EVALUATING A PEDAGOGY TO CLOSE THE GAP BETWEEN THEORY AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE IN MASTERS EDUCATION

We discuss the evaluation of a novel reusable pedagogy adopted on a part-time Masters in Computing offered by the Open University (OU), the largest UK university and distance higher education provider. In developing a professionally relevant Masters, our aim was to marry a deep understanding of discipline specific knowledge with a broad set of skills for application across disciplines to enhance our graduates' employability and career progression, with a pedagogy that combines situated learning on contextual problems, with assessment that allows a student to exercise their knowledge and demonstrate their skills on meaningful tasks in their own context of practice. In our evaluation, which combined traditional and novel semi-automated analysis techniques, alongside standard performance indicators, we looked at effects of the pedagogy on the development of relevant transferable professional and research skills both at module and course levels. From the initial findings, the pedagogy appears to be effective in delivering open and flexible Masters education which is relevant to professional practice, and has clear potential to improve our students' career outcomes, also enhanced by the student delivering added value back to their own organisation. This work will be of particular relevance to educators involved in open and flexible learning, particularly for a professionally oriented audience, and for programmes delivered through instrumented online learning platforms.