News Story

Celebrating KMi’s 30th Birthday

Tuesday 18 Nov 2025

In 1995, two truly visionary academics from The Open University (OU); Prof Marc Eisenstadt from Psychology in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and Prof Tom Vincent from the Institute of Educational Technology, were matched together by another visionary OU staff; Lady Kitty Chisholm who was OU’s Development Director – now back in KMi as a PhD student – to create an institute within the OU where innovation could thrive. Their shared passion was clear: to research and develop cutting-edge and future technologies to support OU’s remote students in accessing high-quality learning. That vision was endorsed by Sir John Daniel; OU’s Vice Chancellor at the time, who later said that “Of all the OU innovations in the 1990s, this is the one of which I’m most proud.” KMi was born out of sheer vision, ambition, and strive for the OU to become a leader in High-tech higher education.

These pioneers understood the critical value of research-based innovation for the future of the OU. They also knew that true innovation does not happen easily or by chance; it needs the right culture and environment. They envisioned a place where creativity and risk-taking are not just welcomed but expected; where rapid design, prototyping, and challenging the status-quo is every day’s business; where the mindset is not “can we do it?” but “just go for it”. They aimed to cultivate a rare yet essential skillset: the ability to see and invent the future. This is critical for any organisation that aspires to stay competitive, agile, and fit for the future.

Well before KMi was officially founded, this spirit of innovation was already in the air. In 1984, Prof Tim O’Shea (IET) and Prof Marc Eisenstadt (KMi co-founder) co-authored a paper, one of many other futuristic ones, that was arguably over 40 years ahead of its time. It described intelligent computer tutors, where tools and systems work together to deliver personalised and adaptive teaching. They imagined and described computers that could present learning materials, interpret student responses, track progress, predict performance, and adjust teaching strategies accordingly. Much of that relied on technology that was not yet invented! Many of these ideas are now turning into reality in KMi, in collaboration with many others around the OU. Today, KMi leads on research and development of technologies that use AI to predict student performance to help tutors intervene early, tools that harness generative AI to offer personalised, 24/7 learning support for students, and help produce high-quality teaching materials far more rapidly and efficiently. Even before that, KMi played a key role in the production of the virtual microscope, field-study telepresence technology, and sensory learning tools, to ensure teaching practices are inclusive and accessible to students with diverse abilities.

Once you’ve cultivated a culture that embraces innovation; one that’s unafraid of colouring outside the lines, pushing boundaries, experimenting freely and boldly, and challenging itself and the OU, you gain the necessary agility to redirect talent swiftly to tackle new challenges and seize new opportunities. For example, when COVID19 arrived, KMi succeeded in diverting its AI data analysis skills to develop social-proximity tracking tools, and to address the rise of false information during the pandemic. When increasing students’ retention and decreasing awarding-gaps became top priorities, KMi started researching and deploying AI tools to boost affected students’ progression. When generative AI stormed the world, KMi was ready to explore it fully and develop prototypes of tools that could revolutionise our teaching delivery and production, and our students’ experience and success. By the time ethical concerns around AI entered public and media discourse, KMi was already leading debates on how AI is reshaping power dynamics and highlighting the urgent need for new socio-technical frameworks. When Open Science came under the spotlight, KMi produced the world’s largest collection of open access research papers, serving 30 million users every month.

Being ready and open to people, places, methods, and ideas, is in KMi’s DNA. As Marc Eisenstadt often said, the secret ingredients of KMi are: “Audacity, passion, and social consciousness.” These have always been the main enablers for KMi’s high adaptability and eagerness to innovate solutions for new challenges.

History has shown that industries and organisations that fail to innovate risk collapse; from print newspapers and video rentals to film photography and traditional banking. Those that embraced new technologies not only survived but thrived, becoming more efficient and relevant in the process. Such a wave of disruption has now reached Higher Education. The universities that survive, and thrive, will inevitably be those with the right culture, passion, and audacity to innovate, modernise their operations, cater to changing learner needs and expectations, and rethink how education should be delivered in the era of AI.

As Carroll Shelby (played by Matt Damon) says in the 2019 film Ford v Ferrari: “All due respect, sir, you can’t win a race by committee.” The Open University, like all universities, now faces the race to innovate. Luckily, the OU is uniquely positioned to be one of the fastest in this race, given our long history of innovation in the Higher-Education sector, and setting up KMi as an innovation hub is one prime example of that mission and aspiration. The race is on, and here’s to the next 30 years, continuing to shape the future of education and innovation at the OU and beyond.

Harith Alani, Director of KMi