News

The Open University’s campaign to mark its 50th birthday has been announced as a winner in the Chartered Institute of Public Relations 2020 excellence awards.

The Open University’s campaign, #OU50, took the title in the Education category, beating off stiff competition from universities, including Swansea University, University College London, and University of Oxford to win this prestigious award.

The Open University has joined forces with MoneySavingExpert to produce a new free course that will give people the skills and knowledge to master their finances.

The course covers key aspects of personal finances such as how to be savvy when spending money, budgeting, getting ready for retirement, borrowing, saving and much more.

As people across Ireland come to grips with staying at home and social distancing, many are turning to learning new things online to occupy some of their time.

OpenLearn, The Open University’s home of free learning, is experiencing record numbers of visitors to the site.  Usually recording an average of 40,000 visits per day, during the first week of schools and businesses being closed over 160,000 people each day were taking advantage of the free content and courses on offer.

John D'Arcy, National Director of The Open University in Ireland.

As we enter the latter half of 2019 we also enter the latter half of The Open University’s 50^th anniversary year. When the OU was established in 1969 it was with a clear purpose: to open up education to all – it was, and remains, a radical idea that still makes us different today. Throughout our anniversary year, The Open University has aimed to inspire pride, unity and involvement by celebrating our students who sit at the core of everything that we do.

Scientists from The Open University (OU) are supporting one of a series of ground-breaking missions by NASA to go back to the Moon. The announcement comes as the world prepares to mark the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landings, when astronauts from Apollo 11 walked on the Moon on July 20th 1969.

The Open University has launched a new collection called ‘Time to Think: Open University journeys in British and Irish prisons during the years of conflict, 1972-2000’.

In its fiftieth year, The Open University’s support of Pride events taking place across the UK and Ireland has even more resonance.

June also marks fifty years since the Stonewall riots in 1969, one of the most important historic events leading to the gay liberation movement and to the first Pride marches a year later.

Brain-to-brain learning could be a reality by 2070. This is according to the Future of Learning 2070: Imagine What’s Next report, which unveils predictions on what learning will be like in 2070 based on interviews with leading experts across the field of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The Open University is marking it's 50th anniversary this month by telling its remarkable story through the power of photographs, in a collection released today. Former and current OU students, including a builder from Belfast who changed his career to study Nursing after a life-changing accident, a prisoner turned academic, and a woman research pioneer in moon exploration, all feature in the new collection by world-famous British photographer Chris Floyd.

The President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins made a special address to graduates at The Open University in Ireland degree ceremony at Croke Park, Dublin today (Friday 5 April).