The Open University is a world leader in modern distance learning, the pioneer of teaching and learning methods which enable people to achieve their career and life goals studying at times and in places to suit them.
“There is no conflict between fair access and academic excellence. Nor should there be.” So said Les Ebdon, director of fair access to higher education in his latest report to parliament. But when it comes…
Earlier this year, the Russian Federal Space Agency received a hand-luggage-sized delivery from the UK. It came with a request to launch the contents aboard a rocket, along with the Russian three-tonne…
In imploring the world to be less dependent on the US dollar for international transactions, French finance minister Michel Sapin is expressing a wish that many of the euro’s creators hoped would already…
Two of Wimbledon’s top seeds crashed out of the tournament to players some years their junior. First, the world number one and second seed, Rafael Nadal was knocked out by new kid on the block Nick Kyrgios…
London’s Victorian sewerage system is creaking and in dire need of renewal. The proposed solution: a 25km “super-sewer”, the Thames Tideway Tunnel, running from west to east across the capital at an estimated…
Many professional authors are also parents, but recently, there have been a number of success stories of parents simply writing for their own children and becoming very successful. And this recent surge…
Yo! And to say it again, yo! There’s a new app available which does precisely one thing: it sends the single word “yo” to another user. No context, no other message, not even “no”. Just “yo”. Yo. Yoyo…
There are now more than 1.1 million children in our schools whose first language “is known or believed to be other than English” according to the latest government figures. This confirms a continuous upwards…
Google’s Android now dominates 80% of the smart phone market. Of the major phone operating systems, Android is the most vulnerable to security breaches and yet perceptions haven’t caught up with reality…
Glastonbury Festival features a huge range of music, dance, comedy, circus arts, film and other expressive forms. Predictably, it looks like rain is set to feature this year, too. This is a dairy farm…
Linux, the most widely used open source operating system in the world, has scored a major publicity coup in the revelation that it is used on 94% of the world’s top 500 supercomputers. Every operating…
Speaking as part of a commemorative celebration of the importance of the Commonwealth in WW1, David Cameron had this to say about the participation of colonial troops from all over the empire: They fought…
Do we have enough onshore windfarms, or do we have too many? And who decides what “too many” looks like? The Conservative Party has announced it would end subsidies for new onshore wind farms if it won…
Mobile phone providers should introduce national roaming, Britain’s Culture Secretary, Sajid Javid, has announced. The purpose: to enable full mobile phone coverage across the UK, bringing signal to those…
You’re the reigning Wimbledon champion, the first Briton to win at home for more than 30 years. You’re facing the prospect of defending your title against a rampant Novak Djokovic and a dominant Rafael…
Parents and teachers have long been given guidance on which books can help children learn but no such help is on offer when it comes to apps. The bad news is, definite recommendations may be a long time…
There are many tales in literature over millennia about people selling their soul to a malevolent deity for the right price. But at least it’s usually a good price. Recent research has discovered that…
Twitter made hay this week as Facebook suffered what has been described, perhaps a tad hyperbollically, as “the longest outage in recent memory”. That’s if your memory doesn’t stretch back much further…
England play Uruguay tonight in a crucial match that, if lost, could leave the team with one foot already on the flight home. It’s for situations like these that Steve Peters, England’s sport psychiatrist…
The expectation placed on Roy Hodgson’s 23-man England squad is immense – each player is representing a country that proudly boasts football as its national sport, and (rightly or wrongly) considers itself…