Sustainability: Our journey to connect colleagues with non-tokenistic action in the design process

James Openshaw and Paul Astles ~ Learning Designers

 

This article is the first of a two-part reflection about our collective experience at the EDEN 2023 conference in Dublin, Ireland and the EAUC conference 2023 in Bath, England. Alongside our shared experience and takeaways from those events this blog post will also include an update about the work going on in the Open University Learning Design Team in relation to sustainability and where we are heading next.

Before we get to the exciting stuff about our own work let’s look back at our personal highlights and takeaways from the most recently attended conferences. Continue reading “Sustainability: Our journey to connect colleagues with non-tokenistic action in the design process”

Beyond the “real world”: exploring authentic assessment design

Mary Simper ~ Learning Designer

The Learning Design team at the OU has been exploring assessment practices, which has led to some rich discussions on accessibility, student choice, learning outcomes and authenticity. Discussions around authentic assessment have led us to think about how we can design assessments, well… more authentically!

Let’s start with an analogy…

Imagine being given a recipe for the best brownie in the world. Wouldn’t you want to bake and taste the brownies? This is called a taste test and it gives bakers the opportunity to experiment before selling products.

Similarly, authentic assessment provides students with a taste test where they mix, measure, and stir ingredients, applying methods to create a final product. A key stage is reviewing how well the process worked and this is akin to reflection, a major component of authentic assessment.

Now that we’re all hungry for brownies, here’s a more concrete definition: Continue reading “Beyond the “real world”: exploring authentic assessment design”

Kicking off Pride Month at the OU: exploring LGBT+ visibility in STEM

 Eleanor Moore ~ Learning Designer

June is Pride Month and here at The Open University, we have a packed calendar of events exploring diverse perspectives and themes of inclusion. One of the first was an online seminar led by Dr Jessica Gagnon of Manchester University and Dr Marco Reggiani of Strathclyde University.

Jessica and Marco delivered an interesting presentation on how visibility is perceived and navigated by LGBT+ academics and PhD students in STEM, with a focus on how multiple axes of oppression impact people and groups who are marginalised and historically excluded. They interviewed 82 people, including 24 LGBT+ individuals, as part of their study. In summing up the key findings of their research, it was clear that emerging themes resonated with seminar participants as people shared their experiences of navigating the complex world of being visible as an LGBT+ person. Continue reading “Kicking off Pride Month at the OU: exploring LGBT+ visibility in STEM”

More conference catch-ups: Reflections on the OER23 conference

Catriona Matthews and Paul Astles ~ Learning Designers

We had the honour and privilege of discussing this very blog site at the ALT Open Education Conference (#OER23) this year. OER, if you haven’t come across the term before, refers to Open Educational Resources.

Our talk, held on the second day of the conference and titled “Read all about it!! The benefits and challenges of creating a high-quality open access blog”, can be viewed here on YouTube. The last slide of the talk is represented in an image below. We would love for you to follow the QR code at the bottom of that slide and tell us how a particular blog post on our site may have inspired you to reflect on and develop your practice.

Image with QR codes to scan to share with us how a particular blog post on our site may have inspired you to reflect on and develop your practice.

During the conference we were on Twitter, live-tweeting our thoughts and reflections. Some of these were being re-tweeted by the team account. If you haven’t had a chance yet, please follow the OU Learning Design team Twitter account. You will get a good flavour of our experiences and takeaways on there.

Continue reading “More conference catch-ups: Reflections on the OER23 conference”