Faculties
At the heart of the OU's teaching are its faculties, schools and institutes, producing high quality courses underpinned by research of international excellence.
Faculty of Arts
The Faculty of Arts teaches and researches in the following areas: Art History, Classical Studies, English and Creative Writing, Ethics, Heritage Studies, History, Interdisciplinary Studies, Music, Philosophy and Religious Studies.
Open University Business School
The Open University Business School is accredited by leading management education associations in the UK, Europe and the USA.
The Open University Business School
Faculty of Education and Language Studies
The Faculty of Education and Language Studies (FELS) is made up of four academic areas: the Department of Education, Department of Languages, Centre for Language and Communications and Centre for Childhood, Development and Learning. FELS is also home to the Centre for Research in Education and Educational Technology, CREET.
Faculty of Education and Language Studies
Faculty of Health & Social Care
The Faculty of Health & Social Care has particular expertise in developing work-based learning programmes. It is now the UK's largest provider of health and social care education.
Faculty of Health & Social Care
Open University Law School
The OU's law courses and degree have been developed in partnership with the College of Law.
Faculty of Mathematics, Computing and Technology
The Faculty of Mathematics, Computing and Technology comprises four departments: Communications and Systems; Computing; Design, Development, Environment and Materials; and Mathematics and Statistics.
Faculty of Mathematics, Computing and Technology
Faculty of Science
The Faculty of Science is home to four departments and one research institute: the departments of Life Sciences, Chemistry and Analytical Sciences, Earth and Environmental Sciences and Physics and Astronomy, and the Planetary and Space Sciences Research Institute.
Faculty of Social Sciences
The Faculty of Social Sciences has six departments: Economics, Geography, Politics and International Studies, Psychology, Social Policy and Criminology and Sociology.
Institute of Educational Technology
The Intitute of Educational Technology is at the hub of the OU's continuing research into and development of the latest technologies for learning and teaching. It also runs a number of postgraduate programmes in educational technology.
Institute of Educational Technology
Knowledge Media Institute
The Knowledge Media Institute is a research and development centre at the leading edge of web, semantic, learning and new media technologies.
Centre for Inclusion and Collaborative Partnerships
The Centre for Inclusion and Collaborative Partnerships (CICP) has responsibility for maintaining and developing: validation partnerships, external collaboration, access to higher education, research and scholarships, and the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA) aftercare service.
Centre for Inclusion and Collaborative Partnerships
Interdisciplinary Research Centres
The OU has a number of interdisciplinary research centres of excellence:
Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance
The Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance (CCIG) conducts and promotes research, dialogue, and debate that will contribute to a greater understanding of the connections between notions of citizenship, processes of identity formation and practices of governance in the contemporary world.
Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance
Centre for Research in Computing
The Centre for Research in Computing (CRC) undertakes distinctive, leading edge research in software and processes that underpin knowledge management, communication, learning, and interactions among humans and machines.
Centre for Research in Computing
Centre for Research in Education and Educational Technology
United by a focus on learning through diverse media and challenging established orthodoxies in policy, pedagogy and research methods, the Centre's multidisciplinary research falls into four key themes: Childhood and Youth Studies, Education Studies, Language and Literacies and Technology Enhanced Learning.
CEPSAR
CEPSAR is The Open University’s flagship interdisciplinary research centre that brings together world-class researchers from the two Departments – of Physical Sciences and of Earth, Environment and Ecosystems. Research within CEPSAR focuses on the origins, systems and process with respect to the evolution and chemistry of materials that form the stars and planetary bodies, the processes and natural systems that shape the environment of our habitable world now and in the past, and essential properties of a Solar System that allows life to develop on one of its planets.
OpenSpace Research Centre
OpenSpace was founded in 2009 to promote research into geographical and environmental questions. The Centre's research is motivated by the broad challenges facing the world, including: how can we live together better; how can we inherit the past responsibly; and, how might we bequeath better futures to others?
In addition to these five centres the OU is a partner in two Economic and Social Research Council centres:
Innogen
The Centre for Social and Economic Research on Innovation in Genomics (with the University of Edinburgh)
CRESC
The Centre for Research on Socio-cultural Change (with the University of Manchester). We also host the ESRC-funded Identities Programme.
