{"id":11,"date":"2010-07-30T15:37:25","date_gmt":"2010-07-30T15:37:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/?page_id=11"},"modified":"2020-08-14T16:20:18","modified_gmt":"2020-08-14T16:20:18","slug":"more-about-sally","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/?page_id=11","title":{"rendered":"More about Sally"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sally<\/a>I work for the UK Open University and since August 2016\u00a0I have been Head of the\u00a0School of Physical Sciences.\u00a0Before that I was a Head of Department and the Science Faculty’s Deputy Associate Dean with responsibility for Assessment. My substantive post is as Professor of Physics Education and a Staff Tutor in Science, with responsibility for the running of various science modules. I work with eSTEeM <\/a>and the OpenScience Laboratory <\/a>to evaluate and improve our assessment practice, and until 2019 I was on the organising committee for the\u00a0 Assessment in Higher Education Conference <\/a>.<\/p>\n

I first got involved in e-assessment when I chaired the production of\u00a0 S151 :<\/em> Maths for science,<\/em>\u00a0which was presented for the first time back in 2002 and which has\u00a0been studied by more than 15,000 people since.\u00a0I chaired S151 off and on throughout its life, and\u00a0the new edition of the book on which it is based, Maths for Science<\/a><\/em>, co-published with Oxford University Press, is still available<\/p>\n

The idea for Maths for Science<\/em> came from\u00a0Mike Tinker, who\u00a0worked at the University of Reading and was an OU associate lecturer (tutor). Sadly, Mike died in 2006. I picked up the idea from Mike and wrote the course with Shelagh Ross and Pat Murphy and it\u00a0reflects my great interest\u00a0helping students to cope with the maths they need in order to study physics and other science courses.\u00a0We also wanted to be able to give our students instantaneous feedback – so we decided to use interactive online assessment. This was ground-breaking work at the time, and would not have been possible without the help of many others, especially Phil Butcher.<\/p>\n

More recently I was a member of the teams producing S104 : Exploring Science<\/em> (presented for the first time in Feb 2008), \u00a0S154 : Science Starts Here<\/em> (presented for the first time in October 2007) and S141 : Investigative and mathematical skills in science<\/em> (presented for the first time in October 2012). I had responsibility for the development of maths skills in these modules and for the integration of interactive computer marked assignments (iCMAs) with more conventional tutor-marked assignments (TMAs) and I went on to chair each of those modules (S104 then S154 then S141). S154 won all sorts of prizes and accolades and was loved by its students and tutors – but as a 10-credit module it didn’t fit with the new English funding regime so it was discontinued in 2012; I think there is still work to be done in using diagnostic tests (online of course!) to direct students who would benefit from that sort of little module and then back to the mainstream.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0was also\u00a0a member of the team producing MST224 Mathematical methods <\/em>(first presentation October 2013). I used\u00a0the computer-algebra based STACK <\/a>question type in Moodle to write iCMA questions for this module – great fun!<\/p>\n

From 2006 to 2010,\u00a0I was lucky enough to hold\u00a0teaching fellowships\u00a0in two of the OU’s Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning: piCETL (the Physics Innovations Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning) and COLMSCT (the Centre for Open Learning in Mathematics, Science, Computing and Technology). My various COLMSCT and piCETL projects reflected my interests in eAssessment and science students\u2019 mathematical misconceptions.<\/p>\n

In 2006 I was awarded an Open University Teaching Award for my work in developing S151: Maths for Science<\/em> and its interactive online assessment system. I was one of the OU’s nominees for a National Teaching Fellowship in 2010 and 2011. I have a\u00a0 PhD by published work which shares the title of this blog: “E-assessment for learning? Exploring the potential of computer-marked assessment and computer-generated feedback, from short-answer questions to assessment analytics.”<\/p>\n

I have tutored various science and maths modules and have taken a few OU courses as a student. I live partly in West Norfolk with my husband, and partly in Milton Keynes; my children are both ‘grown and flown’. \u00a0My hobbies include\u00a0walking long-distance footpaths and writing about this (see\u00a0http:\/\/sites.google.com\/site\/jordanwalks\/<\/a><\/span>) and singing in a local choir.<\/p>\n

For more information about my publications go to Open Research Online (http:\/\/oro.open.ac.uk\/view\/person\/sej3.html<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Follow @SallyJordan9<\/a>
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