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25 years of EdTech – 1996: CMC
I’m revisiting the previous post on Bulletin Board Systems slightly here. One of the interesting things about this series is the way others are bringing great stuff to my attention. For instance,...
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Why does education hate itself?
Here’s a news story that doesn’t happen: A bank has appointed a former university Vice Chancellor as their new CEO, because they feel the expertise in running an institution with longevity and...
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25 Years of OU – 2011: JIME
Around this time I became a co-editor of The Journal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME) with my colleague Ann Jones. It had been founded in 1999 by Simon Buckingham Shum, operating their own...
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25 Years of OU – 2012: OER Hub
The OER Research Hub, funded by the Hewlett Foundation, is probably the defining research grant of my career. With Patrick McAndrew and colleagues in IET we were successfully awarded a grant for 3...
View Article25 Years of OU – 2013: FutureLearn
via GIPHY At the end of The Year of the MOOC, the OU VC of the time, Martin Bean, invited a few of us to discuss a new project. There was political pressure (I believe but not had it confirmed) on the...
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25 Years of OU: 2014 – Battle for Open
As an academic, part of the expectation is to publish journal articles and book chapters particularly with the REF in mind. I’ve always managed a reasonable level of output without being one of the...
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25 Years of OU: 2015 – GO-GN
I mentioned that the OER Hub was probably the defining research grant of my career, but GO-GN is probably my favourite. It is also the most fortunate to have come my way. It was set up by Fred Mulder...
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25 Years of OU – 2016: Being a student
Man with piece of paper One of the benefits of working at the OU is that you are eligible for a staff fee waiver to study OU courses. When I first joined I studied one module in Shakespeare, but since...
View Article25 Years of OU – 2017: TEF
In 2017 I applied to be an assessor for the new Teaching Excellence Framework, and was appointed. I wanted to be part of it because I felt that the process would not represent a distance education...
View Article25 Years of OU – 2018: The OU crisis
via GIPHY And thus we arrive at 2018, a pivotal year in OU history. Under the leadership of then VC, Peter Horrocks, the OU was making the headlines for all the wrong reasons – regional centres were...
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25 Years of OU – 2019: The Open Programme
My advice is have a Bryan Mathers graphic for every point you want to make In 2019 I became the Director of the Open programme at the Open University. The open programme covers our ‘Open’...
View Article25 Years of OU/Ed Tech – 2020: The Online Pivot
via GIPHY A “2 for the price or 1” post! As part of the ongoing 25 Years of Ed Tech project, I do one post that is based around the ed tech of that year that would have been included (the book stops...
View ArticleBest albums of the year (that I’ve purchased)
I’m restricting my top 10 to records released this year, and which I have purchased on vinyl, which means both of the excellent SAULT albums are excluded because they are tricky to get hold of, and...
View ArticleFilms of 2020 (yeah, I know)
So, cinemas eh? The last film I saw before lockdown at the cinema was Birds of Prey. I then managed to pop to see Unhinged in the brief 5 minute window where cinemas were open again, before we went...
View ArticleBooks, charts, lists, 2020
Now in it’s 7th year, my annual book post with bonus pointless charts and lists. One might expect that given that EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD WAS CLOSED, I would have read more books this year than last...
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Blog review 2020
Bryan Mathers captured the feeling of many of us At the end of last year I wondered if I was losing my blogging mojo. I had a plan to try and kick start it in 2020 with a 25 Years of OU series,...
View ArticleWhy use metaphors in ed tech
via GIPHY I’m just about to complete a new book, Metaphors of Ed Tech. It’s sort of an accompaniment to 25 Years of Ed Tech (although entirely stand-alone) – it’s been argued that stories and...
View ArticleCreativity space
via GIPHY One of the claims I make in the metaphors book I’m about to send off is that they provide a much needed route for creativity for practitioners in learning technology. I think this is...
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Death Star vs Storm Trooper investment
Let us put aside the whole being evil and blowing up planets part of the Empire for now (although, admittedly that is a large part of their brand), and simply focus on the most efficient use of...
View ArticleDistance ed lite
via GIPHY Now that we are into the second semester of this academic year, with nearly all higher ed teaching taking place completely online, and many students studying from home, we are in effect...
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