Author: Olivia Rowland

Listening to students in real time: how feedback leads to success

Like all robust development processes, our learning design approach includes a number of opportunities to learn from feedback. One is our curriculum design student panel (aimed at capturing students’ views on learning design ideas before they’re live). Another is real-time student feedback (RTSF), which gathers feedback from students as they’re studying with the aim of ensuring they get the support they need. Short questionnaires focusing on recently studied topics are embedded into students’ online study planners so they can reflect and comment on their experiences and receive extra guidance based on their comments.

Our module teams can learn from RTSF too. In this post, we take a look at how students and module teams can benefit from RTSF and some of the impacts it’s making.

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Conference to practice: more takeaways from ALT-C

ALT-C was intense. It featured more than 100 sessions, many of which called for some deep thinking and reflection. Some time has now passed since the ALT-C conference, so we thought it would be good to reflect on what stood out for us. Here, Mark, Olivia and Shawndra share their highlights.

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Top tools for learning: a learning design team’s perspective

We spend a lot of time talking about tools for learning, so it’s not surprising that several members of the learning design team follow Jane Hart’s annual survey of top learning tools [link opens in new tab].

However, many of the tools we talk about are part of the OU’s VLE. It’s been a while since we reflected on the learning tools we use for our own learning, whether that’s in our jobs or as part of study. In the last year, while we’ve been working from home, we’ve all needed to find new ways of working and learning online.

Jane’s survey prompted us to spend some time doing that as a team. Thanks Jane – it’s always good to have the chance to reflect. Here’s our list and our observations – plus some thoughts on how we can use the interactive qualities of these tools to enhance students’ learning.

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Feedback loops: reflecting on five years of feedback from the curriculum design student panel 

If you’ve ever felt frustrated by a product that doesn’t seem to work for you, you’ll understand the importance of building opportunities for feedback into a design process. It’s certainly an essential part of our learning design process: alongside various organisation-wide evaluation initiatives whose insights we access as part of our work, the learning design team runs the curriculum design student panel, which provides opportunities for students to comment on a range of aspects of learning design. These comments feed directly back to our module teams. Panel members have provided invaluable insights into their study preferences, motivations, environments and habits since the panel was set up in 2016.

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