The LOTA approach
المؤلف:
Chris Dillon & Catherine Reuben & Maggie Coats & Linda Hodgkinson
المصدر:
Enhancing Teaching and Learning through Assessment
الجزء والصفحة:
P284-C24
2025-07-22
411
The LOTA approach
A major challenge was in introducing LOTA ideas to the academic community. Timescales for change in the OU are long. Faculty course teams work largely independently during the 2-3 year production period of a course and it can be difficult to inject new ideas into the course development process. With long production and presentation cycles (OU courses are typically designed to be presented for 6 years, with an interim review, before they are withdrawn, re-written or replaced), new ideas can take a long time to work their way into the system.
Another factor was that academic change in the OU is largely a bottom-up process. The OU has a strong tradition of academic autonomy in terms of designing and producing innovative distance teaching materials. The approach adopted was to focus on changing 'hearts and minds' rather than attempting to force change through. Three main components of the LOTA approach were:
• Establishing a team drawn from across the University comprising staff (including senior academics) from all the faculties and schools to act as 'champions' of the ideas with their academic colleagues.
• Involving the 'champions' in setting up links within their faculties and working with course teams (often ones with which they were already academically involved) to explain and embed LOTA ideas.
• Carrying out, with the support of the champions and course teams, audits to identify the main learning outcomes in courses1, and to explore how the assessment supported the stated outcomes.
There were several significant advantages to this approach:
• The team met monthly over a period of three years and provided a rare opportunity for colleagues from different academic disciplines to come together to talk about learning and teaching at an institutional rather than a faculty or departmental level.
• It made a 'safe' space in which talk to colleagues about learning and teaching, particularly the pros and cons of current approaches, was legitimated. The meetings came to be seen by the team as a uniquely valuable experience2.
• Open and supportive discussions with colleagues from other academic areas provided opportunities to share ideas and information widely, and to learn about where synergies existed across the University that might otherwise not have been evident.
• Workshops, pilot projects and other academic resources supporting LOTA were planned within the group, and then taken forward in ways appropriate to the different academic areas. Academic staff development was, therefore, initiated and mediated by known and trusted individuals within each faculty, not by outsiders.
1 OU courses have a six-year life so most courses had not been designed with learning outcomes and their assessment in mind. All new courses now have stated outcomes and associated assessment strategy.
2 In other research (Dillon et al., 2005) we have found similar 'safe environments' to work well for students in encouraging them to raise awareness of and recognize their own learning and skills.
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