Research news

According to new research led by Dr Hannah Marston and Professor Sarah Earle, people who used social media messaging apps and platforms during the pandemic reported feeling lonelier than those who did not.

Watch new videos of our winners of The Open University’s first ever People’s Choice Award as they share their thoughts about winning, reflect on their current project and discuss how the OU has helped shape the way in which they conduct research.

Results are in for the annual Open University Graduate School ‘Bake Your Research’ competition… and WELS has bagged the top spot for a second year running.

The Faculty of WELS welcomes two new Research Fellows based in Scotland. This is a significant moment as the faculty becomes the first at the OU to have a research presence in the four nations where the OU is based. 

Dr Natalie Canning, Co-Director of The Open University’s Children’s Research Centre, launches the Empowerment Framework, a new tool for childhood practitioners to analyse children’s play and activities. Based on Dr Canning’s research into Early Childhood contexts, the tool supports the understanding of child development through an empowerment focus.

The OU has secured funding of £5.8m from the Office for Students (OfS) to develop extended reality studios, Open XR Studios, to expand its teaching and learning with augmented and virtual reality.

Dr Lina Adinolfi joins researchers at the OU and across Europe to develop skills in integrating augmented reality into language learning.

A student wellbeing group that sees staff and students work in partnership has been named one of the winners at the 2022 WELS Teaching Excellence Awards.

A team of researchers including academics at WELS and Professor Louise Wallace are behind a project which has received £141,000 in extra funding from The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).

The winner of the OU’s People’s Choice Award is a research project led by Dr Margaret Ebubedike from the Faculty of WELS, co-investigated by Dr Saraswati Dawadi from the Institute of Education Technology, looking at improving the lives of human trafficking survivors in Nepal and Nigeria.