The next chapter…

The blog was originally set up in 2019 to celebrate the OU’s 50th anniversary and the evolution of the OU’s multidisciplinary “Open” qualifications since the university was established in 1969. You can find out more about the Open Programme’s history in our About section.

As the Open Programme enters the next 50 years of its history, we will continue to use this site to share blogs from a wide range of contributors to demonstrate the impact that this unique approach to personalised teaching and learning has had – and continues to have – on our students and staff.

If you would like to contribute to this blog, we would love to share your journey too. Just drop us an email at open-programme@open.ac.uk.

Jay Rixon – Qualification Manager, MA/MSc Open

Evening, thank you very much, it’s my pleasure and my privilege to be here. I’m going to talk a bit about my personal reflection of my journey into the ‘Open’ curriculum.

I’ve always been drawn to the creative – the artistic alchemy of materials, techniques, skills and passion, the ability to visualise a piece of work, cross creative boundaries and take contrasting elements and put them together. My background is in the Arts – I did a Visual Arts degree and at the time I had no idea but I’d now call that an interdisciplinary experience. In my degree, I learned about textiles, about glass and metal work, with no barriers across these disciplines. So I could knit with wire if I wanted to, I could use fragile kiln fired glass with hand dyed plastics to produce 3D structures and, as much as I loved and valued this experience, I came out of my degree very much feeling like I was a ‘jack of all trades and a master of none’, which is often how people describe the Open degree. However, my technical repertoire was broad, and I had learned to work across so many creative disciplines, which I only really learned to value when I became an art teacher in a Further Education environment. It was in this setting that my broad creative experience really bore fruit, using techniques from one discipline and skills from another. There was little of the wide-ranging arts curriculum that we delivered there that I could not teach, and when I look back on this experience now, I recognise that interdisciplinary and the multidisciplinary methods that I used. And now I see the value of that approach and this has no doubt influenced my contentment and my passion for inter- and multidisciplinary curriculum.

That picture is supposed to represent what is going on in my head most of the time [laughter]. In the same way that I look back on my education in my teaching experience with a new level of perceived value, I can also reflect on another facet of my experience – I’m dyslexic. This was something that was never properly recognised in my formal education and I do wonder whether I respond to inter- and multidisciplinary experience because of my dyslexia.

I know that my learning journeys are often different from those around me and that sometimes I have to go through a maze to get where I want to go. And it’s also true that I sometimes get lost and end up going around four sides of the square when other people can just cut straight across it. But I also know that in my approach, there is value and there’s worth. I see what other people don’t see and I process information and tasks in a way that other people don’t. And this transferable skill set, the ability to not think in swim lanes but across them, is not a learning difficulty. It’s not a disability but it’s an asset, both personally and professionally. Given the diverse needs of our students – we also know that we have the highest proportion of students with a disability on the Open Programme, who are bringing strategies to their learning that helps them press on with their education – our role as the Open Programme and our wider university is to help our students with this barrier to learning and unique ways of looking at the learning concept.

In the same way our students on the Open Programme often feel like they have to justify their journeys and learning experiences to friends, to family or to employers, the Open Programme team often seek to find ways and interventions to help our students explain their experiences, their reflections, and why this type of curriculum helps them stand out from the crowd in the work environment. And that this is a valid form of learning and way of exploring the world of education.

So, I feel that this type of learning makes me, and our students on the Open Programme, exactly what this visual shows – it’s the ‘t-shaped’ student. The fully-rounded learner or employee. The ready-to-hit-the-ground-running-individual, with multiple ways of looking at the world around them.

Students that participated in an Open degree consultation a couple of years ago said themselves that learning on the Open degree enables them to succeed in a wide range of disciplines, that they can also be flexible to changing jobs and the demands of those jobs as well. So, it’s great that at least some of our students are starting to recognise the importance of this, but there is, of course, much more work to do to help students and employers reach the same conclusion that our students have done.

I’m proud to represent the Open Programme and I am proud to support our students in this way of learning; this type of curriculum. And ready to champion it in the coming times, as colleagues are as well. And with the Fourth Industrial Revolution coming around the corner, this type of curriculum is more relevant than ever. So, it is absolutely my privilege to work on the Open Programme. It has also given me the chance to reflect on my education and my professional experiences and I see that the way I learn might be different from others around me; and I see that I might take a different path or route, but it is equally as valid. And my journey is endlessly rewarding, and I sincerely hope that our students feel the same way.

An Open degree “generator”

Martin Weller is a Professor of Educational Technology and the Chair of the Open Board of Studies. Here, Martin takes a playful approach to demonstrating the flexibility and scale of choice available in the BA/BSc (Hons) Open degree.

One of the exciting aspects of the Open degree is that, apart from a few excluded combinations, students can combine modules from across the range of OU offerings. This creates some interesting combinations, and it turns out that students really take advantage of the flexibility, with many different, often unique, pathways.

