MAODE tutor Victoria Wright reflects on a student-tutor relationship that keeps on delivering…

When tutoring a group of students on the MA in open and distance education, (MA ODE) in around 2016, I remember the day that a student contacted me. She was working in Kazakhstan up by the Russian border and was having difficulty because sometimes she could only receive in Cyrillic!

We got to know each other a little better and she moved to head up a school in China soon afterwards, then returned to the UK a year later.

I had been asked by Cambridge University Press to write a book for the International market, iGCSE ICT, and asked to suggest a co-author. I thought of my ex-student, Denise, because the quality of her work was known to me and she had good classroom experience around the world. We then met up in the hotel at Euston Station for lunch to decide on an overview of the book with the contracting manager.

Denise and I have now written around 10 books together, for students and for their teachers and have become close friends. Denise comes to stay with me in our holiday home in France once or twice a year, and we have never looked back.

It makes me think of the unexpected opportunities for those who study a Masters with the Open University can lead to!

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.