eSTEeM

Centre for Scholarship and Innovation

Conference delegates working in groups

Projects

eSTEeM is providing a mechanism for professional development through practice-based scholarship within a mentored community. Much of our work is organised on a project basis with project management aimed at the delivery of new educational outcomes and scholarship outputs. 

eSTEeM supports a rolling portfolio of approx. 80 active scholarship projects under a number of themes which include:

  • Access, Participation and Success
  • Innovative assessment
  • Online/onscreen STEM practice
  • Supporting students
  • Technologies for STEM learning

To learn more about our projects, please click on the project titles or use the search feature below by entering keywords. To search by the name of a project leader, please use the 'Filter by Project Leader' tab on the right-hand side of this page.

Search results

280 results found

Overcoming the Barriers to Success in T452: Enabling Students (OBSTACLES)

Gareth Neighbour Andrea Patel

The Engineering degree’s capstone module, The Engineering Project (T452), is core to achieving compliance with UK-SPEC, achieving accreditation with the professional institutions, and as such shares many features with project modules elsewhere.  However, in the distance learning context, stu

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Students as partners to incorporate learning preferences and inclusivity into curriculum design and improve learning outcomes

Ruth Neal Ellen Marshall

This project aims to evaluate how current instructional methods on two statistics modules M140 (Introducing Statistics) and M248 (Analysing data) meet the learning needs and preferences of a diverse student population.

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Mitigating Generative AI Exploitation Through Isolated Practical Assessment: An Empirical Investigation of Assessment Integrity and Individual Learning Outcomes in Systems Penetration Testing and Cyber Security Education

Michael Bowkis Lee Campbell

This project uses a mixed methods approach to investigate whether curriculum innovation in assessment design can address the disruption caused by generative AI in practical computing education.

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Developing STEM public engagement through comedy

Chris Douce Judith Taylor

Communication and presentation skills is an important and essential element to doctoral training. The university help students to develop those skills by providing opportunities to enable students to share their work with others through events such as PhD student conferences.

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Evaluating the effectiveness and student experience of using plug-in tablets as part of robust online assessment

Becca Whitehead Gemma Warriner

Our assessment is becoming increasingly vulnerable to the use of Generative AI to answer questions, rather than the students themselves. We aim to investigate the possibility of online assessment via a verbal one-to-one discussion.

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AIDED: II (The AI Design Ed project #2)

Catherine Scott AnnMarie McKenna

This project looks to investigate the practicalities and implications of using GenAI as a participant in a creative problem-solving session, specifically as a member of a brainstorming team responding to a defined problem statement.

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Academic discussions: evaluating student experience and outcomes and tutor perceptions of this novel form of assessment

Fiona Moorman Katja Rietdorf Karen New

In response to academic integrity concerns and with a view to piloting a more authentic form of assessment within the biology curriculum, S317 (Biological Science: from genes to species) and S296 (Cell biology) plan to introduce a structured spoken assessment ‘Academic Discussion’ (AD) into their

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Exploring How Informal and Structured Environmental Engagement Opportunities Support Distance Learning Student Wellbeing and Sense of Belonging

Harriet Marshall Yvonne Chakraborty

Focusing on OU students studying environment-related modules, this pilot study will investigate how community engagement can act as an empowering intervention for all students, particularly for those facing eco-anxiety. 

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Access to Stage 1 – consolidated support for STEM pathways

Catherine Scott Fiona Aiken Eira Patterson

This proposal outlines plans to evaluate the impact of a ‘Learn 1’ VLE currently being developed as part of the AOCcI-supported project Skills for Success: Access and Beyond. The VLE will host resources to support STEM Access students (Y/XFT033) in developing and consolidating maths and

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Evaluating Generative AI as an Academic and Emotional Aid

Hayley Ryder

Project modules are demanding, and M840, the mathematics MSc dissertation, is no exception, having a low completion rate: submitting students usually pass, but about a third never submit. 

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