Radio and television
The very rapid spread of radio in the United States in the 1930s led to proposals to use it for distance education. By 1938, at least 200 city school systems, 25 state boards of education, and many colleges and universities broadcast educational programs for the public schools. One line of thought was to use radio as a master teacher.
" Experts in given fields broadcast lessons for pupils within the many schoolrooms of the public school system, asking questions, suggesting readings, making assignments, and conducting tests. This mechanizes education and leaves the local teacher only the tasks of preparing for the broadcast and keeping order in the classroom."
A typical setup came in Kentucky in 1948 when John Wilkinson Taylor, president of the University of Louisville, teamed up with the National Broadcasting Corporation to use radio as a medium for distance education, The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission endorsed the project and predicted that the "college-by-radio" would put "American education 25 years ahead." The University was owned by the city, and local residents would pay the low tuition rates, receive their study materials in the mail, and listen by radio to live classroom discussions that were held on campus. Charles Wedemeyer of the University of Wisconsin–Madison also promoted new methods. From 1964 to 1968, the Carnegie Foundation funded Wedemeyer's Articulated Instructional Media Project (AIM) which brought in a variety of communications technologies aimed at providing learning to an off-campus population
Open University
The Open University in the United Kingdom was founded by the then serving Labour Party government under Prime Minister Harold Wilson, based on the vision of Michael Young. Planning commenced in 1965 under Minister of State for Education Jennie Lee, who established a model for the OU as one of widening access to the highest standards of scholarship in higher education, and set up a planning committee consisting of university vice-chancellors, educationalists and television broadcasters, chaired by Sir Peter Venables. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Assistant Director of Engineering at the time James Redmond, had obtained most of his qualifications at night school, and his natural enthusiasm for the project did much to overcome the technical difficulties of using television to broadcast teaching programmes.
The University revolutionised the scope of the correspondence program and helped to create a respectable learning alternative to the traditional form of education. It has been at the forefront of developing new technologies to improve the distance learning service and is still the largest such institution in the world. Its success helped to hasten the establishment of similar institutions elsewhere, including in the US and Japan. Walter Perry was appointed the OU's first vice-chancellor in January 1969, and its Foundation Secretary was Anastasios Christodoulou. The election of the new Conservative Party government under Prime Minister Edward Heath in 1970 led to budget cuts under Chancellor of the Exchequer Iain Macleod (who had earlier called the idea of an Open University "blithering nonsense"). However, the OU accepted its first 25,000 students in 1971, adopting a radical open admissions policy. At the time, the total student population of conventional universities in the United Kingdom was around 130,000.
Athabasca University, Canada's Open University, was created in 1970 and followed a similar, though independently developed, pattern.[27] The Open University inspired the creation of Spain's National University of Distance Education (1972)[28] and Germany's FernUniversität in Hagen (1974).[29] There are now many similar institutions around the world, often with the name "Open University" (in English or in the local language). All "open universities" use distance education technologies as delivery methodologies and some have grown to become 'mega-universities',[30] a term coined to denote institutions with more than 100,000 students. In 1976, Bernard Luskin launched Coastline Community College as a college beyond walls, combining computer assisted instruction with telecourses proceed by KOCE TV, the Coast Community College District public television station. Coastline has been a landmark strategic success in helping to establish online distance learning using modern technology for learning.
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