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

108 results found

Understanding Passive Withdrawals on S111

Victoria Pearson Linda Moore Maria Velasco

In every presentation of S111, there has been a percentage of students who remain registered until the end of the module but have had limited or even no engagement with the module content and assessment.  In some cases, they may have never logged on to the VLE at all despite attempts from AL

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Postcard Confessions: Deepening Understanding of Students via their Hopes and Dreams

James Warren Georgy Holden

We think that we know our students, but do we fully understand their hopes the reality of their daily lives?

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Can we reduce anxiety of students sitting remote exams? Sharing best practice between SPS and LHCS

Gemma Warriner Fiona Moorman Becca Whitehead

Winner - eSTEeM Scholarship Projects of the Year Awards 2025.

Our project was a cross school collaboration between the School of Physical Sciences (SPS) and the Life, Health and Chemical Sciences (LHCS).

Rationale for our approach

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What is known about how to write online exams and how to prepare students for them?

Martin Braun

When the Covid pandemic affected education, universities around the globe had to move not only their content delivery online, but also their assessments.

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Enrichment workshops to enhance student engagement and employability

Janet Haresnape Ruth Gilbert Heather Fraser Hanne Bown David Ruiz Hannah Gandy

The aim of this project was to evaluate the programme of enrichment workshops which had been offered to biology and health sciences students in the School of Life, Health and Chemical sciences at the Open University during the summer months in 2022 and 2023.  The aims of the enrichment works

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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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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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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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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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