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

264 results found

Understanding and mitigating students difficulties in undertaking complex practical activities on their computers

Patrick Wong

Hands-on practical activities can improve students understanding of technological concepts and provide an opportunity to improve their technical skills.

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Supporting students in online tuition from Access through the student journey

Carlton Wood Lynda Cook

Within many STEM modules we have moved to an online platform for learning events, including tuition.  Whilst there are many benefits to online tuition by both tutors and students (such as remote access) anecdotal evidence suggests that STEM OU students do not actively participate in online t

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Evaluating the accessibility of an alternative format of module materials in Maths & Stats

Chris Hughes

Winner - Enhancing the Student Experience, eSTEeM Scholarship Projects of the Year Awards 2020.

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Student co-design of confidence-building formative assessment for Level 1 Computing & IT students

Paul Piwek Simon Savage

Winner - eSTEeM Scholarship Projects of the Year Awards 2023.

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Floodplain Meadows Partnership Ambassadors

Emma Rothero

The Floodplain Meadows Partnership ran a 3-year long training programme for volunteers (called FMP Ambassadors) to become more familiar with the scientific methods of assessment for managing and restoring species rich floodplain meadows.

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Evaluating student perspectives of different types of learning events provided on SDK228, a level 2 LHCS module

Janette Wallace

SDK228, Science of the mind: Investigating mental health was a level two interdisciplinary Life, Health and Chemical Science (LHCS) module that attracted students from a variety of backgrounds including health and natural sciences, health and social care, nursing, psychology and counselling.

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Summer Series of Journal Clubs: an opportunity to develop employability skills and a sense of community amongst students in secure environments

Karen New Fiona Moorman Hannah Gauci

In keeping with the ethos ‘open to all’, The Open University (OU) has provided higher education opportunities to students in secure environments (SiSE) for over 40 years, currently reaching over 150 secure environments (Open University, 2020).

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Evaluating the level 1 engineering tutors resource

Anne-Marie Gallen Clare Reger

Reusability is a key concept for educators. For many of the associate lectures at the Open University, the group tuition policy has resulted in repetition of tutorial structure and delivery with ALs across clusters giving similar tutorials on the same topics at similar times.

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The Mathematics and Statistics Community of Learners

Rachel Hilliam

The Mathematics and Statistics Study Site was created in September 2017 and was one of a number of pilot study sites in the OU. Many of the resources on the site have grown out of smaller scholarship projects.

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Qualification Study websites: uptake and practice

Georgy Holden

This project sought to understand how the subject sites are being used and how they are perceived by students. The project took the approach of looking at all of the undergraduate subject sites in STEM.

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