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Reflections on ALT conference 2023: Supporting colleagues to take practical actions to embed sustainability
Hayley Johns and Paul Astles ~ Learning Designers This blog post builds on our previous sustainability related post. You can read that here. If you have not had a chance to read it yet, do go back and check it out. The work presented by Hayley and Paul on behalf of the Learning Design Sustainability…
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Out and about with Learning Design: Learning from working with others
Gerald Evans ~ Head of Learning Design; Emilou Hayden, Catriona Matthews, and Paul Astles ~ Learning Designers In this post, we’re sharing some of the experiences of team members who have worked on external projects. As a team we periodically work with clients both inside and outside the OU to provide Learning Design specialist…
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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…
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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…
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Beyond the “real world”: exploring authentic assessment design
Mary Simper ~ Learning Designer The Learning Design team at the OU has been exploring assessment practices, which has led to some rich discussions on accessibility, student choice, learning outcomes and authenticity. Discussions around authentic assessment have led us to think about how we can design assessments, well… more authentically! Let’s start with an analogy……
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Kicking off Pride Month at the OU: exploring LGBT+ visibility in STEM
Eleanor Moore ~ Learning Designer June is Pride Month and here at The Open University, we have a packed calendar of events exploring diverse perspectives and themes of inclusion. One of the first was an online seminar led by Dr Jessica Gagnon of Manchester University and Dr Marco Reggiani of Strathclyde University. Jessica and Marco…
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More conference catch-ups: Reflections on the OER23 conference
Catriona Matthews and Paul Astles ~ Learning Designers We had the honour and privilege of discussing this very blog site at the ALT Open Education Conference (#OER23) this year. OER, if you haven’t come across the term before, refers to Open Educational Resources. Our talk, held on the second day of the conference and titled “Read…
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Remixplay 5: Conference-in-a-pod
In January, I had the privilege of attending the GameChangers Remixplay 5: Secret agents of change conference in Coventry, a space for those who use playful practice to engage and build communities, and to then set that community loose on projects of monumental societal change. I had a blast at the conference, and came away…