Geology students at the Open University no longer have to wait for boxes of rocks to be sent to their homes so they can examine their structure. Since February they have been able to use a virtual microscope instead.

The university has always pioneered the use of new technologies to teach. First it was television. The initial university broadcast went out on BBC2 on Sunday, January 3, 1971.

It was a welcome to students called Open Forum and was followed by the first course-related programme, Mathematics: an introduction.

The early broadcasts were in black and white, with few special effects, and were fronted by academics. These talking head presentations were later parodied as lectures from “two hairy men with a flip chart”.

Open University programmes were (and still are) also broadcast on BBC radio, mainly Radio 4. Video tapes, audio tapes and CDs followed.

The university also invented the home experiment kit, which the OU mailed to home-based science students. These kits would have come complete with real sheep’s brains.

Today there are interactive DVDs, podcasts and the internet. The latter can be accessed through devices such as the iPhone and BlackBerry.

Since 2006 the university has operated a Virtual Learning Environment, where students can access online conferencing, wikis, digital libraries, online tutorials, bespoke research tools and interactive computer-marked tests. These complement printed materials, which are still an important component of courses...>> Read More

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/student/article7110702.ece