Category: Guest blog

Blurring Boundaries: The Campaign for #JoyHE

On Tuesday and Wednesday 21st and 22nd June, the Open qualifications team of the Open university in partnership with the Associate Lecturer Support & Professional Development team hosted an interdisciplinary conference, Blurring Boundaries. The purpose of the conference was to engage staff from across the University in conversations about interdisciplinary teaching and learning, encouraging discussions about the benefits of blurring boundaries across subjects and disciplines as well as the value of learning from one another.­­­ Continue reading “Blurring Boundaries: The Campaign for #JoyHE”

What are multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity?

Dr Simon Scott is Associate Professor in the School of Liberal Arts, at the University of Birmingham. He is the school’s lead on interdisciplinarity and has convened modules on multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and transdisciplinarity. He is currently editing a book on Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching: Pedagogies and Practice. His research is in two areas: on the study of interdisciplinarity, and interdisciplinary research on shame. Dr Scott was recently a Guest Lecturer at an Open University online seminar, ‘Facilitating reflection on interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary study’, and he discusses that seminar here. 

I really enjoyed the challenge of preparing this talk for students of the Open Programme. And it is a challenge to cover a lot of ground (and meaningfully) in a short time. I started, as we always should, with definitions: multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinarity. Someone rightly asked, in the Q&A at the end, about disciplinarity, and this often gets overlooked. A discipline is a collection of different communities and standardised practices of teaching and research, but there are still vast differences within them. This matters a lot: although disciplines are the building blocks of interdisciplinarity, they are ‘porous’ and not fixed entities. Continue reading “What are multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity?”

Using your feedback to make a difference

Rachel Garnham is a Senior Manager leading the Student Voice team at The Open University. Her team works in partnership with the OU Students Association to include students in OU decision-making.

 

The Open University has just launched its new strategy – learn and live – at the heart of which is student success. We really want to make sure more students achieve the goals that you have set for yourself. And one of the best ways to do that is by using your feedback to improve the student experience so it meets your needs. Continue reading “Using your feedback to make a difference”

The Open Programme and Employability: A Student’s Perspective

Sarah Andrews works at the University of Brighton and manages a large team of student ambassadors. She is an Open degree student.

 

 

About six years ago, on a bit of a whim, I decided to register myself to study at the Open University for an Open degree. It’s a pretty life changing decision I made relatively quickly over the course of just a couple of months, and looking back I’m not sure I knew quite what I was letting myself in for – but perhaps my tips here might encourage some other prospective students to take the plunge into the joy that is a multi-disciplinary Open degree! Continue reading “The Open Programme and Employability: A Student’s Perspective”

The Open Programme and Employability: What exactly does a Careers and Employability Consultant (Learning and Teaching) do?

Claire Corkram is a Careers and Employability Consultant (Learning and Teaching) for The Open University, who supports the Open Programme team. She joined the OU in July 2018 from Northampton University and has also been a distance learning student. Studying a Level 6 Diploma in Career Guidance & Development. 

So, what exactly does a Careers and Employability Consultant (Learning and Teaching) do and how do I support the Open programme? My role is a hybrid one where I provide specialist careers guidance and development to faculty staff and students. Fundamentally, my role is to support my colleagues in faculty with the integration and embedding of careers support into the curriculum by developing and implementing a range of career services which support student employability. It’s a busy, varied role which I really enjoy, and no two days are the same! Continue reading “The Open Programme and Employability: What exactly does a Careers and Employability Consultant (Learning and Teaching) do?”

The Open Programme: The first 50 years!

Jay Rixon and Gina Sharp, part of the Open Programme team, and Matthew Taylor, a  Library Archivist, share their reflections on creating an online exhibition to celebrate 50 years of The Open University’s innovative curriculum. Jay starts the conversation…

On the 22nd May 2019, my colleagues and I celebrated 50 years of the Open Programme in the year that The Open University celebrated 50 years – I’ll admit that seems like a long time ago now and so much has happened since then. However, that 50th birthday was a significant milestone for the Open Programme, and we did not want to let it pass without marking it in some way – so a few colleagues have been working on what you might call a passion project, and we now proudly present to you the Open Programme Exhibition, in partnership with The Open University’s Digital Archive. Continue reading “The Open Programme: The first 50 years!”