Student mental health is a critical issue in higher education. It is understood that higher education can act to trigger or exacerbate mental health difficulties, but research in this area has focused primarily on campus environments, identifying stressors such as halls of residence. Since distance learning students disclose mental health issues…

We describe findings from a study based upon a collaborative project carried out online as the end of module assessment activity of a multidisciplinary science module at the UK Open University. Our aim was to determine how well students dealt with working in a team of unfamiliar multidisciplinary scientists and to identify tools and processes that…

The wellbeing of students in higher education generally, and law students, in particular, has become an area of increasing concern in recent years. Despite the growing interest in the area, empirical work on the wellbeing of distance learning law students remains sparse. This paper builds on previous studies around wellbeing in higher education,…

This conceptual paper sets out the community-of-inquiry framework from a distributed perspective. It proposes that considering teaching presence, social presence and cognitive presence from a distributed perspective allows the broadening of the presences to consider the way in which participants, content and tools maintain and advance these…

This article investigates the concept of flipped learning in an online learning environment. It evaluates the case study of the award-winning flipped learning project carried out in the context of a beginners' level German module at The Open University, UK, during the academic year 2017/18. In particular, the article focuses on the similarities…

Offering education by distance provides an important sociological tool for equalising opportunities in developed nations. However, for developing nations and more particularly some of the least-developed countries in the world, it has the potential to play a much larger role in providing both basic and advanced educational opportunities and,…

Active learning in mathematics can lead to deeper understanding than passively listening to a lecture, yet recent studies indicate that didactic teaching dominates online tutorials. This study investigated student participation in three types of activity: solving mathematical problems via polling, on-screen activities on a shared whiteboard and…

A range of studies into the efficacy of online discussion forums is available, and this study seeks to add to the body of evidence around students' experiences of using online discussion forums within a distance learning context. The Open University (OU) is still the UK's largest provider of distance higher education. OU distance learners are…

Learning Management System (LMS)-enabled blended learning has been adopted by higher educational institutions for promoting accessible and effective pedagogy and andragogical practices. The introduction of this mode of learning has altered the traditional face-to-face interaction. However, the lack of actual usage and online presence by…

Despite a growing body of work on understanding how students perceived the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the effects on existing distance learning universities have received less attention. This study aimed to understand changes in distance learning students' study habits (learning, assessment and social activities) and assess the factors…

The COVID-19 pandemic created many challenges for higher education institutions (HEI), one of the most important being forced e-learning -- the involuntary need to move all educational activities to an online environment. In this exploratory study, we aim to learn from students' feedback on demands created by COVID-19 forced e-learning to provide…

Australian tertiary institutions offer online units to provide flexibility for students unable to attend classes on campus due to the constraints of distance and scheduling. While lecture materials and discussions can be accessed asynchronously, a synchronous element allows lecturers and students to interact in real time. Blackboard Collaborate,…

Higher Education (HE) is experiencing disruption from technologies, demographics, the globalising world and longer life expectancy. Historically Higher Education has had a legacy of being seen as the requirement for an educated "elite", there has been a policy ambition set in various countries (including the UK) for it to become the…

Distance education institutions, students and staff have often had to overcome negative perceptions about the overall quality of their programmes and qualifications. In this paper, we identify four of the major challenges cited as undermining the credibility and effectiveness of open, distance and e-learning (ODeL): the quality of teaching,…

In this article, we argue that, if open learning seeks to (re)assert a social justice mission, issues of openness and flexibility are more critical than ever. Drawing on qualitative data from a National Union of Students Wales/Open University study, which explored, in the voices of Welsh students, the identity, motivation and barriers faced by…