The Open University

Reading aloud to children: 7 steps to making it magical

31 January 2018

There is no blueprint for reading aloud, but these simple steps from Professor Teresa Cremin will help you relax and enjoy the special time that is sharing a book with your child. She says: “Reading aloud not only nurtures children’s pleasure in reading, it offers them models of how a book should sound and feel, […]

How gender equality can help fix the construction industry

26 January 2018

The government-commissioned Farmer Review warned in 2016 that the UK construction industry was “facing challenges that have not been seen before”. In no uncertain terms, it called for major industry-wide change. The “overwhelming risks” foreseen in the review sadly seem to have come to pass. Major contractor Carillion’s collapse comes shortly after an autumn in […]

“Nurses need better support,” says OU Head of Nursing

26 January 2018

Nurses must be given support from NHS managers to learn while they earn as part of a new drive to reverse the debilitating exodus from the profession, according to The Open University’s Head of Nursing. Julie Messenger welcomed a report by the House of Commons Health Select Committee, which endorsed the need for different routes […]

Open University takes lead role in new Institute of Coding

25 January 2018

More than 500,000 computer scientists are needed by 2022 The £40M Institute of Coding aims to give the UK an edge in the global digital economy It will deliver industry-focused, innovative Higher Education across the UK The Open University (OU) has been announced as a major partner in the UK’s new £40 million Institute of […]

Open University helped Nathanial get his dream job in IT

24 January 2018

‘’When I started my degree I was asked by a colleague what my dream job was, well my dream job is actually the job I’m doing now and there’s no way I would have got it without my OU degree.’’ Working full time, 34-year-old Nathanial Lawrence had set his sights on a networking and […]

How do we respond to offence on social media? – Expert Opinion

24 January 2018

Creating Facebook is a project run by Philip Seargeant and Caroline Tagg of The Open University’s Applied Linguistics and Literacies (ALL) Research Group. The pair collaborated with us on a Twitter and Facebook poll as part of Brainteaser Month which asked how people respond to feeling offended on Facebook. You can see the polls and ensuing […]

Research photograph [CREDIT: Professor Shailey Minocha]

Can sharing photos online help reduce feelings of loneliness in older people?

23 January 2018

Everyone loves uploading their holiday albums or even photographs of their meals on social media, but is this just for our entertainment or are there other benefits? Research by The Open University and Oxford Brookes University is investigating whether sharing photographs via social media reduces loneliness and social isolation in older people. The research, which […]

A huge asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, but what danger do smaller ones pose?

19 January 2018

A small asteroid passed relatively close to Earth this month, having been discovered just six days earlier. This might sound scary, but it’s unusual that such an object would actually collide with the Earth. Each year about 50,000 tonnes of extraterrestrial material (rocks and dust) hits our planet. This comes as tiny pieces – even […]

The biological reason why it’s so hard for teenagers to wake up early for school

15 January 2018

In societies the world over, teenagers are blamed for staying up late, then struggling to wake up in the morning. While it’s true that plenty of teenagers (like many adults) do have bad bedtime habits, researchers have long since proven that this global problem has a biological cause. In 2004, researchers at the University of […]

OU calls for “urgent action” to address fall in part-time students in England

12 January 2018

The OU is renewing its call for urgent action by the UK Government after new figures showed a further year-on-year fall in the number of part-time students in England. Figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) revealed a 14 per cent drop in the number of people starting undergraduate courses in England between 2015/16 […]

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