Distance Learning with the Open College of the Arts
The Open College of the Arts provides an extensive array of UK degrees and personal development courses in a range of creative arts specialisms, and all via distance learning - but what exactly is distance learning?
Distance learning at the Open College of the Arts is the ability to access education in the arts without the need to travel to a campus, classroom, or teacher. Instead, the learning comes to you, whether it be your office, your studio or your dining room!
And you don’t have to reside in the UK to join our student community. We welcome students from around the globe, where individuals share their educational experiences from various corners of the world.
So, how does it all work?
-
Our ethos and mission is to provide open access to creative arts education. All of our distance learning courses are designed with this in mind, so everyone can engage with the content and learn.
This means you don’t need any prior qualifications or experience to study the majority of our courses, however there are minimum entry requirements you need to meet to ensure you have the right tools to get started.
-
OCA online distance learning courses are designed to give you as much flexibility as possible so that study can fit alongside work, family, caring responsibilities, or anything else life has going on.
What this means in practice is that you have the opportunity to join one of several monthly intakes throughout the year, and can create your own study schedule around those other commitments.
-
When you complete your registration you’ll gain access to the student site [OCA Learn] on your confirmed intake date, which is where your course materials and other resources are hosted. You’ll also be able to communicate with the student community here.
Each student is allocated a dedicated tutor. This tutor is a practising artist, who will guide you on the course through feedback when you submit an assignment. This feedback will critique your work, tell you what you’ve done well, and equally importantly, what you can improve on and how you might go about doing that.
All feedback is there to try and help improve your practice, and self-reflection will also be a key part of all our courses. Feedback is ordinarily written by your tutor, but you can choose to have tutorials through video tutorials such as Google Meet or Skype. These video tutorials can help as you can discuss the work openly. For accredited courses, feedback will also prepare students for their digital end-of-unit assessment.
Learning, Teaching and Assessment Strategy
Learn more