Letter: Interactive technology presents challenges and opportunities for students

Sir: Peter Cochrane's vision of a university making full use of electronic media to communicate with students wherever they are sounds curiously familiar. Is that because the Open University, far from being 'frozen in time as a format', as he mistakenly believes, is already using computer conferencing to link people not only in the UK but all over the world, CD-based interactive multi-media programmes, satellite transmissions and other techniques? These things are happening now, not at some date in the future. And as the technology evolves and develops, the Open University will continue to exploit it.

Yours faithfully,

JOHN S. DANIEL

Vice-Chancellor

The Open University

Milton Keynes

8 June