The latest in the seminars that I’m coordinating at the Open University was held recently. I was delighted that this one was presented by my colleague Rebecca Galley, talking about 10 Years of Learning Design at the OU. I was part of this project, building on the excellent work of Grainne Conole. Learning Design is a good example of how you implement institutional change in higher education. The project developed tools, worked with ‘friendly’ course teams, became integrated into the formal course approval process, developed standard workshop and support, refined practice, and then adapted to particular needs, eg using LD to focus on retention.

It is not easy, but we now have a uniform design process across the university, and are one of the world leaders in this approach. It has allowed us to then match analytics against designs, and to develop a common language and representation.

Rebecca talks through the approach, the successes and tensions and possible directions. What this whole project highlights for me is that change in higher education is possible (contrary to the “things haven’t changed in 100 years” trope), but it requires patience and sensitivity. Had we said 10 years ago “everyone is doing learning design now” the project would have met with resistance (it met with enough anyway, I have the scars to attest to this). That’s the price for working with academics and not robots. But by getting people on board, working to solve real problems, talking in their language (not management speak) and being able to demonstrate benefits the OU is now in an excellent place with Learning Design (which is not to say it can’t be a lot better).