Over on my blog I had some fun with the metaphor generator, which randomly selected a metaphor topic from one list and applied it to a randomly selected educational technology in another list to give metaphor prompts such as: “How is your favourite film an analogy for academics use of Twitter?”. I thought I could do a similar thing with module combinations for Open degrees. So, using the list of modules currently eligible for inclusion, I created three lists, covering OU level 1, 2 and 3 modules to create an Open degree Generator. I generalised a lot of the module titles to make sense to a broader audience (we like a cryptic, clever module title at the OU), and combined a few, so it’s not an exact listing of modules. Nevertheless, all of the suggested combinations of topics can (I think!) be studied in the Open degree.

I’ve used three different sentence structures: “Your degree could be a combination of …”; “Would a degree containing … be interesting?”; and “In order to solve complex problems we need degrees that combine subjects like…”. The last is my favourite as it makes you consider how novel combinations can be used to address complex, or wicked problems.

It’s fun to see the different combinations that it generates. Sometimes the suggested mixture looks a bit random, but usually after some consideration you think “there would be some interesting connections between those subjects”. Have a play with it and see if it inspires any module combinations. And if you don’t like the mix you get, just click the Gimme Another button to get a different set. This is just for fun of course, you should explore any module in more depth before signing up for it, but the generator might act as an inspirational prompt.

[The code for the metaphor generator which I used for this is available here, and Alan Levine’s write-up on how he developed it here.]

Opening the ’empty box’

Dr John Butcher is Director, Access and Open, in the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Students) office, and Deputy Chair of the Open Board of Studies.

In the 50^th year of ‘Open’ curriculum at the Open University, it is perhaps worth reminding ourselves that the innovations continue, and that our ideas around openness resonate with colleagues at distance universities across Europe.

I was fortunate to spend three days in Madrid at the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU) conference. There was much talk of micro-credentials and Open Educational Resources (OERs), and the recognition of prior learning. There was also genuine interest in the way our Access Programme could help colleagues in distance universities improve retention in their undergraduate courses.

I presented a paper ‘Using an ‘empty box’ module to widen access in a distance learning Open degree’ based on Making your learning count (YXM130). Feedback from the audience was positive, with particular interest in the potential to stimulate cross-disciplinary learning and to transform previous non-credit-bearing and open learning into HE credit. European colleagues saw real benefit in a student-led/tutor-negotiated learning experience, and were impressed at the rapid production timescale. Questions included: how to select tutors with the appropriate skill set; the challenge to tutors of which OERs to ‘accept’; and the obstacles in producing such a flexible module if the institution was inflexible in its systems.

My conclusion, based on feedback from academics based in other open universities, was that there remained a genuine appetite for innovations which allow the learner a personalised experience, and that the empty box concept is one of the few areas in which ‘conventional’ universities have not stolen our clothes.

Take a tour through our “Gallery of Multipotentialites”…

Throughout history, there have been a number of well-known individuals who have applied a multi-subject, and/or interdisciplinary approach to their work. Our ‘Gallery of Multipotentialites’ showcases a range of people throughout history who have been involved with interdisciplinary study.

Click on each of the pictures below to find out more about these incredible individuals, or you can download a copy of our Gallery Guide which was produced for our OU50 celebration event in May 2019.

What is a “multipotentialite”?

The term ‘multipotentialite’, coined by Emilie Wapnick, the founder and Creative Director of Puttylike, is one way to describe someone with many interests and creative pursuits. Multipotentialites tend to need variety in their lives, but how much variety depends on the individual. Multi-subject study can therefore help satisfy the need for variety which multipotentialites tend to have, and is something that we have encouraged students to consider through our free, badged open course, Multidisciplinary study: the value and benefits, available on the OU’s free learning platform, OpenLearn.

The original artwork displayed in the gallery was designed and produced by Claire Stringer and Holly Langley from More than Minutes for an animation that is included in the badged open course, with direction and guidance from the Open Programme Student and Engagement Manager, Rehana Awan.

Student guest blog: My student journey

Sarah Andrews is a student on the BA/BSc (Hons) Open degree focusing on mathematics and education related modules . She currently works as a Project Coordinator at the University of Brighton and her interests lie in Widening Participation and Outreach. Sarah was part of the Open Programme’s Student Shadowing Scheme after a successful submission detailing her interest in collaborating with Rehana Awan (Student Communications and Engagement Manager) to co-deliver a workshop at the Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching Conference at Keele University in April 2019.

I am what is known today as a ‘First in Family’ or ‘low income background’ student, who grew up in an area with low progression to Higher Education. Back in 2002 (with little guidance as to ‘why’; only that I ‘should’) I applied to university through Clearing and was offered a place studying History of Art at the University of Sussex. I had little guidance or aspiration about careers, and like many selected the subject based on what I had most enjoyed at college. As a fairly academically able student, I had enjoyed and engaged with most of my subjects through my time at school, but there was no one clear pathway ahead of me, and after about a year a combination of dwindling interest in my modules, mounting debt and lack of vision about where my degree might take me led me to drop out. It wasn’t that I wasn’t academically capable, but that I couldn’t engage with the content, and, rather crucially, couldn’t picture myself as someone working in the few careers I’d heard it might lead to.

