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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…
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Sharing our resources for designing online learning
Over the past few months of lockdown we’ve received a number of calls for advice from the sector and we’ve participated in a number of webinars as well as delivering workshops for various external clients. As time has progressed we’ve aimed to make sure that as many of these resources as possible are shared and…
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Active learning: making learning engaging
We’ve probably all sat through enough ‘death by PowerPoint’ slide decks to know what happens when we’re presented with information but don’t have the chance to engage with it. In the best-case scenario, we simply don’t learn anything. But often we leave the meeting or class worse off – with unanswered questions, frustration and reduced…
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Learning from one another: the value of students’ insights
Students are at the heart of our approach to learning design. We focus on helping our module authoring teams make evidence-based decisions, and insights from students form an important part of that evidence. This is the reasoning behind our curriculum design student panel (CDSP), which was highly commended in the ALT Learning Technologist of the…
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Workload mapping part 3: concurrency and activity makeup
In this series of posts, we’ve been looking at student workload mapping. This final post looks at the other neat things we can do once we’ve mapped out a module. Our example student, Alex, has had their workload smoothed out in the previous posts. Now that we’re sure the volume of learning and teaching for…
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Workload mapping part 2: mapping in learning design
In this series of posts, we’re looking at student workload mapping. This second post explains how we monitor workload during module design, and where we might make recommendations to authors. Overall workload for a module is agreed right at the beginning of learning design, with set times to aim for based on the level of study,…
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Workload mapping part 1: The student perspective
In this series of three posts, we’ll be looking at student workload mapping. This first post explains why planning is so important from a student perspective – and some of the thinking behind it. Alex is studying a 60 credit Level 1 module. Curriculum guidance suggest this should involve around 20 hours of study per week,…
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Our time at Bett 2019, Education Technology event.
The Bett 2019 Education Technology event has come and gone, and 2 intrepid Open University explorers decided to brave the cavernous space of the Excel and see what it had to offer. Mark’s account The day started with joining the bustle of thousands of expectant educators looking to transform their student experience and hopefully their…