Author: Katharine Reedy

  • Designing assessment for distance learners: what matters?

    By Katharine Reedy and Mark Williams What is the most important feature of assessment for you and your students? This is a question we put to those present at the Assessment Design workshop our team led for the OU staff community in May 2021. The word cloud below shows that people thought that assessment should…

  • Learning from practice: refreshing the OU activity types framework

    Learning from practice: refreshing the OU activity types framework

    The activity types framework – a categorisation of learning material into different types based on the student activity involved – is one of our core learning design tools. It shows, simply and accessibly, the variety of ways in which module teams can actively engage students with their subject content and skills development alongside reading, watching…

  • Student journeys: embedding skills into the curriculum

    Student journeys: embedding skills into the curriculum

    The Open University approach to designing for learning puts a strong focus on knowing who the learners are, catering for their needs and supporting them to succeed. One of the strengths of the OU is that its students are very diverse – the OU’s mission is to be open to people, places, methods and ideas…

  • Practical tools for developing student-centred learning

    Practical tools for developing student-centred learning

    Over the last decade, The Open University has developed its approach to designing and evaluating student-centred learning through a wealth of research and scholarship. The basis for much of what we do derives from the tools developed through the OU Learning Design Initiative.

  • Perfect partners: how we work with others to support learning design

    Perfect partners: how we work with others to support learning design

    Over the last year I’ve been reflecting on how much the success of our work depends on effective partnerships with a range of people – within and external to the Open University. As Learning Designers, it’s inherent in our role that we work collaboratively with curriculum teams to elicit and capture ideas for module creation.…