Emma Rothero, The Open University
In my previous post, I wrote that we were ready to ask the questions but I was worried no one would want to answer.
Well, I needn’t have been concerned. We’ve completed 14 semi-structured interviews and have two more to do. We have written up the interviews we’ve done as draft case studies and I am just sorting out the process of getting the interviews transcribed.
Dr Trevor Collins, The Open University
Trevor Collins and I led a workshop session at the NCCPE‘s Engage 2014 conference this week.
The session builds on our work on digital tools for communication and engagement with the Open University’s Catalyst for Public Engagement with Research.
Dr Ann Grand, The Open University
This week the snakes-and-ladders-of social-media went on tour (if Milton Keynes to London can be counted as touring). I ran a social media workshop at London South Bank University as part of their Global Entrepreneurship Week. The session was aimed at researchers but included a small number of students and entrepreneurs, which enriched the discussion.
Dr John Oates, The Open University
As I discussed in my previous post, the aim of our ‘key working’ project was to identify the different ways of co-ordinating support for families with children or young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and to produce a guidance booklet, primarily for practitioners and managers, to enable them to better meet the requirements of the Children and Families Act 2014.
Although we had been briefed to produce a short guide to developing key working as a printed booklet for wide distribution among local authorities and practitioners, after we had delivered our final product in April 2014, there were several weeks during which we heard nothing about progress.
Dr John Oates, The Open University
The ‘key-working’ project was a research study funded by the Department for Education and commissioned by the National Children’s Bureau. Silvana Mengoni, Research Fellow in FELS, Janet Bardsley, Lecturer in Health & Social Care and myself, as project lead, worked with families and practitioners in both statutory and voluntary services and with commissioners and managers in local authorities. Continue reading
Dr. Susanne P. Schwenzer, The Open University
NASA astronaut Dr. Stanley G. Love inspired students from local schools and the OU alike
Tuesday, the 21st of October 2014, will be a day well worth remembering, not only for the advice that studying maths and physics is what it takes to have the chance to be selected as an astronaut. And if that doesn’t work, it is stills math that opens doors to the best paid jobs.
Dr Ann Grand, The Open University
Our seminar this month was a celebration of the diversity of engaging research at the Open University. To launch the second Engaging Research awards, we asked some of the winners of the inaugural awards to reflect on what ‘engaging research’ means for them in their research and practice.
Left: Mairi Walker (maths PhD student). Right: Vincent Trott (recent PhD graduate in history)
The Brilliant Club is an educational charity that works to widen access to higher education by placing postgraduate researchers in non-selective state schools to deliver university-style tutorials based on their research. Not only is this a great chance for researchers to develop their teaching skills and engage non-specialist audiences in their work, it’s also a fantastic opportunity for pupils to carry out their own research and get a taste of what university learning is like.
The Brilliant Club works with higher education institutions around the country, and has a strong partnership with The Open University. Many Open University researchers work as Brilliant Club tutors and recently the partnership has extended to include an internship scheme, sponsored by Santander.
Alison Buckler, The Open University
This post is shared from the OU’s Education Futures blog.
Earlier this year I blogged about a new research project I’m working on which is trying to understand student teachers’ perceptions of themselves as agents of social justice in low income countries. The research stems from the increasingly worrying body of evidence which suggests that millions of children across the world are spending several years in school, yet learning nothing.
Felicity Mundy, working at the microscope on her Nuffield Placement
Over the summer I completed a four-week Nuffield Research Placement at the Open University in the Environment, Earth and Ecosystems Department. My project was on how optimum growth conditions affect the calcification of planktonic foraminifera.
In other words, I was interested in surface-dwelling plankton. When conditions are ‘optimum’, these creatures grow in large numbers. But does this increase in numbers affect how surface-dwelling plankton build their shells, and if so, why? Answering this question will give us a better understanding of their ecology and how they will respond in the future to environmental changes.
I studied a species of foraminifera called Globortalia inflata to investigate how the thickness of their shells has changed over the past 20,000 years and then compared my results with published data on the abundance of G inflata (a measure of optimum growth conditions).