Dr Phillippa Seaward is an Associate Lecturer and Practice Tutor at the Open University, and an Assistant Professor /Senior Lecturer at a large post-92 campus university. She graduated with online teaching modules in an MA and M.Ed in 2015 and this learning inspired her research for the OU Doctorate in Education (EdD), completed in 2020. Here she talks about the impact her studies had on inspiring new research in the use of technology in education.

Phillippa writes:

It’s trite to say higher education is fast moving, but it really has been in the last decade. I came from senior management in the car manufacturing industry, and while I had business knowledge to share with my students, I had a lot to learn about education. The Masters in Online and Distance Education inspired my interest in a new role for the internet and the ways online learning could motivate and support learners. I realised there were many aspects of online learning that educationalists needed to understand more, to improve our effectiveness and reach.

The online teaching modules encouraged students to pursue areas of our own interest, and practice that were relevant to our roles and own development. I did an initial, small study looking at how distance learners used social media study groups to support their learning, and I quickly found a gap in a new area of unexplored knowledge. This made it relatively easy to define my area of research for a proposal for the Doctorate in Education (EdD) and I could directly show how this would be relevant for my role as a tutor of undergraduates. I was happy to be accepted on the programme, and was pleased to be studying in a varied cohort of energetic people. Some of these are now lifelong friends.

My research investigated reasons why learners choose to use study groups in social media; the types of learning taking place there; the nature of support there; and types of disruption experienced and its effect on student learning. Much of the doctorate is then about finding answers to your research questions in a scholarly rigorous way and communicating your work to others. My principal findings suggest learner experiences in Facebook module study groups converge around five themes of activity: community and relationships; academic subject learning; learning with others online; managing own learning; and difficulties and conflict. This analysis represented an original and new typology of student activity that extended existing published empirical work, and used the novel research context of student-led Facebook module study groups for distance learners.

Social media study groups provide important relational and community supports to learners, and valued information. While Facebook has the potential to disrupt student learning, diverse views were usually embraced constructively as an opportunity for skill development and critical thinking. As a result, this research helped in my role to improve student experience and qualification completions. I gained and shared new insights in the crucial importance of academic and social integration for online undergraduate learners, and I extended the field of contemporary knowledge about this. You can read more about this work and the findings in the OU research repository online at https://oro.open.ac.uk/70905/ .

Interested in finding out more about The Open University’s Masters in Online Teaching?

In 2023 we launched the OU’s new Masters in Online Teaching, an innovative postgraduate programme exploring the ways that new media, digital pedagogies and cutting-edge educational technologies can be used effectively and equitably, across multiple sectors, to engage diverse learners and meet their needs. The programme offers flexible study pathways featuring a choice of topics, study intensity and study timing, and the option to include credit from a select postgraduate microcredentials.

Find out more about the OU’s MA In Online Teaching here.

Cllr Dr Wendy Maples (BA, MA, PhD, SFHEA) is a Green Party Councillor and Education Consultant who graduated with an MA in Online and Distance Education in 2016. Here she talks about the impact her studies have had on her approach to new technology in education and public services.

Wendy writes:

Changes in education generate a lot of headlines. Hyperbolic stories suggest we are under imminent threat from new technologies. When I first started teaching, Wikipedia was going to destroy higher education; today it’s LLM-generated essays; in between it was online teaching and learning.

I had been a university lecturer and academic author for over 20 years when I took my first MAODE course (the predecessor to the MA in Online Teaching https://www.open.ac.uk/postgraduate/qualifications/f98). I’d read Vygotsky and Paolo Friere and managed a team of (wonderful) tutors – but I wanted to update my professional practice.

The MAODE made me a more deeply reflective practitioner and gave me the skills and confidence to evaluate the promises of new teaching and learning tools and environments, as well as the variable existing conditions that affect education practice and practitioners. I’ve recently created professional development materials for ‘hybrid’ learning centres where there may be computers but, from one day to another, no electricity to run them, and I’m currently preparing the 6th edition of Good Essay Writing (Redman and Maples, Sage) and considering how ChatGPT can be used to help students improve their essay writing.

I bring my MAODE learning into my education consultancy work of course, but also into my work as a local politician. During the pandemic, I was able to facilitate our town’s very first online and hybrid Council meetings despite some colleagues’ anxieties and heel-digging resistance. More recently, I’ve ensured councillors have had considered discussions about introducing ‘digital’ into the adult social care sector and the importance of carers’ as well as clients’ support needs.

I dip into the Alumni circle from time to time and am always re-invigorated by the variety of inspiring practices of my former fellow learners. I also look forward to the online conference where new MAODE students and invited guests talk about their wide-ranging projects and research.

