this my turn okay uh some of the things of course are already saved from the other of the panelist okay but I have three points in order to explain my point of view about the this unique things about open universities not in particular with the experience in in my university the first the first point to me a very important one is that the online universities have usually a clear educational model I think this is very important from the pedagogical point of view and also the case educational point of view and I think it's something from my point of view also something very different for instance at the face-to-face or traditional universities where the professor have the sometimes their own model particular model and each faculty have different models maybe I think in the in the open universities maybe it's because we have to think about the uses of technology online etc that it's very important to define a kind of educational model sometimes more centered on the students or in the teaching and learning process etc but I think it's important to have this educational approach this is the first point for me the second one is related to the students of course flexibility etc that the other of you said before but for me is it's a kind of universities that we focus on lifelong learning that means we have adult students people that probably need to of course be more competent in this society and have to study and these online and open universities are offering to these people maybe also second opportunities to access with quality courses and also degrees or master degrees etc I'm sure all of the all my universities we have here in this panel the average of the students is adult people and I think we are really lifelong learning universities and I think it's a very important difference for instance with the traditional universities and the third point in particular something that I see my university and in other universities in the world is that the open universities usually are universities who produce knowledge in particular open knowledge that means we have to build all of learning contents and put these learning contents on in webpaces or in our virtual campuses and this is very important because we have to produce this with our professors and also with another professor that collaborate with our universities and also it's an opportunity to put these contents open and also for instance for our countries we have our own language for instance in here we have Catalan also Spanish it's an also an opportunity to offer to these sometimes in case of the Catalan of course it's not a huge number of speakers about 10 millions it's a lot but it's it's not like Spanish that is more 200 millions but it's also an opportunity to produce knowledge in these languages and also an open open knowledge we can distribute for everywhere well thank you very much some very interesting comments there and I think they last point there Joseph that you made about the importance of not only producing but being a champion of open knowledge open access is something that I certainly that resonated with me and I know in your own work personally I think we've got a few questions that have been going on in the back channel I invite the panel members maybe just to respond as I know some of you have to those specific questions at this point I'm just going to go on to our second question and then we'll take some questions from the chat box but our second question really follows up neatly I think on having described the unique features of the open university I'm using that as a singular but obviously it covers all sorts of different variations we're living in changing and uncertain times so I'm very interested to hear what particular challenges the open universities have faced in those recent times to start us off maybe Sarah you might want to pick up that initially and then other panel members if you just want a signal with your hand physically or with the hand okay there are many challenges but again I will only mention four major ones first of all I think that all open universities that were established mainly in the 70s not like the Universitat of Ieta de Catalonia that was established immediately like an online university are experiencing what I call an identity crisis because for over 150 years it was very clear and distinct what the campus-based university is and what a different teaching university is right now the boundaries are totally blurred and part of it is because the mainstream universities have adopted many flexible features of the open university which is in a way a victory that it also challenges what is the specific and unique role now of the open university and also because of the digital technology kind of revolution so it also put a lot of challenges for the industrial model open university the second actually continuing is the digital technology it's a little bit paradox but the digital technology solves many problems of the old technologies both they enable a dialogue between students and themselves and students and their teachers and they open up the access to huge resources of libraries and so it's very easy right now but on the other hand because they are built on the model which is not the model of Universitat of Ieta de Catalonia for very nucleus academic staff and the academic teaching responsibility is distributed between the senior academic staff now they were called course coordinators or associate lecturers and the tutors so in a way this is not the model that is appropriate for the digital time and in order to move I think Antonio will stay because I was there in Portugal when you debated how to change the Portuguese open university and adapt it to the online so you had your own experience which is not so easy and I think also in the UK Open University you did it but also with a lot of difficulties and the other challenge is the change of target population as I mentioned before is when the open universities were started so very few studies at universities now if you have 50 to 80 percent in some countries mainly the developed ones starting at universities you need to redefine your target populations which are very very different and the I know the teachers were a very important target population in UK Open University in Indonesia and also in Israel which is not the case now because all of them hold already academic