Open Universities: the next phase

Student persistence has long been a major challenge for open universities. Despite the evolution of open education, an overall high student attrition rate remains. This paper examines the changes and trends in factors related to student persistence in open universities. It reviews the empirical studies from the 1970s to the 2010s which reported factors influencing student persistence. The relevant studies were searched from databases, including Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. Among the 108 studies collected, a total of 284 factors influencing student persistence were identified. The factors were categorised into student factors, institutional factors, and environmental factors. Their changes and trends over the years were examined. The results show that student factors were the most frequently studied over the years examined, with the major categories being students’ psychological attributes and outcomes. Institutional factors have been increasingly studied in recent decades, with the design and delivery of programmes and courses being the strongest category. Finally, environmental factors have been decreasingly examined, with factors related to students’ family and work being the two main categories. Based on the results, the implications for developing intervention and retention strategies for student persistence in open universities are discussed.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Factors Related to Student Persistence in Open Universities

2019

“…To do justice to distance education, its contribution to campus-based education is greater and in more aspects than vice versa. (Xiao, 2018, p. 5) Other challenges that CUAED, as a public university, must address in the immediate future, some of which are also aligned with those found by Tait (2018), include the following:…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterizing UNAM’s Open Education System Using the OOFAT Model

Cervantes-Pérez¹,

Vadillo²,

Bucio³

et al. 2019

Mexico’s national university (UNAM) is a public mega university with a 46-year history in open education. This article presents an analysis based on the open, online, flexible provision of technology-enhanced higher education (OOFAT) model, developed by Orr and his colleagues (2018). The aim of this analysis was to characterize UNAM’s open and distance education system in terms of openness, flexibility, and its business model, in three distinct time periods. According to this analysis, the system has evolved in all areas, and at present has a content-focused approach in terms of flexibility and openness, which differs from the OOFAT at the center approach that is desired. The study also characterized the UNAM system’s business model as a prospector-like approach, which highlights the possibilities for instilling innovation through the schools that comprise this system. The analysis allowed for mapping the current situation and thus sheds light on defining the steps necessary for creating an integrally open system.

“…Thus, there was a high demand in all DTUs for part-time study at the undergraduate level. Furthermore, some Guri-Rosenblit, 1999;Tait, 2018).…”

Section: Change Of Initial Target Populationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Today, participation rates in higher education are very high in most European countries and in North America. Participation rates in higher education fluctuate between 50% to 85% of relevant age cohorts (Tait, 2018). As a result, there has been noticeable decline in enrollment at the undergraduate level in many DTUs in the last decades.…”

Section: Change Of Initial Target Populationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The terms open universities or distance teaching universities are, of course, generic terms and as such cover many variations and differences in purpose, practice, and paths of development in different countries. There are currently around 60 single-mode distance teaching universities around the world (Tait, 2018). Most of these single-mode distance teaching universities have not adopted an open admission policy, even though they are entitled as an open university, but instead portray openness in many other dimensions (Guri-Rosenblit, 1999.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Open Universities: Innovative Past, Challenging Present, and Prospective Future

Guri‐Rosenblit

2019

This article examines the innovative past of the large-scale, single-mode open universities that follow the model of the UK Open University (UKOU), analyzes the main challenges which they are currently facing in the digital era, and concludes with highlighting leading prospects for their future operation. The establishment of the UKOU in 1969 marked a new era in distance higher education. It gave distance education a new legitimacy and opened up new prospects for populations that for a variety of reasons were unable to attend a campus-based university. Many of the new open universities were heralded as a conspicuous development in higher education, with innovative features such as: open access, reaching out to part-time adult students, providing academic faculty the opportunity to work in teams to prepare study materials, modular credit accumulation, teaching huge numbers of students, and harnessing innovative technologies into their teaching/learning processes. In the last three decades, many of these innovative characteristics pioneered by open universities have been adopted by campus universities. This has eroded the unique status of open universities in many national jurisdictions. Furthermore, the emergence of digital technologies has challenged the underlying premises of the industrial model of many open universities, as well as their logistic operation. Present challenges facing open universities emerge from: blurred boundaries between distance and campus universities; the changing of initial target populations; the need to restructure the technological and logistic infrastructure of open universities; the changing roles of the academic faculty; and the growing competition for both students and funds. In order to find success and keep being relevant in the future, open universities should take into consideration: future target populations; the use of MOOCs and OER; support systems for both students and professors; collaboration with other higher education institutions; collaboration with the corporate and work worlds; and enhancing the academic status of open universities.