University of London - Technological outreach

New technologies are helping universities to reach people with no prior experience of higher education, an international conference on learning and development has heard. Speakers at the Fifth Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning last week included the Prime Minister of Uganda, the vice-chancellor of the University of South Africa, representatives from Unesco and Unicef, and The Open University's vice-chancellor, Brenda Gourley, whose speech was entitled "New technologies: new possibilities for reaching the unreached". The forum had 600 guests and was hosted by the University of London, which in 1858 became the first university in the world to offer distance-learning degrees.