Category: Reflection

  • Reflections on the Digital Ways of Working Project (DWEEP) evaluation

    Reflections on the Digital Ways of Working Project (DWEEP) evaluation

    Mike Collins ~ Learning Designer In the past couple of weeks, our colleagues over in the Learning Innovation team published the report of the Digital Working Environment Exploratory Project (DWEEP), an in-practice exploration of the use of virtual environments to support collaboration and hybrid working. The Learning Design team took a lead on the evaluation…

  • Playful Learning 2022: Reflections and conference-in-a-pod

    Playful Learning 2022: Reflections and conference-in-a-pod

    It’s a few weeks after the Playful Learning conference, and even after a bit of time to decompress I’m still a buzzing, overstimulated mess. And you know what? I’d do it all again in a heartbeat. In this article and accompanying podcast, I’d like to share my take on the conference: my impressions, my takeaways,…

  • Fit for learning: CPD as a daily exercise

    Fit for learning: CPD as a daily exercise

    By Paul Astles So what is CPD? CPD stands for Continuous Personal Development. Often, CPD can be perceived as something that happens through mandatory training sessions rather than being an active process that you can be involved with daily. Al-Asmari (2016) discovered that some staff viewed CPD as a challenge to overcome rather than a…

  • Conference to practice: more takeaways from ALT-C

    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.

  • Conference to practice: reflecting on a week at ALT-C

    Conference to practice: reflecting on a week at ALT-C

    I’ve been a Learning Designer for three years now, and ALT-C (The Association for Learning Technology Conference – September 2021) was my first conference within the role. While I’d never expected my first experience with this to be online, I must say I thought it was fabulous.

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

    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…

  • Mix, stir then blend gently: co-creating a remote community of practice

    Mix, stir then blend gently: co-creating a remote community of practice

    If you read our last blog post, you’ll know that like most people, we’ve made some changes to the way we work here in the learning design team thanks to COVID19. One of these has been a change to our community of practice. Before lockdown, this was informal – members of the learning design team…

  • A virtual biscuit tin: creating a community of practice for learning designers in lockdown

    A virtual biscuit tin: creating a community of practice for learning designers in lockdown

    It wasn’t just students who faced a sudden change in how they were learning in March when the UK locked down. Learners in the workplace were affected too – including our learning design team here at the Open University. We were dispersed to our homes by lockdown and overnight, lost our ability to learn from one another.