Partnerships with three plant related organisations
During the production of the Science Short module – Plants and People (S173) we established a number of partnerships with plant related organisations. These included the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (including with their satellite division at Wakehurst Place), the Royal Horticultural Society based at Wisley and also the Eden Project in Cornwall. Below I identify the nature of the partnership.
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew – staff at this organisation co-authored 50% of the award winning book Why People Need Plants which was used as the main course text for the Science Short Module Plants and People S173. They also advised on scientific content, critically read manuscript material and helped at the initial course inception stage. In addition the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew also co-published the book for us and liaised heavily with David Vince the LTS co-publications executive. The advantage of having Kew involved was that they gave of their expertise, allowed us to access material especially photographs that we could not have sourced easily ourselves and also leant some gravitas to the course production in the sense of being the world’s premier botanic garden.
Royal Horticultural Society – one member of their staff – John David- who was their chief scientist advised on content and also allowed himself to be filmed for one of the activities that underpinned an area that is critical in the assessment of the S173 module. Most importantly they allowed us access to the 360,000 members of their organisation through a story publicising the S173 module in the Garden and Plantsman publications, which undoubtedly resulted in more students signing up with us.
Eden Project – through Mark Patterson (an OU graduate himself) and also deputy head of their Education section he gave us access to three key individuals in the organisation. This allowed us to produce slidecast material following a three day visit down to the Eden Project. In addition mark arranged for us to have access to their whole facilities which permitted us to take many photographs that we used to illustrate a number of items, most importantly the Study Book for the S173 module.