degrees so who are going to be your target population the weaker part of the society disadvantaged even stronger because we know that at the master degree level there is huge success and retention and different education which is not the case at the first degree so redefining the target population is a huge challenge that is facing open universities and of course the last one is the growing competition from other universities also raising also online degrees and courses and also all these infrastructures of the MOOC that last year I think they offered already 42 degrees to their infrastructure in greeting the cases that the UK Open University is leading the future learn initiative but it has also 140 something a partner so definitely huge challenges facing open universities and in some cases they even threaten that they are going to be closed because they are not relevant anymore to the nowadays situation so that's certainly quite a challenge the point last there about the real identity or future of the open university does anyone on the panel want to pick that up in particular and okay thank you Mark and thank you Sarah for also mentioning our unexperienced in Portugal about the transition from the industrial model to a more online based model regarding open universities well picking up on this question I would say that of course clearly the open universities have been challenged in many ways but I would mostly focus on three dimensions first of all there is the dimension of competition as which has already been brought up by Sarah so the open universities need not just saw all the other traditional universities picking up on their mission well developing open education resources and practices developing an impressive provision of MOOCs for instance sometimes not with the quality standards that should be desirable and the ones that actually open universities have set and also on the other hand with of course these moves to the digital arena also because there was an important aspect to the open universities in the old technological model technologies were expensive and require important infrastructures that only specific dedicated institutions could have the open universities now with the moves to the online to the digitalization it also became much more democratic and all institutions all higher education institutions can actually develop their own operations and this has brought of course a challenge to the open universities which lost a bit the uniqueness in terms of infrastructure and technology on the other hand apart from the traditional universities becoming a player also in the field there are a number of new digital universities that were set and apart from it also new realities new kinds of non-organizations that have been also emerging associations of students that share resources and shared experiences things like the open and personal resources university or new emerging experiences even more disruptive on the other hand if this has been clearly a challenge and that has implied for the open university transform and that transformation has been quite difficult for many in the case that the open university of Portugal this was a dramatic move and we've achieved it in just three years but this was a really really complicated complex process it required changing not just the infrastructure it required changing the operational model the pedagogy retrain all the teacher staff all the technical staff to change the organizational culture as well to retrain students and to allow them to create a new learning culture as well well to develop a new learning culture as well so this was a complex move and some of the university open universities have not still completed this move are still a midway between the old industrial model in the sense and the new online baseline and this has been complicated for most of them because even being designed having been designed as an innovative organizations they are no longer innovative in many ways another important challenge has been political because there has been a disinvestment of governments in education so there has been a lack of public resources in higher education and this has affected the force open universities because of their specific social role and these lack of resources from government of public funding has also hindered the development of the open universities apart from these new forms of assessment and certification that has been driven by MOOCs has also not still been completely embraced by the open universities and this has to be of course a thing about it there was a comment in the chat box i think it was from Gronje about the retention this is an important aspect as well our move from paper based model to an online based model was also a move based on the improvement of quality of the learning experience and the reducing retention so increasing in this sense retention reducing sorry retention rates so improving the learning outcomes and the learning experience the success of the learning experience this is an important aspect has been also to be taken into consideration by the open universities finally a challenge which has it's also an important challenge has been with regulation and quality transfer criteria in europe and abroad i mean worldwide there hasn't been many experiences of specific regulation in business education however in the last couple of years it has been clear that it is important to have this kind of regulations why because it favors the development of the system and in an integrated and organized and regulated way and also in in another sense it allows it to consolidate quality criteria in that should be and quality standards that should be met regarding qualifications criteria this is also an important issue because many of the especially in terms of formal education many of the or most of the universities that are operating a special for universities have been fighting with the fact that the forces have been accredited using criteria which are designed for face-to-face education has been quite an important issue to that has entered in many ways the open universities fortunately in the last couple of years they have been changed they've been a great work led by angra and also the way and several national quality agencies and things have changed dramatically this has been quite an important development development and also in terms