Over the next ten years or so I worked in a variety of unskilled roles, eventually working for North Lincolnshire Council’s education team, and then STEM Sussex at the University of Brighton, who run several different outreach projects to engage young people with Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. It was at STEM Sussex that I started working on a number of projects with students less likely to progress to higher education and skilled careers, and discovered that this was something that really gave me purpose and meaning; despite (or perhaps, because) of the ‘glass ceiling’ I was starting to encounter due to my lack of degree level qualification. Around the same time, my line manager asked me, fatefully, ‘have you ever thought about doing a degree?’.

I began to investigate the options open to me, but going to a ‘brick’ university didn’t seem quite right. I couldn’t find just the right course, and I didn’t want to be tied down to attending lectures on particular days when my employment could potentially change. Thankfully I stumbled across an advert for the Open University and had a ‘lightbulb moment’ in realising I could get a student loan and study in my own time, and began to explore the course options open to me. Initially I knew I wanted to do something around young people, but wasn’t quite sure what, and none of the named degree options seemed quite right to me; the focus was either on teaching, social care or early years, none of which fit with my experience of the diverse roles available in extra-curricular and support services for education and schools. Luckily for me, the Open University also offer their Open Degree, and it’s this that I started to explore in greater depth.

The Open Degree is a named degree in its own right; it is well established[1] and carefully structured[2]. I was reassured and encouraged by the course outcomes which focus on development of a qualification that suits the student’s personal and professional needs and aspirations, and realised that with careful thought I could come up with a degree pathway that would be both personally engaging and relevant, and started to build my own bespoke course.

Throughout my life, I have been described by teachers and managers as organised and conscientious, so it’s no surprise that I approached the planning of my degree in a methodical way; there is nothing accidental or coincidental about my plan. I considered several factors including my goals in studying, the skills needed for potential future jobs (none of which included a specific named degree), my personal strengths, and of course my interests. Starting with four main subject areas (education, science, social science and statistics) I looked at all the modules that interested me and seemed relevant and pulled together several possible pathways in each; then over the course of a couple of weeks gradually whittled it down to a pathway that I could see myself completing. This turned out to be the social and policy aspects of education and youth, combined with statistics, which is highly relevant to work in the higher education sector and a transferable skill which will add a great deal to my employability[3].

I’m now half way through my degree, and it has flown past! I have completed modules which have been varied, fascinating and challenging in equal measure. My learning has directly linked to my career path; supporting a secondment within the Widening Participation team at the University of Brighton. I am now working part time in the two teams, on projects which are meaningful and rewarding to me and directly relevant to my studies, for example in development of additional support for less confident students participating in a social mobility driven STEM summer placement programme, and a transitional summer school for mature students starting at the University; both of which are driven by data and evaluation.

Looking forward to the future, I am looking forward to completing challenging, but rewarding modules in statistics, before progressing to my final module, Issues in research with children and young people. I intend to graduate with a 2:1 or above in a degree that is both highly specialised to my current career path and highly flexible to suit many other areas (should I need to change in the future), having developed both in-depth academic knowledge in my chosen area and core aptitudes valued by employers[4]. As with many OU students, the study bug has well and truly bitten; I’m already researching Masters courses I might be able to progress to.

In summary; the Open Degree programme at the Open University has enabled me to build a bespoke degree that interests me and makes sense to my career path, as well as being highly transferable. This has encouraged my full engagement with the course, my satisfaction with the University and degree programme, and my employability once I graduate.

Footnotes:

[1] The “Open degree” was the first qualification to be offered by the OU when the University was first established and is the most commonly awarded undergraduate degree in the OU, with 18.5% of undergraduate honours degrees awarded in 2016/17 and nearly a quarter of a million alumni having graduated with an Open degree since it was first introduced. It is a mature and popular degree that is recognised to be of value by both students and employers.

[2] Students are asked to study one of a number of specified key introductory modules designed to develop base subject knowledge and study skills, and 120 credits in each of stages 1, 2 and 3. A number of suggested pathways are given, or support is available to structure a degree according to your interests. While the Open University does not have initial entry requirements, each module gives clear guidance in regards to entry or prior knowledge needed for successful study.

[3] The UK Employer Skills Survey 2017 highlighted complex analytical skills, including problem solving and numerical/statistical analysis, as one of the most prevalent skills shortages in the labour market. See Department for Education (2018) Employer Skills Survey 2017 [online]. (Accessed 22 March 2019).

[4] The Pearson and CBI Skills Survey 2015 shows that having the right attitudes and aptitudes is by far the most important consideration when businesses are recruiting graduates – nearly nine in ten employers (89%) value these above other factors such as degree subject (62%).