Centre for Inclusion and Collaborative Partnerships (CICP)
Widening Access and Success seminar series
Monday 7th December 2015
Supporting WP through Open Educational Practices
Open University,Walton Hall, Milton Keynes
10.00 amRegistration and refreshments
Christodoulou Meeting Room 15, Open University Walton Hall Campus
10.30 amWelcome and introduction to the Widening Access and Success Seminar Series
Wendy Fowle, Research and Evaluation Manager, CICP, Open University
10.40 amPete Cannell(Co-director of Opening Educational Practices in Scotland)
- The interface between open education and widening participation
- Barriers to engagement with Open Educational Resources
11.30 amDrJonathan Hughes & Laura Hills (CICP, Open University)and Hannah Gore (Open Media Unit, Open University)
- The creation of ‘Taking your First Steps into Higher Education’: attracting learners from a WP background and supporting theirtransition into formal learning, through Badged Online Content
12.15Professor John Richardson(theInstitute of Educational Technology, Open University)
- Research on learning and teaching over the last 40 years: how can we ground research and practice around OERs in what we already know?
13.00Opportunity for discussion and networking (please feel free to bring your own
lunch with you, if you would like to)
13.30Close
Speaker profiles
Pete Cannell is an educational consultant, OU AL and honorary associate of the Institute of Educational Technology. In the first of these roles he is working as co-director of the Opening Educational Practices in Scotland project (OEPS). Pete was formerly Depute Director at the Open University in Scotland, in which role he was involved in developing widening participation partnerships and in some early projects involving the use of Open Educational Resources (OER). OEPS is a cross sector project in Scotland that is funded by the Scottish Funding Council with the aim of increasing the sectors’ engagement with OER. The project operates at the interface of WP and open education and has a focus on developing social practice that supports effective use of free and openly licensed resources.
Dr Jonathan Hughes is Lecturer (Access and Curriculum) based in the Centre for Inclusion and Collaborative Partnerships at The Open University, England and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He has published on aspects of higher education and later life learning. Most recent publications consider what publicly available documents like access agreements reveal about how universities position themselves in an increasingly diversified market. He is currently working on papers on the assessment of informal learning and on how assessment is understood by students. At the Open University Jonathan has been the academic lead on the OU Badging Project which has led to the launch of Badged Open Courses which develop skills and capabilities. He has also been skills lead and author on Perspectives in Health and social care, a first year OU module, for which he is currently the module lead. He serves on the editorial boards of Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning and Enhancing the Learner Experience in Higher Education and provides peer reviews for a range of journals including Review of Educational Research for whom he was an outstanding reviewer in 2013.
Dr Laura Hills is an academic within the Centre for Inclusion and Collaborative Partnerships who contributes to and provides support for the Unit’s strategic priorities, including the Access programme, open online courses, and research and scholarship. Her research interests focus on support for scholarship within institutional contexts and the relationship between scholarship and professional development of individual practitioners. She is also interested in the role of open online courses in the journey from informal to formal learning and how such learning can be effectively assessed and recognised.
Hannah Gorehas developed a range of projects with students and academics, largely in on the theme of improving online communication methods within the web presence of The Open University, utilising a range of emerging tools, platforms, and techniques to leverage student engagement. For the last six years Hannah has been working on several projects on the impact of social media on student engagement. With the developing movement towards social learning and its use of hosting on third party platforms, Hannah’s portfolio subsequently expanded to the role of Senior Producer: Social & Syndication at The Open University. It is within this role and the culmination of her experience across this domain that led to Hannah influencing and leading the development of aspects of The Open University’s free online learning platform, OpenLearn. From this Hannah recently undertook a development in posts moving to Senior Producer: MOOCs for the delivery management of the production and presentation of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) to FutureLearn, OpenLearn and third party platforms under syndication arrangements. Hannah is currently researching her doctorate on the Engagement of Informal Learners Undertaking Open Online Courses and the Impact of Design with The Open University, whilst continuing her work in the same field.
Professor John Richardson is the professor of student learning and assessment in the Institute of Educational Technology at the Open University. He is the author of Researching Student Learning: Approaches to Studying in Campus-based and Distance Education (Buckingham: SRHE and Open University Press, 2000) and is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, the British Psychological Society and the Society for Research into Higher Education. His book is available free of charge on OpenLearn: