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 am
Registration and refreshments
Christodoulou Meeting Room 15, Open University Walton Hall Campus
10.30 am
Welcome and introduction to the Widening Access and Success
Seminar Series
Wendy Fowle, Research and Evaluation Manager, CICP, Open University
10.40 am
11.30 am
Pete Cannell (Co-director of Opening Educational Practices in Scotland)

The interface between open education and widening participation

Barriers to engagement with Open Educational Resources
Dr Jonathan Hughes & Laura Hills (CICP, Open University) and Hannah
Gore (Open Media Unit, Open University)

12.15
Professor John Richardson (the Institute of Educational Technology, Open
University)

13.00
The creation of ‘Taking your First Steps into Higher Education’:
attracting learners from a WP background and supporting their
transition into formal learning, through Badged Online Content
Research on learning and teaching over the last 40 years: how can
we ground research and practice around OERs in what we already
know?
Opportunity for discussion and networking (please feel free to bring your own
lunch with you, if you would like to)
13.30
Close
http://www.open.ac.uk/cicp
Centre for Inclusion and Collaborative
Partnerships (CICP)
Widening Access and Success seminar series
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 Gore has 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.
http://www.open.ac.uk/cicp
Centre for Inclusion and Collaborative
Partnerships (CICP)
Widening Access and Success seminar series
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:
http://www.open.edu/openlearnworks/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=11722
http://www.open.ac.uk/cicp