of regulation there are some experiences that could be discussed in the next round well thank you thank you for a very comprehensive answer Antonio I know Liz has put a hand up Joseph will come to you last but you will give you the first opportunity to come in on the next question so Liz I know you wanted to pick up particularly on the funding factor thanks Mark sorry is it to jump in front of you but interestingly in my notes I'd written down around the major challenges retention funding regimes policy regimes and competition from other online providers but I think there's also I really wanted to jump in over what Sarah was saying about the identity crisis and the open universities are facing and I think it was John Daniels a couple of years ago who said I heard him say at a conference that open universities are struggling to know how to dress now that other traditional universities have stolen their clothes and I thought that was a really interesting an interesting way of of perceiving it I personally think that there is a role for open universities and it relates to that inclusion and social justice mission that we've all talked about I think there is still a need for that everywhere in the UK just as much as anywhere else and we're going through an interesting period in that there's a there's been a demographic decline in numbers of young people that they are they will be increasing again so there was a question about you know are they're going to be adults who want our courses but actually yes there is going to be more of a crisis in the future in terms of the numbers of people wanting and needing to access higher education but also because of the funding regimes and because it's become so expensive that people that people actually need to work at the same time as they study otherwise they just can't afford it so I think there's a really strong role for open universities there in overcoming some of the challenges but that universities themselves have challenges and I think I was really struck again with what Sarah said about and what Antonio said about their need for some kind of transformation in order to become more agile and more responsive to the things that we need to do and this was really brought home for us last year at the Open University in the UK and I'm sure you all read about it in the press it was it was no secret that the attempt to transform the institution to move it to become fully digital and lots of other change was not handled well and it wasn't met well by the academic community and we have actually reviewed that attempt at transformation and started to focus on the things that we know can really make a difference for the student experience so we've moved back from absolutely transforming the university as a whole in one fell swoop to thinking about what are the things that we really need to do to focus on student success and student experience but that brings me into onto also the issue of the political and the disinvestment so as most people will know Open University UK used to offer modular study purely modular studies so people could come and study whatever module they wanted it was affordable and we didn't have to charge two half fees because of the money that we got directly from government in 2012 in England that changed completely so that we were forced to increase our fees and students could only get loans for for full qualifications and only if they were studying at the minimum of 25 study intensity so so we were we were forced to change what we had to do in order to fit in that in that kind of ideological environment that says that all higher education should be delivered as full qualifications and that's how universities should be assessed and we've always really really struggled in the UK to meet the funding body requirements because they're structured around what a traditional university does it's 18 year old students studying full-time in face-to-face and and every every policy every measure everything that's put in place to assess us is focused on that model so that's a real real challenge for us and and I think the biggest challenge lies in retention and I think we've all talked about that I did a little bit of work with a colleague a year ago to look at retention in open universities it's actually very very difficult to to make comparisons because all the funding regimes are different and people operate in different ways but I think that that we all have a challenge around retention and when we start to be measured against the traditional sector in terms of you know success means you must acquire a full degree then we really struggle because many of our students are not doing it for that reason they're doing it for other reasons it could be that they just want a bit of learning at a particular time so changing the narrative around success is something that we really need to address if we're going to if we're going to make some some impact there particularly on policy and if I had a euro I'll get I'll say and rather than a pound for every time I've reminded government ministers and government officials of the need to remember adults and part-time learners I could probably retire by now but unfortunately it hasn't yet made any made any difference but I think those are just some of the things that I could I could go on for hours but I'm not going to I'm gonna get in here hi just a few comments I think from my point of view the challenge during these last past 10 years from the open universities as some of you said before from my point of view is to preserve our identity that means to be clear that what is a real open or online university and it that seems to me it's important to two points now the first one is the quality I think quality has been one of the most important challenges during this period last 10 years and quality is it's not only retention or of course it's that is a very important point because we have also to define what means retention in online or an open universities because sometimes there is people that it's looking for maybe some knowledge but not for the final degree but we need to preserve and improve quality for instance in teaching like them process or quality of the our learning materials etc and the most important thing to do that of course one of the important things is to present also our reputation as a universities in particular in some