Designing, Co-Producing and Delivering New Modules: Considerations for Collaboration
Here at the Open University, we have a clear mission, which is to be open to “people, places, methods and ideas”. As a Student Experience Manager for the Faculty of Business and Law (FBL) for 5 years, I was honoured to be asked to help produce a new module for the OU’s new law degree. Some readers may know that we offer 1000s of free courses on top of the degree provision and the numerous partnerships we have, including one with the BBC for David Attenborough documentaries.
In this blog, I set out the key stages of the process and outline some of the questions that we asked ourselves when designing the innovative and new module entitled “International, Environmental and Space Law”. Yes, it sounds quite Sci-Fi, which is a big draw for students… and we introduced it at undergraduate level knowing there was no other HE provider “out there” delivering this rich and contemporary blend of content. The OU is not unfamiliar with designing and delivering cutting edge content and overcoming challenges with module design.
With a view to helping readers looking to create content for modules, I feel it is important to point out that the OU does operate at a different and larger scale than most universities. Nevertheless, we have evolved from being a university of the airwaves to a university of the cloud and have helped create over 2.3m graduates since we opened in the late 1960s, and evolved with the times.
Keeping true to visions and values
At a foundational level, I certainly feel that the groundwork for successful delivery is laid during the planning phase of production. Value is mainly derived from effective co-production and collaboration taking place between authors of module content, tutors delivering content and tutorials, and students.
When designing a module, the production team are conscious of keeping our core mission and values in mind as they are at the forefront of all that we do at the OU. And so, the first tip I would offer to any authors of content is to keep your institution’s mission/values in mind at the planning phase and think about the overall lenses you will use to help students look at content. We sought to design content that empowers students to critically question the extent to which law achieves social justice.
The process and the key questions
Here the steps and questions we reflected on when designing the course and they are framed within the OU’s core mission statement.
People
Our module production team consisted subject specialists. The module needed to be housed withing the faculty of law but also appeal to students across the university studying on other programmes. I therefore recognised the importance of building bridging support materials to help non-law students engage with content. Some of that involves providing guides to “threshold concepts”, this helps engage students with the language and concepts involved in law.
The guiding points to consider start working on were, deciding on what to leave out at the design and planning stage, ensuring what was left in the module was accessible to both law and non-law students. I recognised the importance of adding in support material to help students struggling with content and ensuring the module was deliverable interactively online.
Places
As an online university, design and user experience is at the forefront of our minds during production. The exciting challenge was there was no simple “off the shelf” textbook that could be used. It was therefore essential that excellent authorship and rigorous critical review took place. As a team we collated the first drafts, then refined them via collective effort to enable different reviewers taking different perspectives could be involved in the creative process. This helped the module to meet the needs of our students.
The questions to ask here were:
How will the module be delivered face to face/online/blended/synchronous/asynchronously?
Where and how can student voice be incorporated during production and then into the cycle of delivery?
If the course is being delivered in a variety of ways, how can you ensure the content and tutorial activities work well for all students?
Will materials/resources be housed online in student module pages?
What extra supporting materials will be given to tutors and students with respect to study skills?
Methods
When designing the module, map out the content and number of weeks each unit would be delivered and when the assessment points will take place. It is at this stage of module design where it is important to understand the evermore changing needs of students. Each institution has a different student cohort which will guide module production.
The key questions we asked were:
What, if any, are the underlying issues, or themes that could act as the “golden thread” which could weaved throughout the module?
Why not set up a focus group or bring some ex-students to provide a “student view”?
Why not take the opportunity to introduce new, different and innovative types of assessment when designing new and innovative content?
Why not ask student which types of assessment are useful and enjoyable to craft?
Ideas
The key drivers to better understanding the changing needs of students and creating a new and vibrant module taking where an inclusive and student-centred to collaborative design thinking and methodology, approached inclusive pedagogy and produced innovative content delivered supportively and flexibly.
The key idea here was to incorporate authentic assessment techniques that allow students to be assessed in more creative and employment focussed ways.
To help co-produce the module, we consulted with students on their preferred types of assessments. More importantly how do we consolidated these ideas and perspectives in a way that allowed us to create a vibrant module.
Bringing it together
As the Lead SEM in production, I created a tuition strategy that set out the student tutor contact time, the assessment schedule, and offered some of the pedagogical advice that was useful when authoring tutorial activities. The tutorial authors then authored, we set production deadlines for each and every set of unit materials and tutorials and three stage critical review of all unit content drafts.
All content was written and edited online and housed in a secure and password protected shared space. This allowed all participants to edit, comment and re-draft in real time and thus meet the production schedule. Bringing in the student voice via consultation was a challenge too but overcome by setting up threads on forums where students can engage in dialogue with a member of the team.
This helped to ensure lots of quality control checks were put into place, and that all members of the team could see how the course was shaping up and coming together. After that, the IT and data copywrite clearance checks were completed. The module content checked for accuracy and functioning interactive links to activities in tutorial design, authorship of assignment questions and guides for tutors, mark schemes and support materials.
We were then ready to launch. It proved successful following a hard 18 months from design to delivery.
The success
This is the best part: the results were very encouraging after the end of the first presentation. Over 80% of students submitted the first assignment on time, which was encouraging given the complex work/home lives of OU students. Encouragingly, over 76% of students passed the module (which was the highest in comparison to equivalent modules starting at that time in the faculty). Just over 20% of students achieved a distinction grade, 57% achieved a Grade 2-3. Another positive success was the “awarding gap” data narrowed which meant that black, Asian and students with disabilities were performing better in this more inclusive module than its equivalents.
Part of this was due to the team designing a more inclusive form of assessment (e.g. a script for a podcast), having critical reviewers use an inclusive curriculum tool that ensures authors build in content that reflects students (e.g. examining the diversity of astronauts), the ways in which space exploration programmes have encouraged students with disability apply to take jobs in this field, digital inclusion checks to help students who may not be as engaged with access and use of online and digital resources to have check points and signposts to resources and support services.
The future
We are now in the second presentation. We want to improve the offer even further and have built in immediate feedback mechanisms into the programme so students can feedback to us at key points of their study. The issues they raise can then be addressed while they are studying rather than at the end of the course. Feeback as to responsiveness to student need and their experience is then taken at the end of the course to help us to reflect on how responsive the team was to their needs.
As you can see, the path to achieving success is not linear or straightforward. To me, the only way to reach it is through collaboration. Yes, the OU may be a large institution with multiple people to collaborate with. This can be useful and presents its challenges. But regardless of the scale of your institution, when designing, producing and delivering modules, effective collaboration is the key to success.
About the author
After leaving legal practice, Ash Odedra has worked as an academic manager since 2005. He joined the Open University in 2015 as an Associate Lecturer. Since 2019, he is also a Student Experience Manager. He has led in quality enhancement for undergraduate and postgraduate studies across the Business and Law Schools where he has designed tuition strategies, produced modules, authored online teaching and tutorial content. He likes to paint, draw, sculpt, make music, and direct short films.
