As Jeremy Paxman strides across first world war battlefields presenting the new major BBC documentary Britain's Great War, standing invisible behind him is an expert historian from The Open University.
Britain's Great War is one of a raft of memorable TV series that have sprung from the longstanding working relationship between The Open University (OU) and the BBC. Pay attention and you'll spot the OU logo on popular programmes as diverse as David Attenborough's epic Frozen Planet, long-running history series Timewatch and popular science show Bang Goes the Theory.
TV and radio are in the DNA of The Open University. Its original name, in its planning stage, was "the University of the Air". The name changed, but not the vision of using broadcasting to reach thousands of widely dispersed learners simultaneously. In 1971, the year that the first students began their studies, the OU and the BBC signed a formal agreement which has been regularly renewed ever since.
Back then TV and radio offered the only viable technology for making sound and moving images accessible to large numbers of students. OU professors adapted their lecture hall skills and turned themselves into surprisingly popular TV presenters. But from the 1980s alternatives began appearing – first cassette tapes, followed by CDs and DVDs and then by the internet. Today's Open University students happily access their multimedia study material via a plethora of mobile devices.
But far from giving up on broadcasting, The Open University has changed its approach to target a wider audience. OU programmes used to be aimed at students of one specific course. Now they are designed for a mainstream – but still intellectually curious – audience.
Content from TV and radio programmes is used in OU courses too. They rarely appear in front of the cameras these days, but OU experts have input into every OU/BBC co-production, so what audiences see and hear is informed by their academic research and teaching. Academic support to Britain's Great War is provided by Dr Annika Mombauer, a researcher specialising in World War One, who has also helped shaped The Open University course Europe 1914-1989: war, peace, modernity.
It's all part of The Open University's founding mission to open up education to as many people as can benefit from it.
To this end, each broadcast series comes with added learning content – archive footage, interviews, expert contributions – produced for OU students but publicly available on the university's free learning website, OpenLearn.
"Factual television is a great way to inspire people to find out more," says Dr Caroline Ogilvie, the OU's head of broadcast commissioning.
"It's vital to have programmes that appeal to a wide audience and bring the subject to life, potentially drawing them in to education."
Some Open University series you may have seen (or heard)
• Airport Live
• Wartime Farm
• Stargazing Live
• Coast
• Frozen Planet
• Bang goes the Theory
• Timewatch
• Child of our time
• Thinking Allowed
• The Bottom Line
• More or Less
See also: Forty years of Open University TV
