Professor Tim Blackman, Pro-Vice Chancellor Research, Scholarship and Quality, The Open University:
The Open University is pleased to support the AllTrials campaign’s call for full and open reporting of medical trials. As a provider of science and health education and open educational resources accessed by thousands of people worldwide, the Open University is committed to helping the public make informed decisions about health and healthcare. The University strongly encourages all clinical trials to be registered and to ensure that the results of trials are published irrespective of their outcome.
About The Open University
The Open University (OU) is the largest academic institution in the UK and a world leader in flexible distance learning. Since it began in 1969, the OU has taught more than 1.8 million students and has more than 200,000 current students, including more than 15,000 overseas.
The OU is rated in the top ten of UK universities for student satisfaction in the National Student Survey, since the survey began in 2005. In 2013/14 it had a 91% satisfaction rating. Over 70% of students are in full-time or part-time employment, and four out of five FTSE 100 companies have sponsored staff to take OU courses.
In the UK’s latest Research Assessment Exercise (RAE 2008) The Open University was ranked in the top third of UK higher education institutions. More than 50% of OU research was assessed in the RAE as internationally excellent, with 14% as world leading.
The OU has a 41 year partnership with the BBC and has moved from late-night lectures in the 1970s to co-producing prime-time series such as Frozen Planet, Bang Goes the Theory, Britain’s Great War, I Bought a Rainforest and Business Boomers. Regarded as Britain’s major e-learning institution, the OU is a world leader in developing technology to increase access to education on a global scale. Its vast ‘open content portfolio’ includes free study units on OpenLearn, which received 5.2 million unique visitors in 2012/13, and materials on iTunes U, which has recorded more than 66 million downloads.