Open University has come a long way with distance learning

Today it's a different story with internet conferencing and social networking sites, better known for allowing teenagers to chat and swap photos, helping distant learners get a degree.

Over four decades, the Open University has been at the forefront of innovation in learning, and this year celebrates its 40th birthday. However, at the beginning, an Open University degree was seen as a lesser qualification than a normal one. Without the same strict criteria for entry, it was viewed as an easy option.

Now the OU is consistently in the top three of the National Students Survey of Student Satisfaction and had 18 of 25 subjects classed as excellent in the last UK Quality Assurance Agency subject review. In the recent UK universities Research Assessment Exercise it rose 23 places in the UK league table, with 14 per cent of its research described as "world leading" and more than 50 per cent described as "internationally excellent".

The rest of the world has finally caught up with the OU, and distance learning is booming in popularity. It has more students than any other university in the UK, teaches almost 200,000 each year and has so far helped more than 2 million people learn.

At any one time there are about 14,000 people in Scotland on an OU course and, as school leavers examine Higher results and student debt rises, more than ever are likely to be tempted to consider the OU as a way to study and earn at the same time.

One well kent face in Scotland's capital, was a pioneer of the OU degree. The Lord Provost, George Grubb enjoyed doing his so much he did a second. After taking a basic BA degree and graduating in 1974, he later did a research degree, and graduated in 1983.

During his school days at the Royal High in Edinburgh, Mr Grubb was Scottish Schools and Junior athletics champion and concentrated more on sport than academic studies. He admits he didn't do well in his Highers. After national service he opted to take theological training and join the air force as a padre, but when he inquired about doing a degree in divinity he was told he would have to take a first degree beforehand. And that's where the OU stepped in.

"It was just at that time when the Open University started and I enrolled," Mr Grubb says. "A lot of people thought it was a second-rate institution so it had to win its spurs and of course it has done that over the years.

"It produced excellent teaching material, super back-up material, good tutors and very quickly it became an established university.

"They pioneered use of television programmes so you would get up at 5:30am to watch a programme and of course sometimes they'd forget to turn on the transmitter and you'd be sitting there looking at a blank screen. So it was really early morning and late-night study and you had the back up of tutorial group of Napier College as it was then known."

Being a pioneer was part of the appeal for Mr Grubb: "That's what made it so enjoyable and exciting," he says. "You are at the forefront of this kind of learning which has taken off in a big way. And it gave me the opportunity to combine my daily work as a parish minister with studying." Afterwards Mr Grubb went on to complete his Bachelor of Divinity at Edinburgh University's New College in 1978, and then returned to the OU to do a research degree which he completed in 1983 on church history.

And, he says, the change between the two were obvious.

"I was a mature student at New College. Most of the people there were quite young. It was very much lecture-orientated which we didn't have at the Open University, it was seminar-dominated."

The OU has always taken advantage of the latest technology, and from its genesis, when it used the dead time on television to screen educational programmes, that focus has not changed. It was at the forefront of the use of the internet in education, investing 2.9 million on e-learning technologies over the past two years.

Last year, it became the first university to offer free downloadable course material via iTunesU, the area of the Apple's iTunes store offering downloadable education content. Learning and Teaching Scotland, the government body responsible for the school curriculum, was quick to follow.

The OU has its own online video community site called "ouView" on YouTube, its own Facebook page and a presence in virtual world Second Life called Open Life.

Today, famous faces including Lenny Henry are proud to boast of having an OU degree and with the move from grants to loans and fears about debt, many people who would have previously gone to a traditional university are choosing the OU.

The application process is still under way so final figures are not available, but the OU says it has seen a big rise in interest this year compared to last.