Shortly after the trial finished, I enrolled in a series of finance and securities courses and studied after work.

FORBES: Woman Feed

Sacktor studied biology at Harvard, taking courses to prepare himself for medical school.

FORBES: Names You Need To Know: Todd Sacktor's Search For The Memory Enzyme

It also runs adult education courses for the local community and last year 3, 500 adult students studied there.

BBC: Team work pays off in Ripon

The award ceremony - appropriately, for students who had studied a masters course in distance education - is expected to be the first of a series as more and more courses are delivered through the internet.

BBC: Open University's online graduation