Distance Education UK experience.

The Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) distance learning courses stemmed from a review of trade union education by the TGWU. This review called for a broader curriculum of labour education. As a result, the TGWU, in discussion with Surrey University, the major provider of the union’s course in Region 1 (London and the South East), developed a new idea of “distance learning.” It combined tutorials with monthly course meetings over a twelve-month period. This, it was felt, would achieve two purposes: “collectivism” via the course meetings so central to union activity and missing from postal courses; and a sustained course looking at issues beyond the workplace but reflecting back on the workplace and union through student chosen project work. The course should perhaps have been called “half distance learning”; however, the “distance learning” tag stuck, and this and other similar regional courses are operated under the same title. (Other TGWU courses are designed to range from basic representative tool courses to the more advanced distance learning labour studies course described above.)

The TGWU distance learning courses have now been discussed in a number of articles. These accounts illustrate how a more demanding course, using more traditional educational tools common to distance education (guided reading, extracts from texts and essays) but in a different framework, can be run successfully (Fisher, 1984; Fisher & Camfield, 1986; McIlroy, 1988, 1989; Spencer, 1991; Sterling, 1988; Sterling, Nesbit, & Miller, 1986). Because these courses were experimental, they have been subjected to detailed scrutiny. Substantial course reports have been written in each region, and some have included surveys of student attitudes toward the courses (usually completed as part of the course work). For example, the reasons students gave for applying for the Leeds University/Region 9 (Yorkshire and Humberside) two-year courses included the usual “to make me more effective” and “to give me more confidence.” They also included comments that expressed a desire “to study in more detail history and labour law,” and to gain a “wider range of subjects than usual” and more “knowledge and understanding.”

Many applicants also commented upon the limiting nature of courses they had taken previously. One wanted to get “away from the day-to-day problems of the workplace focused on in other courses.” Another stressed how a “broader course would be more useful at work and in the union” than others she had been on. Although the majority saw the course as complementary to previous courses (as, indeed, it was designed to be), these critical comments were nevertheless included in students’ statement of why they wanted to do the course and what they thought the union local and union generally would get out of it.

In their original applications, all students expected the course to benefit the union. Later, in the end of course surveys, when asked whether the course had influenced their union activity, students replied that it had. Comments were varied and suggested that it had “stimulated interest in the Union’s Regional activity”; had “given more confidence”; and had meant that they “looked at events differently . . . away from the tunnel vision of the workplace.”

When asked if the course would promote greater involvement in the union, all those who answered were positive. The responses were interesting in that most related to external as well as internal activity. A desire to be involved in lay tutoring and in regional union activity were included, as was the view that awareness of history and politics would assist their activity within the Labour Party and help in “argument with the public.” A few had definite plans about what they wanted to do in the union.

In many ways Region 8’s (Northern England) responses on the usefulness of the course were even more positive, giving specific examples of changes in branch (i.e., local) organization. For example, changes were made in meeting times and structure; and there was increased community affiliations. Other regions also reported favourably on the impact of the course on union activity. However, it is always difficult to separate cause and effect in this matter. Was the attendance one aspect of a greater activity or did the course lead to greater activity? In any case, tutors are particularly sensitive to anything that might help to persuade the “client” to continue a relationship with the “provider”! Therefore, while it would be wrong to exaggerate the impact of these courses, it is possible to claim that the broader, more educationally demanding, partially distance-delivered curriculum was well received by these more experienced UK trade union students.

These UK labour education “distance learning” courses combined face-to-face meeting with learning materials designed for home study. They complemented other union education programs and were found to achieve the union’s and the educational institutions’ objectives of providing more detailed content while sustaining social learning and social action