areas in the world where the online or distance universities are considered as not good universities and I think this is a big challenge for us to preserve and to maintain everything related to the technology as to the quality process and the second thing during the last 10 years of course is the period when many of face-to-face or traditional universities introduce the technology in the teaching and learning process not this is the period of the MOOCs and blended learning hybrid learning with classrooms etc it's again that is very important for us you know to maintain our identity as an online universities that means online courses it's not that this online university is not a university that offer MOOCs or hybrid programs it's another kind of university which have a little own methodology that in particular focus on this methodology and of course can offer MOOCs another kind of these short courses etc but this is not only the focus or is not the same MOOCs than online universities no but this challenge it's also an opportunity to collaborate with face-to-face universities or traditional universities and I think this thing happens for instance here in in Catalonia and many other countries in Latin America and countries that they know very well this situation the improving the uses of technology for the teaching and learning processes in the face-to-face universities allow a lot of free opportunities to collaborate with online universities around the world and I think this is also positive. Well thank you some very interesting perspectives there on the challenges I think all I can say is that there are a multitude of fronts that you're that open universities are battling in many respects from identity to the issue of funding to the quality perception and so forth so I suppose we might just take a moment to reflect on any other follow-up comments or any comments that have come through the chat box so are there any of the panel members that want to just come back with an additional comment or rejoiner teach a wait moment here but in the absence of anything let's move on then I've got one eye on the time as well to our third question which in many respects we've already touched on but I think here I want to take that whole sense of identity and perhaps even to the point of crisis where I think one of the was Liz you talked about using the metaphor of clothing and the fact Tania at least you if not others talked about new competition here so to what extent really is the open university given we've already explained how it is unique unique by its mission in particular therefore in today's digital era is it still relevant I'm going to hand over initially to Liz and then to Joseph and then to say thank you sorry I was expecting to go last mark and then you took me by surprise okay so the question to what I said is the open university still relevant in the digital area I think it's as relevant as ever but and I think I was trying to make this point earlier that that being digital in and of itself isn't the crucial factor so we have a you know there's loads of fantastic stuff going on in digital worlds there's some brilliant stuff being done online we've got some some really superb initiatives things like you know online laboratories and digital microscopes and all kinds of exciting things and one of the things that I've been been working on is that as some of you may have heard of it as a student hub live where we've been webcasting live webcasting to students to help them feel like part of a community a community of learners using technologies and new ways to engage students and of course there's loads of stuff around around AI and what could be done there but I think for me digital is just another way of dealing with distance I can't remember who it was said this but I heard somebody talk about you know technology enabled learning there's a bit like saying a fork is technology enabled eating which is quite an interesting way of thinking about it but digital technologies don't in and of themselves resolve the issues of social justice they don't in and of themselves transform lives they don't give access to those previously excluded but they can help so I did put in the chat a little earlier that we have a week we have around 1700 students who were in prison I was fortunate enough to go and and and award degrees to three of those prisoners a couple of weeks ago it was a really genuinely moving experience for me and it made me appreciate what we do and why we do it but the technology isn't actually very useful in that space because that one of the students was telling me that they'd had a lockdown due to a security breach and because they couldn't find out which particular student had breached the security they closed access for all of the students so so so technology can help us and digital is really useful but as I say it doesn't in and of itself necessarily make the difference that we need it to make having said that we there are some amazing things which have been done with technology and in the digital era and I think open universities are leading the way in that um so so I'm I think there's clearly a space we are leading the way we've done a huge somebody mentioned that we we own future learn and we're looking for at the moment how we put our post grad on to um future learn lots of things that we're still doing but when it comes down to it um resolving issues of social justice and transforming lives are actually what um you need policy to to do as well as as well of course the the models that we're using um so it's it's it's very multifaceted and I don't think technology on its own is the thing that makes the difference but I shall give way to I think who is next mark I'm okay thank you very much okay uh regarding to the your question about the the open university which is still relevant in this digital era um I have three three points to comment no they're they're in my notes the first one is okay in this new digital era and nowadays I think not only the open universities or the online universities are changing also the traditional ones or face-to-face universities are changing a new kind of universities are appearing this moment in different countries uh doing different things that means we we have to analyze uh these movements that were happening now uh with in the area of universities of higher education and