 Hello, Belinda. I'm very happy to see you. I need to introduce you to the public, but I am sure that everybody knows you very well, but still to remind that today we are having the interview with Belinda Tainan, the Vice Chancellor, Vice Chancellor of the Open University. And today Belinda agreed to answer a couple of questions regarding the developments of open and distance learning, openness, teaching, and other challenges that we come across with integration of the innovations in organizations. So Belinda, let's start. And my first question would be, how would you describe the successful integration of technology-enhanced learning in organizations? Well, hello, Irene. It's lovely to be here and to be talking with you today. Well, that's a really challenging opening question. And if I've understood it, I'd say, well, to the Open University in the UK in particular, it's very fundamental to the way we work and the success of our organization. And probably the best way for me to answer that is to give you some examples of how we approach open. So first for the OU, and it's part of our mission, is that we're open to people. So potentially students don't need to have any qualification whatsoever coming to us, although many do. But they're not required to bring to us what a traditional university might expect when you first register for a course. So many of our students don't have the typical, what we call A-levels in the UK, which would enable you to enter or qualify to go into a university course. Although as I said, many of our students do. And also, you know, our students might come to us with different experiences or different kinds of qualifications. So first of all, we're open in that sense. And then in order to help people be successful, because, you know, we do have some evidence to suggest that if you do have some of those pre-qualifications that you are more likely to be successful. Well, then there's our number one challenge. If we've got people coming in who don't have those qualifications and they're maybe going to be less successful, what can we do to support them? So one of the things that we have on offer to those particular students is a pathway or an access route into the university, which helps them prepare for study. And then the other thing we do is that within our first year curriculum, we actually embed and design a learning experience that enables students to learn the kinds of study skills and the academic development skills they need in order to be successful in our programs. And then finally, I think a real, you know, critical part of the model at the Open University is that we have tutor support and that all our students have access to an individual tutor. And within their tutor groups, they can talk with their tutor about different issues and they can get both academic, personal, social, administrative support. And then one other tiny thing, it feels like you just keep adding all these different fabulous things on, but we also have discipline-based study teams. So students, if they are doing, you know, an education degree, for example, they have a particular team which is only focused on education and they can contact that support team which will give them, you know, support in their studies. So those things all combined, I think, create, you know, sort of the scope, I guess, of the type of offer we provide to students who come to us who don't have necessarily those traditional entry skills. So, I mean, there's lots more I could say, but maybe that's a good starting point. I must admit that continuously in the e-network, for example, we do appreciate and we mention a lot how much open universities have already done for other universities who are struggling with its integration. However, in the broader context, we see that online forms of education provision are also now no longer see as a curiosity issue or a niche market, but a lot of institutions recognize them as a central part of education for now. However, we see that openness is still quite a recent item on European agenda. What tendencies do you absorb in the efforts of education organizations in Europe that would be your, like, taking up challenges and openness? What tendencies do you absorb in the efforts of education organizations of taking these challenges? I think this is a really interesting question and I agree with you that online learning is hardly new to anyone anymore. However, I still think openness, you know, is potentially new for many organizations in Europe. And remember, I'm quite new to Europe, so I won't want to make too many generalizations about my colleagues there. But it probably raises for me even more questions, not least that open itself probably needs to be defined within the context. You know, so what does that mean for an organization? Is it about entry to study, which is a bit like the open universities, that we're open in terms of, you know, entrance into the university? Or is it more about open practices more generally? Is it about the organization's research? Is it about educational content and open education resources? And I think I see sort of generally, you know, just sort of globally, you know, when you trot around and you meet people and you talk to them about open, is that being able to define it within context appears to be one of the greatest challenges. And I think if any organization is going to embrace the field of open, that's where they need to start. You know, and I quite often see initiatives sort of start up within organizations, which are sort of situated around individuals' passions. And that's really fantastic and that's great. And you get innovation, you know, and entrepreneurialism within organizations. I really applaud it. But quite often, it's unsustainable. And so I think there are huge opportunities to be had in the open space. But I think it requires organizations to take a strategic view of it. Exactly. I understand your point. And one of the discussions led also in professional networks was, of course, that we are learning, we are all learning and we are learning from mistakes as well. And what mistakes would you identify of open education in Europe that would be maybe your recommendations not to repeat them while integrating openness in organizations? I