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

68 results found

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 of the 3rd eSTEeM Scholarship Projects of the Year Award 2020 under the category - Enhancing the Student Experience.

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Factors influencing female participation in Physical Science Postgraduate Research Programmes

Clare Reger Mark Bowden Anne-Marie Gallen

The aim of this project was to conduct a scoping study into why lower numbers of female graduates choose nuclear fusion Ph.D.s relative to other physical sciences. This is a particularly nuanced study as we are considering the nuclear fusion research pathway in comparison to other STEM routes.

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Accessibility and inclusion in tuition (AccIT)

Rachel Slater Anne Campbell Elaine McPherson

The AccIT project has four main aims:

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Improving and evaluating inclusivity in group project work for distance-learning engineering students

Alice Moncaster Hedieh Jazaeri

Projects and teamwork are the predominant context in which most engineers work. Providing supported learning experience of such contexts supports employability for our students.

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SiSE only tutor groups and the effect on SiSE students and their tutors

Laura Alexander Linda Moore Victoria Nicholas

Normally at the Open University Students in Secure Environments (SiSE) are allocated in small numbers to standard tutor groups to form mixed groups of 20 students, of whom 1 or 2 would typically be SiSE students.

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Investigating the motivations of female students choosing an open versus named qualification

Elaine McPherson Mary Keys

UK universities (including the OU) have continued to struggle to recruit women to certain subjects within STEM despite best efforts to address this gender imbalance. In 2017, the OU introduced a ‘BSc (Hons) Combined STEM’ degree (R28) alongside its single and joint honours degrees in STEM.

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Evaluating the design of the virtual microscope with students

Christothea Herodotou

Existing studies about the design of the Virtual Microscope (VM) detail the technical specifications of the microscope such as improving the client response time when requesting an image and portability across computer platforms (Çatalyürek et al., 2003; Fereira et al., 1997) and report on develo

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Evaluation of D-flag students accessibility to and use of online tutorials and forums in L2 modules

Sarah Daniell Lorraine Waters

It remains the case that despite different initiatives to encourage tutorial attendance, few students attend live online tutorials in LHCS.

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Investigation into running course specific taster tutorials within prisons for non-OU students

Colin Blundell

Students in Secure Environments (SiSE) can typically have different issues to other students from pre-registration through to the end of their studies.

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