and and try to find our role there our position there our definition as a as an open university uh to me that is very important because there are many of the new emerging university models in nowadays in these moments of course all of them are using uh technology and many of them are are introducing or accepting as a usual for them online uh methodologies uh that means it's very important for the open university define clearly which is a position and the technological and methodological role um in order to collaborate or to compete or to work or to offer courses in this in this open world in digital era the second point is regarding to the one of the first dimension is about about lifelong learning I think of course the open universities this is our focus our students but we need to rethink about that because usually when we talk about lifelong learning we are talking about adult people but for instance in my university and another open universities we are receiving now also young students the students that working studying for instance in another face-to-face universities but it's doing something for us and and to me we need to think about the possibility the possibility to flexibilize more the curricula of our courses and our degrees I think that is very important in this new digital era it's not only think about traditional masters and degrees etc traditional courses I think we need to offer thinking in this new lifelong learning approach a more flexibility to follow a particular curricula in order to offer the students of the participants the knowledge that they want to have or then they want to achieve and the last point that I have here in my notes I think we in this digital era we have to continuously be promoting of course everything related to open I think this is something that we did and we continue doing nowadays and I think it's very important to preserve that and as I mentioned at the beginning also producing knowledge sharing this knowledge putting this knowledge open and also it's something that is very clear with my previous point about the the flexible curricula okay this is the three things that I want to share with you okay okay so I will repeat I think the open university model is very relevant in the digital era because many of the scale of the operation of most distant teaching universities which are the largest universities in their national jurisdictions and also because of their flexibility but obviously they have to do some things in order to be more relevant first of all to define a clear mission which is a little bit blurred and some universities the kind of our refrain from doing this define who are the target populations do they want to focus many a better degree or advanced degree on micro credentials do they want to be more international in their scope of operation with whom though they want to collaborate with whom they are competing so it's a huge frame that they have to decide and many universities refrain from doing this distant teaching universities currently the second point which is very important is to keep their reputation because distant education for many years and also currently even in some places has a bad reputation it's a lower level higher education the UK open university I think was the only one that for several years appeared in the Shanghai ranking table is one of the 500 living research universities very important to strengthen the status of open universities in order to keep their reputation strong in their countries and also worldwide and it's not an easy thing to do MOOCs and OER yesterday I listened to the webinar many many talked about the MOOCs and webinars and the OER we do not know yet how to use it efficiently and effectively in the learning systems of open universities and also other universities so it's very important and now I saw that the trend is to offer a full degree which is going to increase I think in the future and of course collaboration this is very important thing is at the beginning for most open universities it was very important when I wrote the book to say that they attend a long university they are autonomous they do not need anyone they attend a long university now collaboration is the name of the game you have to collaborate with other higher education institutions and also with the corporation with the work places so it's very important to frame the collaboration kind of the future collaborative entrance that each university wants to enhance and the last point that I want to emphasize I published a few months ago an article which is called e-teaching is a prerequisite for e-learning it is so much taken for granted that we live in the digital era and we know exactly how to study and how to teach so this media most students even though they were born with the computers in their hands and laptops and all these things do not know how to study for the digital devices and teachers as well they can't use it effectively if they will not get very strong support mechanisms for doing so so it's very important for open universities to provide support systems for both students and teachers in order to use most efficiently and effectively the digital and here I will so Antonio that just leads you to wrap up just relatively briefly just mindful of the time well thank you mark uh i'll try as best as possible so um building up from what has already been said um I would say that of course uh if we uh if the the success story of our transition from the industrial model to the online based model was collaboration uh as serius pointed out collaboration has also to be the key word in the future not just among the open universities themselves but with other higher education institutions as well however um we have to look at it from a different perspective in fact if we look at if we would ask what would be the the relevancy I mean the importance of open education or business learning in the sense of online learning or technology has learning or whatever we would would say in the in the near future this would be of course critical um it would be dominant so uh as the open universities face this new era in which digital education will be mainstream what are their role what are they needed for and this is something that um is uh also this is also worrying um politicians and uh the society in general so we have to face the mistrust from um governments