It is truly exciting to see this community of practice in action and to continue to be a part of it.

Interested in finding out more about The Open University’s Masters in online teaching?

In 2023 we launched the OU’s new Masters in Online Teaching, an innovative postgraduate programme exploring the ways that new media, digital pedagogies and cutting-edge educational technologies can be used effectively and equitably, across multiple sectors, to engage diverse learners and meet their needs. The programme offers flexible study pathways featuring a choice of topics, study intensity and study timing, and the option to include credit from a select postgraduate microcredentials.

Find out more about the OU’s MA In Online Teaching here.

Sam Marks, safeguarding education professional and 2015 MAODE graduate explains how she still uses what she learned in everyday practice.

Sam writes:

When I started my studies with the OU in 2011, I hated the e-learning my organisation provided and was determined to do better. I never imagined signing up to the Masters Online and Distance Education that I would still be actively using the skills I developed ten years later, supporting education professionals to deliver safeguarding lessons and training in their organisations.

My career path has always been very practical. I worked as a pub manager and area training co-ordinator, learning and teaching by doing for many years. When I then changed career to the charity youth sector, I applied these skills but needed the theory to help underpin and rationale my approach to training. MAODE gave me this. A core part of learning about what works in technology enabled education, was learning theory, and applying that theory to the context. This is something I still do now, for both online and offline education, and teach others too, so they have a good grounding in why we teach and train adults in the way we do.

It wasn’t just the theory which equipped me over the last ten years though. Through this Masters I got to be, and continue to be a real life networked practitioner, using forums, blogs and creative online tools to bring learning to life, support colleagues across the globe and keep myself up to date. The focus on accessibility and inclusion, has also help me train my colleagues to use in built accessibility features,  and ensure our products provide equity of access.

Having MAODE on my CV has prompted discussions and opened doors for my work, and of course, when the pandemic came in 2020, I was already working online and able to help others to do the same. It really was the best decision I made, and the masters that keeps on giving.

Interested in finding out more about The Open University’s Masters in online teaching?

In 2023 we launched the OU’s new Masters in Online Teaching, an innovative postgraduate programme exploring the ways that new media, digital pedagogies and cutting-edge educational technologies can be used effectively and equitably, across multiple sectors, to engage diverse learners and meet their needs. The programme offers flexible study pathways featuring a choice of topics, study intensity and study timing, and the option to include credit from a select postgraduate microcredentials.

Find out more about the OU’s MA In Online Teaching here.

Digital technologist and award-nominated author Dr Michael Flavin writes about his MAODE experience and the developments it has led to in both of his parallel careers.

Dr Michael Flavin writes:

I studied the MA Online and Distance Education, 2007-10. On enrolment, I was an Associate Lecturer at the OU, having done a degree, MA and PhD in English. I was also teaching at a school. Studying for the MAODE undoubtedly made it clear that I was committed to and engaged with the digital environment, and led to me getting a full-time university post in my first year on the MA, at King’s College London, where I still teach.

The MAODE re-ignited my love of learning and, on completion, I went straight on to do a second PhD, this time in technology enhanced learning, leading to two books, Disruptive Technology Enhanced Learning (2017) and Re-imagining Technology Enhanced Learning (2020), both published by Palgrave Macmillan, together with a range of other academic articles (see Google Scholar).

Getting back into the study groove on the MAODE also led to me doing a third MA post-second-PhD, this time the OU’s MA in Creative Writing, by the end of which I had a full first draft of a novel. I kept working at it and my début, One Small Step, was published by Vulpine Press in September 2022. The novel is set in the community I grew up in, the Irish diaspora in Birmingham at the time of the IRA’s mainland bombing campaign. I’ve written about One Small Step for the Irish Post and writing.ie, and have been interviewed about it on the Irish Left Archive podcast.

You can read One Small Step in the gaps between assignments on the Masters in Online Teaching. For me, postgraduate study at the OU was a springboard, one from which I’m still rising.

Editor’s note: Michael’s short story ‘Berthing,’ has been shortlisted for the Alpine Fellowship prize: https://alpinefellowship.com/writing-prize

Interested in finding out more about The Open University’s Masters in online teaching?

In 2023 we launched the OU’s new Masters in Online Teaching, an innovative postgraduate programme exploring the ways that new media, digital pedagogies and cutting-edge educational technologies can be used effectively and equitably, across multiple sectors, to engage diverse learners and meet their needs. The programme offers flexible study pathways featuring a choice of topics, study intensity and study timing, and the option to include credit from a select postgraduate microcredentials.

Find out more about the OU’s MA In Online Teaching here.