New Captain at the Helm!

Jennifer Norman has recently been appointed as the new Head of Department of Policing Organisation & Practice (POP) in the Faculty of Business & Law (FBL).

Jennifer started this role in April 2022, taking over from Matt Jones, and leads a team of interdisciplinary academics in the development of the policing programmes at The Open University (OU) that are delivered as part of the Police Education Qualification Framework (PEQF) at North Yorkshire Police. 

Jennifer originally joined the POP team in November 2020. She worked as part of the team designing the material for third year students on the Police Constable Degree Apprenticeship (PCDA). This experience provided her with insights into the OU model in terms of the pedagogy and how the online components of the learning delivery are combined with tailored and personal support provided to the students via personal tutors and associate lecturers. 

Here Jennifer tells us more about her appointment...

It’s an exciting time to start my role of Head of Department. Policing at the OU benefits from a range of talented academics from both the Centre for Policing Research and Learning (CPRL) and POP which means we can feed contemporary research into the curriculum we design. We also have police officer secondees who work within the team who offer invaluable practitioner insight to our curriculum delivery, ensuring our operational knowledge is current and can be realistically applied by apprentices in their policing practice. From my own involvement in the design of the curriculum, I appreciate everyone who is involved in the construction of the programmes offered at the OU. There are the central academics within POP who bring research, theory and practice into crafting the material, the OU learning design team who use their expertise to optimise the innovation offered by the university and all of the internal and external reviewers involved in the process to ensure the material is rigorous, accurate and of sound quality. All these elements provide the programme with external credibility and ensures the learning is accessible to police apprentices and meaningful to their practice. This means the learning is flexible to be completed in ways that suit the individual and provide the individual support they need to maximise the success and experience on the programme.

The POP team have now designed all three years of the PCDA curriculum, a PCSO apprenticeship, and a programme for Specials Constables. All the programmes are developed with our police partner through an established strong and productive relationship. Having flexibility and adaptivity to meet our partner and police apprentices needs, means we have been recognised internally to be delivering a gold standard approach to the apprenticeship. We have a strong commitment to Scholarship which means we undertake projects to evaluate what we are delivering through our teaching. This allows us to understand what works well for our students to secure their success on the apprenticeship. This is all credit to the team, who are committed and work meticulously to support the students in their journey. It is a real pleasure to take on this role and I am looking forward to working with everyone towards a fantastic future.

Jennifer Norman