FASSTEST

FASS Centre for Scholarship and Innovation logo

FASSTEST brings together colleagues from across the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, 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 outcomes. FASSTEST supports a rolling portfolio of approximately 40 active scholarship projects under a number of themes which include:

  • Online and blended tuition
  • Assessment
  • Employability/careers
  • Equality, diversity and inclusion
  • Mental health and wellbeing
  • Multisensory/multimodal learning

If you are interested in learning more about a particular project or connecting with a project team, please contact us at FASS-Scholarship@open.ac.uk. 

Projects

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9 results found

Communication Strategies and the Tutor-Student Relationship

Project leader(s):  Wendy Humphreys Vicky Johnson

One of the findings of our completed project, The Quality of Tutor-Student Early contact in Post Level 1 Modules, was the extreme variation in both the interpretation and practice of tutors, in terms of early communication within a module.

Supporting DD102 Students to Develop the ‘Reflection on and Articulation of Employability Skills’

Project leader(s):  Ieman Hassan

The project aims are to draw on employability guidance to enable ALs through a practitioner enquiry to ‘make the components of employability explicit to students’ in order to further ‘support students in articulating their skills, values and behaviours gained and developed through their study at

Arts-based Collaborative Digital Eco-Pedagogies for Teaching about the Climate Crisis and Intersecting Global Challenges in Higher and Distance Education

Project leader(s):  Maria Nita Yoseph Araya

The project aims to start a cross-faculty conversation about the current use of novel reflective, digital, public engagement and teaching methodologies in Higher and distance education (Cooke, Araya, Bacon, et al. 2021; Walsh and Powell, 2019).

Criminology: Where Do They Go? A Thematic Analysis of Final Year Criminology Students Pursuing Career Development or Career Change

Project leader(s):  Deborah Drake Karen Sharpe

A key objective of this project is to find ways of ensuring that students are on the right pathway and make the right qualification choices at the outset. This will help to improve the learning experience of students and support retention and progression.

Does Wi-Fi/Data Connectivity Disadvantage OU Students?

Project leader(s):  Sonja Rewhorn Vicky Johnson

Since March 2020 many of us have had to move to working from home using our home internet whether as Wi-Fi or data.  As well as work shifting to online, The Open University also moved all its tuition seminars online.    

The Role of Peer-to-Peer Mentoring in a Distance Learning University: An Evaluation of a Three-Year Pilot in the Arts and Social Sciences

Project leader(s):  Joanna Robson Tina Forbes Sue Watkins

Following two successful small-scale pilots in 2015 and 2017 the current project evaluates the upscaled peer-to-peer mentoring scheme rolled out in the Open University’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in 2020 - 2023.

Raising Student Awareness of Employability Through Multiple Curriculum Adjustments at the Module Level

Project leader(s):  Jonquil Lowe

DB125 You and Your Money replaced DB123 from October 2018J.

Understanding Student Learning of Emotive and Sensitive Content

Project leader(s):  Julia Downes Ruth Wall Anne Alvaer

This ongoing project investigates how diverse distance students learn about sensitive and emotive topics in an undergraduate introductory criminology module.

The OU and Scotland’s Colleges’ Collaborative Teaching Partnership: An Evaluation

Project leader(s):  Gerry Mooney Janet Cole Iain Macpherson Steven McGeever Khadija Patel

The primary purpose of the proposed project was to: