Celebrating "Open" curriculum at The Open University
#YourDegreeYourChoice
Sarah Meyer is a final year Open University Psychology student and Virtual Student Intern on the Credit Transfer project.
Three words to describe my internship experience? Belonging, Developing, Growing. Continue reading “Belonging, developing and growing – experiences of an OU Virtual Student Intern”
Jay Rixon is a Senior Manager, responsible for the MA or MSc Open qualification. In this post, Jay reflects on the recent Student Hub Live session titled, ‘What’s the real value of a master’s degree?’ held on the 4th July.
Taking part in a live Student Hub Live (SHL) broadcast is always an activity that members of the Open qualifications team enjoy. Well, that is until you are in the online ‘green room’ and the countdown to go live has begun and the nerves kick in. Camera, lights and action! Continue reading “What’s the real value of a master’s degree?”
On his retirement from the Open University, Emeritus Professor John Butcher reflects on the importance of openness.
Recently, on reaching the age of 67 in October 2023, I retired from the Open University as Professor of Inclusive Teaching in Higher Education. My final responsibility was to chair the Academic Committee which had governance oversight of the Open qualification and to which the Open Board of Studies reported. At the end of the meeting, at the point at which thanks were being generously expressed by colleagues, it was suggested I might formulate some personal reflections to be disseminated through the ‘Open blog’. I was happy to agree. Continue reading “Openness matters”
Dr Simon Scott is Associate Professor in the School of Liberal Arts, at the University of Birmingham. He is the school’s lead on interdisciplinarity and has convened modules on multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and transdisciplinarity. He is currently editing a book on Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching: Pedagogies and Practice. His research is in two areas: on the study of interdisciplinarity, and interdisciplinary research on shame. Dr Scott was recently a Guest Lecturer at an Open University online seminar, ‘Facilitating reflection on interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary study’, and he discusses that seminar here.
I really enjoyed the challenge of preparing this talk for students of the Open Programme. And it is a challenge to cover a lot of ground (and meaningfully) in a short time. I started, as we always should, with definitions: multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinarity. Someone rightly asked, in the Q&A at the end, about disciplinarity, and this often gets overlooked. A discipline is a collection of different communities and standardised practices of teaching and research, but there are still vast differences within them. This matters a lot: although disciplines are the building blocks of interdisciplinarity, they are ‘porous’ and not fixed entities. Continue reading “What are multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity?”
Cin is an OU student currently studying some micro-credentials alongside her Access module. She is a Central Committee Representative on the Access Board of Studies and on the Access and Open Academic Committee (Learning, Teaching and Assessment). She is also the 2022-2025 elected Student Officer for the RAISE network (Researching, Advancing, and Inspiring Student Engagement).
As part of Student Voice Week we had a great session focused on Open and Access students entitled Navigating your Journey as an Open and Access student. We had a solid turn out with students from across many different subjects and from all levels of experience. We saw brand new students getting ready to start Access in February, across all undergrad levels and right through to Open post-grad students joining us. Continue reading “Student Voice Week – Navigating your Journey”
Prof. John Butcher is Director for Access, Open & Cross-curricular Innovation at the Open University.
I was asked to write a blog for the Open qualifications blog site at the precise moment when my colleagues knew I was unlikely to refuse…
Picture the scene, a new pub by the canal in Milton Keynes, on a September evening, and I had just delivered my inaugural lecture in the Berrill Theatre on the Walton Hall campus. I was in the pub with a few kind colleagues who wanted to celebrate the occasion with me – and because a lot of my lecture was about achievements within a team and being open to new opportunities. Continue reading “Being open: not just a qualification?”