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

31 results found

Using Learning Logs in SXPS288 – Effectiveness in helping students to reach Learning Outcomes, to enhance and document their employability skills, and raise awareness of opportunities in the space sector

Alan Cayless

Within the physical sciences curriculum, employability and skills development elements are being incorporated into modules in order to address the Open University Employability Policy and also to address the employability and careers development requirements of Institute of Physics (IoP) accredit

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Evaluating the Impact of Implementing Learning Design Approaches in STEM over 4 Years

Tom Olney

In 2016, the OU was restructured into four super-faculties (STEM, WELS, FASS & FBL). Amongst many other things, each faculty was tasked with developing structures, governance and procedures that would support module teams in designing teaching and learning appropriate to their context.

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Curriculum Development in Computing and Communications: Enabling the Student Voice, Facilitating Employability and Exploring Students’ Personal and Professional Aspirations

Alexis Lansbury Arabella Nock

This project will investigate whether our current C&C curriculum meets the personal and professional aspirations and employability needs of our students and identify curriculum-gaps from our students’ perspectives.

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Evaluation of online journal club (OJC) in S285: to what extent does this help students develop employability skills?

Lorraine Waters Rachel McMullan

Developing employability skills have been identified as an Open University priority; there is evidence that these transferable ‘soft’ skills are often limited in science graduates entering the workplace.

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Which factors are correlated with undergraduate engineering distance learning students’ expectations of ethical issues?

Joanna Sessford

Ethics is becoming an increasingly important part of engineering curriculum. Engineers need to be able to recognise and make ethical decisions in their working life. This is essential for a number of different reasons including to avoid potentially life taking disasters. 

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Postgraduate Project Management: evaluation of student employability skills development

Kay Bromley Jill Shaw Joan Jackson

This scholarship project was set in the context of a 30-credit computing postgraduate project management module (M815).

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Recruiting tutors to specialist modules in the School of Computing and Communications at the Open University

David McDade

Highly Commended - eSTEeM Scholarship Projects of the Year Awards 2025.

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Peer-learning activity for communicating algorithms in a Level 2 computer science module

Ravi Rajani

Peer learning is widely believed to address essential transferable skills such as teamworking, communication, and critical enquiry, that are not easily pursued by other means (Topping, 1998; Boud, Cohen and Sampson, 1999).

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Deep dive into role STEM-ByALs-ForALs programme has played in professional journey of participating ALs, and exploration of future directions for the programme

Rupesh Shah

The STEM-ByALs-ForALs programme was set up in 2015, initially just for Science ALs to help build community cohesion and offer a way for science ALs to share good practice. The programme has been running successfully for 9 years, and has adapted to changing circumstances.

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Perceptions and Experiences of STEM Academic Promotion (Professorial): Case study from the Open University, UK

Diane Butler Soraya Kouadri Mostéfaoui Jimena Gorfinkiel Mark McJury

The study adopts a qualitative approach to determine academics’ experiences and perceptions of the Professorial Promotions process (PB1 only) within the Faculty of STEM, Open University.

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