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

137 results found

Building a sense of community in a core 2nd level Physics module (S217) and investigating qualitatively its effect on retention

Anne-Katrin Klehe

The OU has a broad intake of students from a very wide breadth of educational backgrounds. Most students study part time, mostly up to 60 credits per year while at the same time working full time, looking after a family and/or caring for someone.

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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

M815 Project Management is part of the postgraduate computing programme and can also be studied by MSc students in Technology Management, Environmental Management, Engineering, Systems Thinking in Practice or Space Science and Open MSc/MA. This proposed scholarship project is motivated by tu

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Improving retention through small interventions: The U101 postcard project

Theodora Philcox Elouise Huxor

This project aims to improve student retention on U101, Design thinking. U101 is a gateway Level 1 design module and part of Q61 in 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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Recruiting tutors to specialist modules in the School of Computing and Communications at the Open University

David McDade

Highly Commended at the 8th eSTEeM Scholarship Projects of the Year Awards 2025.

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Team Based Learning tutorials in S248

Kate Nixon Nick Chatterton

This project seeks to improve student engagement in tutorials in S248 Chemistry in life: food, water and medicines.

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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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Assessment and Feedback on Introduction of Group Work on M140

Ruth Neal Kellee Patterson

The aim of this project is to assess the impact on M140 of introducing group work, gain feedback from students and tutors and learn from this experience before rolling this out to all students.

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Innovation in online student support

Cath Brown Sue Pawley

Due to the increasing popularity of the Data Science degree, MST224, Mathematical methods, student numbers have increased significantly. This has resulted in the employment of significant numbers of Associate Lecturers (ALs), and we would like to use the resultant increase

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