Playfulness, Practices and Perspective: the art of learning from one another

Heather Montgomery is Qualification Director for the Open degree at the Open University and Professor of Anthropology and Childhood in the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies.  In this post, Heather reflects on a Student Hub Live (SHL) Live Broadcast on the 22nd June entitled, ‘Playfulness, Practices and Perspective: the art of learning from one another’. Here she shares her highlights and thoughts on the event.

Despite my many years at the OU (20 and counting) I had never taken part in a SHL event before and I was quite nervous – what was I going to say? What if anyone asked me a difficult question? And one of the themes was playfulness! What if I wasn’t feeling very playful on the day?

Continue reading “Playfulness, Practices and Perspective: the art of learning from one another”

Powerful perspectives from Poole: Volunteering at a Graduation Ceremony

Mary Keys and Jay Rixon are both  Senior Managers in Access, Open and Cross-curricular Innovation and are responsible for the BA or BSc Open Degree and the MA or MSc Open Masters qualifications. In this post, Mary and Jay reflect on their recent opportunity to volunteer at an OU Graduation Ceremony in Poole. 

Volunteering at a recent OU graduation ceremony reminded us of the impact education can, and does, have. We worked with the OU ceremonies graduation team in Poole and what an honour it was to join such a dedicated group of staff who set out to make each event memorable and special for every single student and their friends and family.  They ensure that those graduates are celebrated for their own individual achievements acknowledging the personalised journey each student has been on and the milestones they have overcome along the way. Continue reading “Powerful perspectives from Poole: Volunteering at a Graduation Ceremony”

What are multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity?

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?”

Student Voice Week – Navigating your Journey

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”

Being open: not just a qualification?

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?”

Graduation Ceremony – the reason why we do what we do!

Gina Sharp is Stakeholder Engagement Manager for the Access, Open and Cross-curricular Innovation team at the Open University.

 

I was lucky enough to be able to travel to the Open University graduation ceremony in Harrogate last weekend to be on the registration desk.  This is the second time I’ve worked at a graduation ceremony and to be honest it’s a little bit addictive! Continue reading “Graduation Ceremony – the reason why we do what we do!”