Open and Virtual Universities

Abstract

In this article, I will argue that the Open University UK (OUUK)1 that I joined in the 1970s can be seen as a precursor dis/embodied or virtual university, despite the fact that the new digitally-based virtual universities are born from one ideology: that of instrumental progressivism, and the OUUK was a product of different ideologies: post-war British socialism encompassing enthusiasm for technology in aid of social progress. There are commonalties between the new virtual universities and the large open and distance learning (ODL) universities which grew out of the liberal progressivism of the late 20th century, and for which the OUUK was a model. My work at the OUUK over the last twenty years has shown that open and distance learning can provide opportunities for women to access higher education, but at the same time throw up barriers as education is mediated via technologies. A virtual university can also complicate and confuse challenges and critiques of gendering when gender becomes embedded in postindustrial ideology and processes. Much has been written about the impact on ‘traditional’ i.e. face-to-face universities of building virtuality (digital distributed learning) onto their existing material/embodied foundations, but this ignores the large scale and global development of ODL universities, which have already been working as ‘virtual’ universities, for the last 30 years.