Elizabeth Chappell and interviewees
While in Japan to research a travel book, I spent a night in Hiroshima. Talking to the ‘guides’ who met me for dinner, it emerged both were children of survivors of the atomic bomb but their parents had never talked to them about the blast. I went with my guides to a neighbourhood meeting; hearing that I was interested in war survivors, a 94-year-old woman, who had been attending these meetings for years, stood up and said: ‘I too am a hibakusha’.
Emma Rothero, The Open University
The Floodplain Meadows Partnership is a research project based on key academic work carried out at the Open University by Professor David Gowing and others on the response of species-rich floodplain meadows to changes in management, particularly hydrological changes. The partnership recently received an Evidencing Engaged Research seed funding award to look at the impact that advice from the project has had on site managers and sites across the UK.
Jessica Carr - Open University Intern
Last week I was helping out with a media training week, working with MK College students. The students spent the week learning the skills needed to make a short film focusing on a research project being run by the OU. This particular training focused on the nQuire platform. Here’s my run down of the week:
This post is shared from the OU’s Education Futures blog.
Alison Buckler, The Open University
As an academic in the newly formed International Education and Development research group at the Open University, I’ve been thinking a lot about social justice recently. I’ve been particularly interested in the suggestion in UNESCO’s latest Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report that teachers need to be better trained in order to support the most disadvantaged children.
Jessica Carr - Open University Intern
Blogging is something slightly alien to me, especially in an academic sense. As an Open University intern it is part of my role to blog about what I’m doing and quite simply, it seems that the activities I’m currently a part of are just too interesting to keep from you all!
Anne Pike, The Open University
Higher level distance learning in prison gives prisoners a positive student identity, resilience and high hopes for a better, crime-free future. These qualities help them to tackle the immense challenges facing ex-prisoners. Maintaining their student identity and belonging to a learning community after release, also enables them to integrate into society more easily.
Trevor Collins, Knowledge Media Institute, OU.
Last week (12th May), Ann Grand and I gave a seminar at the OU on Digital Engagement. I started by giving a brief introduction to public engagement, referring to the NCCPE’s EDGE tool for self-assessment, and a description of the purpose of the OU’s Public Engagement with Research Catalyst project.
Emma Rothero, The Open University
An award-winning, externally-facing partnership with research at the core
I don’t think of myself as an academic. Before I took on my current role as an Outreach Coordinator within the award-winning Floodplain Meadows research team at the Open University I’d worked for 12 years for the Environment Agency, delivering policy, legislation and proactive conservation projects ‘on the ground’ in Dorset, Wiltshire and a little bit of Hampshire. I’d worked with a wide range of conservation and community partners, occasionally getting cross with flood defence engineers. In short, I came to this job for a change!
Natalia Kucirkova, The Open University
I recently won one the the OU’s first ever Engaging Research Awards. When I heard about the engaging research awards, I thought ‘hmn…How can there be an award for something which ought to be integral to any good piece of research? Isn’t engagement with publics the defining characteristic underlying all research endeavours? And how can one judge a piece of research to be more engaged than another?’
The more I thought about it, the more I realised how engagement with publics has been an underlying principle of the Our Story project. The story-making tablet/smartphone app (called “Our Story”) was developed in parallel with my PhD research and has led to a number of projects integral to my doctoral work but also expanding it to other areas, research institutions and publics.
Dr Richard Holliman, Chair of the Review Panel
Evidencing Engaged Research: The closing date for applications has passed and we are not accepting further applications.
Contact
Dr Richard Holliman, Chair of the Review Panel.
Fiona McKerlie, Secretary to the Review Panel.
Purpose of this call: To support active researchers in the generation and systematic collection of evidence of the impacts from engaged research, demonstrating effects, changes and/or mutual benefits to those participating.