In February 2023, I accepted the post of Senior Learning Designer - focusing on Student Outcomes. This was in response to the Office for Students (OfS) new regulatory framework, the B3 condition of registration, which focuses on student outcomes. This framework sets out specific baselines for student outcomes indicators, ensuring that educational providers, including The Open University, are accountable for delivering successful outcomes for their students. 

The three primary criteria set by the OfS for this framework are:

1. Student continuation, which is gauged by students progressing to their third year of study.

2. Degree outcomes, focusing on students completing their qualifications and considering differential outcomes based on student characteristics.

3. Graduate progression, with an emphasis on progression to professional jobs and postgraduate studies.

The Open University's performance against these criteria is generally good. We're slightly above the threshold for continuation but a more concerning 7% below the threshold for completion (as of July 2023). Given the unique nature of the OU's student demographic, which often includes part-time learners, mature students, and those with study gaps, this performance tracks with expectations. Nevertheless, the new thresholds mean we need to make improvements.

Non-compliance with these criteria could lead to repercussions, including consultations with the OfS, potential fines, and even the risk of losing accreditation. 

The Office of the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Students) has started up the Student Outcomes Portfolio, which aims to enhance student outcomes, ensure the university's financial stability, and prepare the institution for any regulatory assessments from the OfS.

In addition to this, a specialized sub-team was formed within the Learning Design team, which I am leading. I started with a very open brief, which I've worked with the head of Learning Design to refine in to a series of objectives and responsibilities:

• Overseeing ongoing student outcomes initiatives that influence Learning Design and LDS practices.

• Reviewing all activities within Learning Design and LDS that contribute to student outcomes.

• Identifying both the facilitators and challenges associated with practices that enhance student outcomes.

• Collaborating and advocating with university colleagues to advance these practices.

• Assisting the Learning Design and LDS teams in refining their practices through the perspective of student outcomes.

• Pinpointing and advancing specific projects that have a positive impact on student outcomes.

Thus far, I've led on a massive discovery activity, looking across all of the individual services within my own team (Learning Design) and the wider unit (LDS - Learner and Discovery Services) to establish and articulate how different areas of our work contribute towards student outcomes - and how we are evolving our practice to better support them. This has culminated in two reports (with ever expanding scope and reach) which articulate those links, identify the enablers and challenges in evolving that practice - and uses these to inform a series of recommendations. I'm currently working through these with senior colleagues across the university.

Two immediate actions I've taken have been to take up the lead on our Training work, and co-creating a consistent delivery template. These address two well known influencers of student outcomes - the design of learning (including the process, and design of curriculum), and an inconsistent structural study experience adding friction and cognitive load to the student experience.

The training work has gotten off to a great start, pulling together new and old asynchronous training content around the process and rationale of good learning design approaches, to easy-to-follow toolkits and instructions for academic authors. These are currently being evaluated with new academics as part of their induction process, which i'm inordinately chuffed about.

The consistency of the study experience has thus far proved to be a tricky beast, but is well worth the effort - pulling together requirements and recommendations from a wide range of sources to form a central set of guidance / criteria for curriculum teaching content delivery. This piece of work is complex, in flux around the specific form it needs to take as a product, and involves a wide range of stakeholders - but if we can nail it we'll improve both the production experience for staff - and the study experience (and as a knock-on, outcomes) for students.

It'll be years before we're able to properly measure the final, student facing impact with all of this, but in the interim I'll be evaluating our work and direction of travel with our internal stakeholders, and student voice volunteers.

Oh yes and I should mention that in addition to the focus on the above, I'm also signed off on my regulatory essentials including GDPR, Safeguarding, Prevent, and Equality.

Turns out universities are better regulated than water companies. #satire

As discussed elsewhere in this portfolio, student outcomes underpin all of the work done in the Learning Design team, be it proactively through design - or retrospectively through evaluation - and has been the focus of my role since day 1. Saying that, we haven't always articulated our work in terms quite that direct - which may account for why it's sometimes an uphill battle to 'sell' our services to colleagues internally.

I've found the switch to the strategic focus in regards to the OfS requirements quite refreshing, as it's given me an opportunity to take my lived/worked experience as a Learning Designer, and compare it against the strategic intent and outside perception of what we do. Turns out, the marriage was less harmonious than I'd expected.

I was pretty anxious about how I'd do in this role to start with, line management can be a tricky beast, and the mental weight of the Student Outcomes of a massive university felt a little daunting. 8 months on though, I'm feeling good about the work I've done with it. I'm still struggling a little to shift my head out of the 'hands on, do the thing make the thing' mentality of doing everything myself, and parcelling things off in such a way that they can be divvied out, coordinated and delegated, but I'm slowly slowly getting there. I'm also very lucky in that the team I manage are ace.

Something I'll continue to wrestle with is the distance between the work I do in this role, and the measurable impact on student outcomes. Alongside a coordinated effort in both the Student Outcomes portfolio, and across the wider university, there are a range of initiatives in play looking to improve student outcomes - and for many of them we might not even begin to be able to measure their combined effort until a few years down the line when the outcomes data for those students come in. Still,I've been pleasantly surprised at how well received the work - and in particular the unit wide reporting has been in general. It's acted an an informal pulse check and review of activity across the unit, that folk from both within and without the unit have found useful in understanding what it is we actually do, and how it helps.

Still - what have I learned? I've learned that suggesting folk do something because it's based on good research and good practice carries a modest amount of weight - but that suggesting it's connected to legislation that poses an existential threat to the university doesn't half get folks ears pricked up.