Blog

On becoming Module Chairs of one of the Open University’s largest Level 1 entry modules, Introducing the Social Sciences (DD102), myself, Zoe Doye, and my colleague, Ieman Hassan, have become fervent data watchers.  As soon as an assignment cut-off date has passed, we find ourselves in front of our respective computers, impatient to find out the percentage of students who have submitted their assignments.  This we continue to monitor as days and even weeks pass, for our Level 1 students are enthusiastic extension requesters, and it is not unusual to have around a q

Most Open University students are studying on a part time basis, registering for one module per academic year. This means that (without any study breaks) a degree can be completed in five or six years. However, we’ve recently seen a substantial increase in the number of students opting to complete their degrees more quickly, with around a third of our students now studying at a higher intensity – the equivalent of a full-time degree.  

As Associate Lecturers on DE100 (Investigating Psychology) for some time we had noticed the change in study patterns, where more students were opting for study at fulltime intensity (FTI). With the advent of Covid-19 and the associated restrictions on social interaction, we saw an unprecedented rise in student numbers, and a growing proportion applying for FTI. This we put down to the requirement to study online, so that students who may have applied for places at brick institutions were choosing Open University courses instead as we have such a long track record of quality distance learning provision.  

Entering university as a young student is challenging not least because students coming straight from school are used to regular contact and encouragement from teachers up to their final exams.

In the arts and social sciences, topics can frequently touch upon violence, injustice, and oppression that many in our university community directly experience and are affected by. In this context educators think carefully about how to teach these topics whilst also safeguarding and supporting students, or whether it is safer to avoid topics that are just too difficult and sensitive. These challenges become deeper in distance learning.

How can we encourage online learners to engage with their local and physical environment beyond their computer screens? There is increasing evidence of the benefits of object-based and multi-sensory learning at all levels of education (including higher education) as a way of supporting student engagement and deep, personalised learning (see, for example, Chatterjee and Hannan, eds., 2015). These benefits do not just apply to subject disciplines that rely explicitly on hands-on experiences, field work, lab experiments or placements.

Studies have shown that the use of games in Higher Education can improve the ability to learn new skills and can facilitate deep learning by increasing the enjoyment experienced by students. This project draws on the expertise in Open University (OU) design to employ such gamified approaches in teaching and sought to apply them to helping students taking the first module in the MA in Art History (A843) with devising a sound end-of-term essay topic.

As an Open University tutor, I am very aware that some students find it hard to join online tutorials and others who do join may not participate. Although many participate by using the chat box or take part in other interactive activities such as answering polls or writing on the whiteboard, few students turn their microphones on to speak. Without visual clues, it is very hard to interpret how students are feeling when they take part in online tutorials, and in larger tutorials it is difficult to know when or why they might disengage from the session.

Admittedly, the Arts and Humanities are not traditionally known as the spiritual homeland of number crunching, but in 2019, colleagues and I from the departments of Classical Studies, History, English, and Creative Writing at the Open University broke with tradition and embarked on a quantitative analysis of student attendance patterns within our school.  

Independent learning is usually envisaged as something that students do alone. But on ‘A329, The Making of Welsh History’, an online distance-learning dissertation module at the Open University, the situation is quite the reverse. Launched in autumn 2017, A329 was in late 2018 the subject of a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning project supported by FASSTEST, the OU’s Scholarship Centre for the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. That project looked at the efficacy of various pedagogic innovations introduced on the module and found that the two most far-reaching of thes