Category: Research

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”

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 or listening. Continue reading “Learning from practice: refreshing the OU activity types framework”

What students say about … click-and-reveal discussion activities

You may be familiar with click-and-reveal discussion activities. These are simple learning activities, which ask students to consider a question and then click to reveal an answer, some further discussion or feedback. This type of question—feedback device can be seen in face-to-face classroom environments when a lecturer poses a question to the class and then provides verbal feedback on students’ responses. Continue reading “What students say about … click-and-reveal discussion activities”

Engagement with others online: students’ views of course design

As learning designers, it’s essential that we explore students’ needs and goals. That way, we can make sure that learning activities address these needs and support students to reach their goals. For example, each time we design a new module, we take time to explore student data and course teams’ experience to build up student profiles or personas that can be referred to throughout the module design process.  Continue reading “Engagement with others online: students’ views of course design”