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:
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.
38 results found
Project leader(s): Kevin Deane Susan Newman Lorena Lombardozzi Francis Garikayi
The discipline of Economics in the UK has a significant diversity and inclusivity problem. Women, black students, and students from working class backgrounds are under-represented in higher education and academia.
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).
Project leader(s): Alan Shipman
This project aims to investigate how other UK providers of Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) degrees have addressed the challenges of the three-way combination, through their structuring of the three disciplines, curriculum choices within them, and other aspects of design and delivery
Project leader(s): Suzanne Newcombe Paul-François Tremlett John Maiden Hugh Beattie Maria Nita
In line with colleagues in many other institutions, the Religious Studies Department at the Open University has adopted a pedagogical emphasis roughly known as the ‘lived religion’ thesis.
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.
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.
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.
Project leader(s): Alex Tickell Michael O'Flynn Angela Eyre
This project responds to a practical problem faced by members of the module production team on the new English MA (A893).
Project leader(s): Suzanne Newcombe Paul-François Tremlett John Maiden Hugh Beattie
Phase 1 has been completed, and an application for Phase 2 of this project has been approved in principle and is being refined in light of feedback received from the FASSTEST Coordination Group and EDI team. Details will be available soon.
Project leader(s): Janet Hunter
Anyone who has taught via online platforms will be aware that some students find it hard to engage with this medium of learning. Many students sign up to such sessions but do not join on the day, whilst others do not sign up at all.