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Henry, Jane
(2009).
Abstract
Background - This presentation describes an investigation into the long-term impact of particular OU courses on managers and other practitioners. The courses focused on were Creative Management and Creativity, Innovation and Change, the two most popular MBA electives which are also studied by students as one-off development courses and on various other Masters programmes. They former ran from 1991 to 1998 and the latter from 1999 to 2012. Both are 30 point courses. The research employed qualitative interviews to explore the nature of the achieved outcomes in the context of the settings in which participants were engaged.
Issues -The main issues explored included what, if any, lasting impact the courses had on the practitioners who studied them, the nature of the perceived impact on practice, identification of most valued elements of the course and the nature of the use of the course material long after the course had ended.
Outcomes - The study highlights the positive interaction between different courses in terms of transformative learning. It demonstrates the central importance of assignment selection and the virtue of setting assignments that develop key learnings, the usefulness of progressive assignments and of supporting applied and reflective assignments with domain relevant practices and tools.
These courses made a point of allowing maximum flexibility for students to select material and tasks pertinent to their setting, style and inclination. The study suggests that courses that can built in such flexibility have a better chance of meeting the variety of students needs, especially when those students are from widely varied cultural backgrounds.
This presentation will illustrate some valued ways of encouraging deep learning and potentially life changing practitioner development in an open learning context and highlight the role of assignments, support materials, elearning and fact to face encounters in the learning outcomes.