think as I indicated previously, we often get enthused because we have very passionate leaders within our organizations. But I strongly believe it requires senior leadership and institutional commitment to agree principles in a sense before you even begin to think about what it looks like. So I'd really sort of go back to basics in a sense and say, well, what does open mean for my organization? And that would then give you the place to start. Thank you, Melinda. Another hot issue is diversification of target groups now in high education. And this makes considerable impact upon sustainability, just as you mentioned before. Which success factors again you would identify for lifelong learning service development in high education? I think this is a great time to be in the lifelong learning business. And there are plenty of opportunities around at the moment, you know, opening up around how we can deliver lifelong learning. And particularly we've seen that happen with MOOCs and what's happening in that space. Certainly when you start talking about professional development, collaboration with different companies and corporations is stronger than ever. And I think some of the challenges that we may have in the future lay in how courses might be accredited. And the formal approaches that we're seeing in universities may well need to change to reflect the shifts being accounted or being displayed in society about what kind of learning people want to engage with. And I think, you know, the challenge for formal education providers is that university education is not the only education that can be formally accepted. And increasingly we're seeing evidence of that. So if you look at, if you want to make Google Apps, for example, you do the Google training. If you want to be qualified, Cisco, you need to do the Cisco training, the Microsoft training. So there are already, there are quite a lot of influences from sort of different other accrediting agencies about what kinds of qualifications are valued particularly, you know, in the workforce. So I think, you know, we do have a challenge ahead of us here and some universities have been quite clever with that sort of embrace to those things and brought them into the curriculum. So one of the things we've done at the Open Universities, we've brought those kinds of qualifications which people need and want and are recognised into the formal curriculum and included them within them. But that's only, you know, one model. You know, there has also been some talk, you know, about, well, the degree is dead, that we need something different. I'm not sure I totally agree with that yet because I still think the degree has a place. But I do think that we need to question what we're offering in formal education and whether or not it actually is meeting the needs of the lifelong learning agenda, especially in light of the changing market requirements. So I think it's a discussion point that we need to be having. The Open University contributes for many years to Eden development, but now you personally just recently became the member of Eden Executive Committee. And I would like to ask you, how do you see now Eden development and how would you think Eden could support more governments, policy makers, other stakeholders, insustainable, scalable development of Open and distance learning more actively? Well, I should have expected this question would come in my direction, shouldn't I? Well, I've been giving this some thought and sort of talking to different people around it, but I mean, I think the really obvious things for Eden is to be an advocate, you know, for appropriate policy and to provide leadership around the key issues of open, online and distance learning. However, we're defining that currently. I think there's opportunity to lobby various governments, obviously the European Commission and get involved with other organizations like UNESCO, etc. I guess, you know, one thing being an outsider coming into the UK and being part of Europe, I've only been here for two years now. One of the things I've observed is that there are a range of other organizations that are similar but different to Eden. And so you've got the European Universities Association, you've got the International Consulting of Distance Educators, you've got the European Association of Distance Universities, EDAT2. And I think there's something to be said about how we can get those groups to maybe work together better. They all sort of subtly do different things, but they also overlap and they have very similar goals and aspirations. And so I think, you know, there's got to be a way in a sense that we can bring those things together. And perhaps one of the dreams that I sort of have had occasionally or maybe it's a fantasy is that we could have some kind of joint conference that would bring all of those groups together in a way and figure out how we can get that collaboration, you know, across all those different organizations. Because I think probably the key strength of Eden is that it's a practitioner's group. You know, it's a place where practitioners share what they do. And all those other organizations, while they have partially have that, they don't have it in quite the same way we have. So that's something that we can bring to the table in a sense. So rather than us all competing for audience, if we're joined up, I think it's a much more powerful message. But you know, these are just thoughts. And being new to the committee, the committee might just go, no, don't even think about that. But I don't think that will be the case. Great ideas. I'm sure we have more people who will support your ideas. So now Barcelona conference is coming. What discussion would you anticipate in Barcelona? Well, I mean, as I was saying before, I think a real strength of the Eden conference is that it's a practitioner conference. And so I'm expecting that there will be practitioners who will be talking to each other. They'll be sharing their innovation. There's going to be networking amongst their peers and establishing links potentially for new collaborations. And this year potentially there's going to be more discussion, hopefully, around leadership and change. Because I'm involved in, I hope it's going to be a really exciting