{"id":5795,"date":"2017-06-29T17:28:16","date_gmt":"2017-06-29T16:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ounews.co\/?p=5795"},"modified":"2017-06-29T17:28:16","modified_gmt":"2017-06-29T16:28:16","slug":"minister-jo-johnson-sees-breakthrough-openstem-labs-ou","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/around-ou\/university-news\/minister-jo-johnson-sees-breakthrough-openstem-labs-ou\/","title":{"rendered":"Minister Jo Johnson sees breakthrough OpenSTEM Labs at the OU"},"content":{"rendered":"

Universities and Science Minister Jo Johnson paid a visit to The Open University on Thursday 29th<\/sup> June to see its award-winning OpenSTEM Labs, which are transforming online teaching and learning.<\/p>\n

During a tour of the Walton Hall campus, Mr Johnson learned about the OpenSTEM Labs, an exciting initiative which allows OU students to study science and other STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) subjects in a digitally immersive environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudents can see 40 thousand year old signals coming in from space, experience a Mars landscape, see through a slice of rock and look a fruit fly in the eye \u2013 all without moving from their workspace\u201d said Open University Vice-Chancellor Peter Horrocks, who also chatted to the Minister about the OU\u2019s own plans for digital and wholesale transformation<\/a> ahead of its 50th<\/sup> anniversary in 2019.<\/p>\n

“Level of detail”<\/h2>\n

The OU\u2019s OpenSTEM Labs enable learners to connect online to technical equipment such as microscopes, robots and robotic rovers, telescopes, lab-bench experiments and analytical instruments.\u00a0The project earned the \u201coutstanding digital innovation of the year\u201d award<\/a> last week at the coveted leadership and management awards from the sector\u2019s leading magazine.<\/p>\n

\"Jo

Universities Minister Jo Johnson and Executive Dean of STEM Josie Fraser during the visit<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWhat the OpenSTEM Labs mean for OU students is that they can study STEM subjects anytime, anywhere. This is not unusual for the OU, but what is really<\/em> impressive for any university is the level of detail that our students can now access as a result of our pioneering technology,\u201d added Mr Horrocks.<\/p>\n

The Minister talked to project director Professor Nick Braithwaite before taking a look at some landmark items of space exploration at the OU including a meteorite and a scale model of the Philae lander, which was part of the successful Rosetta Mission to land on a comet in 2014.<\/p>\n

The OpenSTEM Labs project was funded by a \u00a32.8 million grant from the Higher Education Funding Council for England, which was matched by the OU. Several thousand hours of use have already been logged, including a new Masters course in space science.<\/p>\n

The project director is Prof Nicholas Braithwaite, who has a long record of OU teaching of engineering, maths and science, and international research profile in plasma physics.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Universities and Science Minister Jo Johnson paid a visit to The Open University on Thursday 29th June to see its award-winning OpenSTEM Labs, which are transforming online teaching and learning. During a tour of the Walton Hall campus, Mr Johnson learned about the OpenSTEM Labs, an exciting initiative which allows OU students to study science […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5798,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1216,1699,2318],"class_list":["post-5795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-university-news","tag-jo-johnson","tag-peter-horrocks","tag-universities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}