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

70 results found

Improving retention through small interventions: The U101 postcard project

Theodora Philcox Elouise Huxor

Post pandemic, student retention on the Level One design module Design Thinking: Creativity for the 21st Century was notably lower than on other comparable Level 1 modules in the School of Engineering and Innovation (E&I).

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Ecoanxiety and environmental education: stories, conversations, actions

Sarah Davies

Ecoanxiety – the distress related to climate and ecological crises – is increasingly recognised in learners by educators (Hickman et al, 2021), in the media (e.g., BBC Ideas 2021, Rannard, 2022) as well as through programmes of advice and education (e.g., Wright, 2022).

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Exploring timeliness, positivity and collection rates of TMA feedback

Colette Christiansen

The correspondence tuition that tutors provide, via the Tutor Marked Assignments (TMAs), is a key part of our teaching and support to students and represents a major investment of time and effort by tutors.

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Evaluating students’ experience of tuition in S217

Adam Freeman Anne-Katrin Klehe

Great effort and time is spent by Associate Lecturers (ALs) on delivering tutorials. Uptake of tutorials in all modules is low. This investigation will concentrate on the experience of students on S217, a second level physics module.

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An investigation into the progression of OU STEM students from taught courses to postgraduate research

Alice Fraser-McDonald

Highly Commended - eSTEeM Scholarship Projects of the Year Awards 2026.

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Making space for female engineering students: an evaluation of the effectiveness of a face-to-face Student Conference

Fiona Gleed

The Engineering profession offers intellectually and financially rewarding careers, with skills in high demand globally. However, women are significantly under-represented, with female students making up 18% of first year Engineering undergraduates in UK HE1.

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The STEM Good Tutor Guide

Chris Douce

It has been 20 years since the university published Supporting Open Learners: Reader, and the accompanying publication, Supporting Open Learners: Theoretical Reader for its tutors. These booklets offer practical guidance about many aspects of the role as a tutor.

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Gaining a deeper understanding of the experience and equitability of extensions and their impact on retention for Stage 1 Engineering students

Emma Champion

Previous scholarship has shown that students with extensions have poorer outcomes on modules and that extensions are used by a higher proportion of students within Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility (EDIA) groups.

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Improving completion of remote examinations in physics

Sally Jordan Jonathan Nylk Becca Whitehead

The project seeks to extend earlier investigations into the factors that enable students to do themselves justice in remote online exams in physics and related subjects, by encouraging them to attempt the exam in the first place and to complete a reasonable number of questions to an appropriate l

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Students’ emotion regulation when learning online

Jake Hilliard

The purpose of this project is to explore students’ emotion regulation practices while studying online. Specifically, this study will investigate how and why students manage their own emotions, as well as examine whether they try to influence their peers' emotions in these learning settings.

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