-
Learning through play: delving into diverse student experiences
~~ By Catriona Matthews and Clare Hill, Learning Designers When you become a student, you don’t suddenly exist in an educational bubble where the reality of life fades away and your only worry is your next assessment. It is not always possible to avoid the impact that wider life events, experiences or responsibilities can have…
-
CATE 2026 awards: Reflections on what being The Open University nominee means to us
Paul Astles, Joanna Helms, Eleanor Moore, James Openshaw, Jack Orbell ~~ Learning Designers In the autumn of 2025, after a rigorous application process, the Learning Design AI group was proud to be chosen as the OU’s CATE (Advance HE’s Collaborative Awards for Teaching Excellence) nomination for 2026. Competition for the award was high and we…
-
Innovating Learning Design in Higher Education: Project Outcomes and Open Resources
Paul Astles and Catriona Matthews ~ Learning Designers In our first article on this topic, Innovating Learning Design in Higher Education: Reflections from an International Collaboration, we explored the rationale for the iLED project and why learning outcomes led design matters across diverse higher education contexts. If you haven’t yet had a chance to…
-
Small Changes, Clear Signals: Making Hidden Sustainability Links Visible in Physics
Dr. Martin Braun ~ STEM staff tutor Sustainability is a defining societal challenge and higher education has a role to play in equipping learners to engage competently with its complexity. For some disciplines, this comes naturally. For others, physics among them is less so. An eSTEeM funded project brought together colleagues from across The Open…
-
Words of Wisdom: Creating a compendium of Sustainability
Paul Astles and Catriona Matthews ~ Learning Designers You may have read our previous blog post with reflections on our experiences at the Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges (EAUC) conference in Sheffield last year. And if you did, you may remember that at that time we gave an overview of a project called…
-
How do online students use digital technologies to manage their emotions?
Jake Hilliard ~ Learning Designer Have you ever put on a music playlist to help you focus on a task, or turned to YouTube for a quick break when you feel stressed or overwhelmed? For many online learners, these aren’t just habits, they’re strategies for managing emotions while studying. Last month I had the…
-
Inside the ICEBERG: How we updated the ICEBERG principles
Catriona Matthews, Jake Hilliard, and James Openshaw ~ Learning Designers Earlier this year, we proudly shared a blog post introducing the updated ICEBERG principles – a set of seven evidence-based learning design principles that positively impact student retention. Originally created in 2016, the principles were updated across 2023-2024 to reflect new research, student insights,…
-
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…