would say okay why should we pay the open universities if the others are already doing the same so we have to be different and secondly um from the um from society as well if you look at the the the the new gen the next generations in the sense there is a clear mistrust for institutions so they are really keen in um in learning uh online and in using digital learning in in its broader sense in a non-formal sense as well but they are these mistrusting institutions so what is the place of an institution who although doing the same as the others claims to be uh specific well in this sense maybe there is a clue from what is happening in poor quality stage there's a new legislation that is going to be implemented which uh basically regulates um the distance education in Portugal and the idea the main idea is the following there is an holistic approach to the system the open university will play a different role from the others and so basically the open university and all the others who want to be funded by the government in order to deliver open uh distance education will have to work in association so there's not just one or the other all have to collaborate of course in different kinds of consortia all that have to collaborate in order to be funded by the government what is the role of the open university basically to um of course to establish itself as a clear international reference in terms of research and development and innovation and establish the standard for the entire system the quality standard for the entire system as well also to share its knowledge and expertise with the others and collaborate with the others in order for them all to uh upscale and for the system as a whole to of course enhance its uh its capability and also to increase its its outreach so the system can grow as long as the the different universities collaborate and the open university has a central position a central role in that by of course acquiring the know-how and sharing the know-how with the others and also resources in this sense there's a kind of an unbundling uh of uh of the structure of the open university as well and we would of course increase the expertise in some aspects and share the other with the others elements which we don't have as uh of so much quality these kind of unbundled model of organization of the open universities is innovative in its sense and this is also contribution that the open university is giving to the system which is leading innovation also in terms of the university structure and management as well apart from of course the educational the education practice so this kind of thing could be an indication of what lies in the future for the open universities but we have to be also careful uh in one point we're discussing the reality of the european open universities this is not exactly the same as the reality of the open universities in asia or in south america or in africa these are also different because they are responding to different uh regional contexts cultural context social context political context and so this is something that we this conclusion may be be uh relevant at this stage for the european context and may be a reference for the future to the other reasons as well but uh this is something that we have to be careful when making the generalization as well but this could be a a great way for us just to kind of bring things to a close with an eye on the time um and if i could just draw on the danger of uh generalizing about the open university because in parts of the developing world in particular they are much more in transition from a traditional pack and post model as it sometimes described but if i was to pull out three points that just i'm taking away from this conversation and apologies we haven't drawn too many questions um that we've put to the panel members from our participants although they've been a reasonably good fact channel conversation the three things that i am taking away is just how important that mission or vision is what it is that is unique to take our first question um that really defines the open university obviously different universities will have slightly different missions but by nature the open university has a different kind of mission and um joseph i think you were the person in particular but it really ran through all of the um panel members feedback around the importance of then the focus on lifelong learning or adult learning as you took about part time but this seems effectively a much more holistic view of the learning experience and of course the unique nature of the learners themselves and where they come from as distinct from perhaps school leavers and campus-based education although that in itself is a dangerous generalization and then perhaps most importantly that i'm just taking from this conversation is that important role that social justice has um and liz you made a great point that we can't i remember a book from one of my mentors many many years ago who said that education can't make jobs well education can't fix society it's part of the fix but we can't expect it to really solve overnight and on its own the deep structural inequities that we have within not just our societies but humanity at large um so clearly open universities play an important role but they have to be connected and that's probably a fourth point to policy to politicians to practice obviously as well but um on that note i think what i'd like to do is just kind of thank you formally for your contribution i know we've had a steady number of participants between 30 and 40 during the whole session that's always a good indication that people have stayed with us i've enjoyed the conversation as i hope you have and i just need to do one final thing if you really want to continue these discussions with particularly these panel members but also many of you who are in the community here in this chat room and then we invite you to attend this year's eden conference in bruges in uh june in the middle of june and we'll certainly be picking up on some of these themes and it's really one of europe europe's major conferences in this particular field so on that little advertorial note um i think i'll formally uh now hand off and sign off on today's webinar as part of open education week thank you of course hopefully we'll see some of you at tomorrow's event as well so thank you thank you