WELS news

The Open University has launched two new courses exploring the support and care of older people with learning disabilities.  

The Principal Secretary in charge of higher education at the Ministry of Education in Kenya was recently welcomed to the OU’s Milton Keynes campus by colleagues from the School of Education, Childhood, Youth and Sport (ECYS), the Institute of Educational Technology (IET) and the OU’s Business Development Unit. The aim of her visit was to develop understanding of the OU’s successful supported distance learning model and explore elements that could be applicable in delivering quality higher education at scale in Kenya.

Researchers at the OU have created a grab and go guide to support providers of palliative and end of life care services. The guide centres around the Ambitions for Palliative and End of Life Care: a national framework for local action, a framework which presents an overarching vision, six ambitions and eight foundations to help local health and social care leaders build accessible, responsive, effective, and personal care at the end of life.

Open University Nursing students and alumni have picked up prestigious awards at Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Nurse of the Year awards. 

Dr Mike Courtney’s career began with a high-flying role as a commercial airline pilot. Yet academics would be where he’d earn his wings, eventually becoming an Associate Lecturer (Tutor) in the School of Languages and Applied Linguistics. Discover his inspirational teaching style – an approach that recently saw him win a student-voted Tutor Award.

A new toolkit to provide practitioners with the information they need to implement ‘relational care’ in practice with older people in a range of care settings has been launched by Dr Manik Gopinath and Professor Mary Larkin at an event hosted at the House of Lords on 17th May, attended by 120 delegates. 

The 13-member Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel (GEEAP) recently produced a report on cost-effective approaches to improve global learning. This panel is co-chaired by the Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Development (CSGD) – Prof Kwame Akyeampong and Prof Abhijit Banerjee, Nobel prize-winning economist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Open University nursing student Grace McAleer, a final year student on the Northern Ireland (NI) Adult Future Nurse Pre-Registration Nursing Degree Programme, and a Senior Nursing Assistant at the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, presented her work on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) at the NI Chief Nursing Conference on Thursday 4 May 2023.

In this article, OU academic and registered Social Worker Dr Gillian Ferguson reconceptualises workplace learning for Social Workers using her social work research 'When David Bowie created Ziggy Stardust'.

An interactive resource written by Dr Philippa Waterhouse, Senior Lecturer in Health, has been shortlisted for a 2023 Learning on Screen award.