Category: Artificial Intelligence

Going for Green: Learning Design sustainability champions

Kathleen Calder, James Openshaw, Catriona Mattews, Hayley Johns, and Paul Astles  ~ Learning Designers

The Learning Design Sustainability Group at The Open University has been championing sustainability at the Open University in one way or another for some time now. The end of 2023 saw a wonderful celebration of that work at the Green Gown Awards 2023.

We’re pleased to share this reflection on our experience of the Green Gown Awards (GGA) process – from thinking about putting our work forward through to the awards dinner and celebrating our achievements in December 2023. Alongside our thoughts we’re also officially unveiling the sustainability resources page on our blog site.

Continue reading “Going for Green: Learning Design sustainability champions”

Student Voice on GenAI: Use, Concerns and Educational Applications

Mary Simper and Eleanor Moore ~ Learning Designers

Like much of Higher Education, we in the Learning Design Team at The Open University have been both fascinated and challenged by the introduction of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools like ChatGPT.

In this blog post, we’ll uncover what our students have told us about their use of GenAI, what concerns they have, and what ideas they have about using GenAI in an educationally valuable way.

Continue reading “Student Voice on GenAI: Use, Concerns and Educational Applications”

The Learning Design Cross Institutional Network: Creating a space for Learning Design discussions

Mark Williams ~ Senior Learning Designer

 Natasha Huckle and Mark Williams were excited to host the Learning Design Cross Institutional Network this year at the Open University campus in Milton Keynes. With support from Jim Harris (University of Northampton) and Simon Walker (UCL) they identified themes for exploration and called out for learning designers across the network to present keynotes and workshops. This is what happened!

Hosting the LD CIN

It was the turn of the OU to host the Learning Design Cross Institutional Network on 27th July. And it was great to bring a range of institutions onto our campus as well as welcoming our online attendees. The aim of the network is to create a less formal occasion, a gathering rather than a conference, as a way of sharing practice and resources. It seems incredibly relevant to have such a space to communicate, because our work is never carried out in isolation. As learning designers, we are constantly researching ideas and theories whilst working within our own teams to implement them most successfully.

Continue reading “The Learning Design Cross Institutional Network: Creating a space for Learning Design discussions”

Sustainability: Our journey to connect colleagues with non-tokenistic action in the design process

James Openshaw and Paul Astles ~ Learning Designers

 

This article is the first of a two-part reflection about our collective experience at the EDEN 2023 conference in Dublin, Ireland and the EAUC conference 2023 in Bath, England. Alongside our shared experience and takeaways from those events this blog post will also include an update about the work going on in the Open University Learning Design Team in relation to sustainability and where we are heading next.

Before we get to the exciting stuff about our own work let’s look back at our personal highlights and takeaways from the most recently attended conferences. Continue reading “Sustainability: Our journey to connect colleagues with non-tokenistic action in the design process”