keynote with two other very senior women. And we're going to talk about leadership. Leadership and innovation and change within organisations. So I hope that becomes a topic of discussion as well. And then third, you know, we really do need a more robust evidence base and hopefully delegates will continue to talk about the kinds of research methodologies and approaches they take for providing the evidence base, which supports our arguments, you know, about, you know, the potential of online and distance learning. So I will just jump to the next question because you mentioned research. And you are also a famous researcher in the field. I wouldn't say I'm not famous. I'm also a very precipitous literature and I've read some. And in your research, teaching receives considerable attention. This is what I personally appreciate a lot. And you are mentioning but also now in higher education institutions we see that teacher workload increases. And the institutions do come to face different challenges like teachers have to implement teaching, research, curriculum designing, opening up virtual mobility, different initiatives. So what could you suggest for institutions how to meet these challenges and what should be the roles of the teachers? Oh, well, thanks again for that question too. And I feel a bit embarrassed to say I'm a famous researcher. I'm not. I'm just an ordinary researcher in the pack, you know. But I have a particular focus, which you're right, which sits around teacher, teacher identity, teacher professional development. And in one recent piece of work I did with some colleagues, we were looking at the role teachers play in supporting distance and online learning and their identity within that, which is absolutely fascinating actually. So I guess one of the things that we still haven't resolved is, because it's really hard for me where to start with this, being clear, there's something different about how we go about online and distance teaching. I mean many of the principles are the same. Good teaching is good teaching. But there are some subtle differences in that and there are many aspects to it. Including things like curriculum design, learning design, being able to facilitate appropriately in an online environment itself. And there are only some of the aspects involved in good sort of online and distance teaching. But I think what we're seeing change is the role and identity of the academic in that dynamic. And so workloads changing too. And so our traditional conceptions of what the academic or the teacher was, you know that they do some research, they do some teaching and maybe potentially some community engagement or enterprise of some kind. That's very much shifting within universities themselves as teachers are being asked to do different things. And so in some universities, teachers are being asked to almost be multi-mediary experts for example, or learning design experts. And that hasn't really traditionally been part of what their role has been. So we're seeing a great shift. So if an organization wants to get into online and distance education, they have to actually shift their academic workforce in a way into more of the kinds of skills and the role expectations of that dimension. So I've been looking at that a lot with my colleagues. And what we're discovering really is that organizations need to have very holistic strategies and have a very clear idea about what the roles and responsibilities are in order to define just what an academic or what a teacher is within their organization. And I think that that's some hard thinking because there's a lot of tradition and there's a lot of sort of history that sits behind what an academic is. And you know that's very challenging not only for the organizations themselves but for teachers and academics within those organizations. The last question will be related to the last major Eden event in Oxford when you were moderating a very interesting session at the very end of the Oxford research. And it was a question opened up for the public and somebody else from the public answered it. But now I address it to you Belinda. I would be really interesting. You're now in the settings of the Open University but let's move now to the settings of a very traditional middle-sized university in Europe. And how would you being a rector of such middle-sized university meet opening up? Now I understand that from your previous answer somebody would have to define the openness first. But if not all the areas of openness could be addressed what would be your first steps and your first areas of openness that you would address in a traditional sized university? Well, I'd probably address this by putting together a strategy. You know, I'd want to develop an aspiration and make sure that that aspiration met the context and situation of the organization I was in. And as every organization is embedded within a specific context and the range of controls to consider I'd be sure that I'd explored the market opportunities sitting around that, you know, all those typical things around assessing the returns on investment. I'd be developing business cases if that was appropriate and then be putting together a change agenda that was holistic that drove the entire organization. I think as I was saying before, you know, my concerns around there's a lot of enthusiasts that sit within organizations where there are inputs of excellence, where they fail and are not sustainable is that it's not driven from a holistic strategy. So probably, you know, if I was, you know, a rector in one of those organizations I'd be starting off with, well, what's the aspiration here? You know, what's the actual need? Why would I want to do this? You know, how would it benefit students and be asking those very fundamental questions before I would be leaping into any kind of form of change or implementation? Thank you very much, Belinda, for your time and for your answers and for your continuing contribution to Eden events and Eden professional networking. So we just had a lovely talk with Belinda Tyman, who is the Vice Chancellor at the Open University and myself, I don't know, I'm a Vice President of Eden. So let's see you in the future events. I'll see you in Eden. Lovely to chat. Bye! Bye.