1. Designing for Openness:
Values Based Organisations Place in the Digital Landscape
Ronald Macintyre
@roughbounds
Cite as: Macintyre R. (2017) “Designing for Openness: Values Based Organisations Place
in the Digital Landscape”, Online Education Social Learning – A Showcase, Dublin City
University, 8th of June, CC BY SA 4.0

2. Structure
• Design Based Approaches
• The Reality of Design Work
• Listening to Learners
• Values and Minding
• Some Broader Patterns

3. DESIGN BASED APPROACHES

4. We Start with the value
you want to create for the
learner and/or your
organisation rather than
what you know (or think
learners ought to know)
and how you think we
ought to communicate
VALUE How What

5. Partnership, Co-Production: Designing in, for through
Partnership
• Starts with the Learner, use of
data to profile learner – e.g front
line care staff, possibly distanced
from education, unfamiliar with
learning online
• Build a journey based on their
needs, think about where they
are, their context, experience,
where they want to go
• Builds on the resources and
capabilities you bring and/or want
to develop – strategic and
operational alignment
What
Learners
Want
Resources
and
Capabilities
of the
Organisation
The
learner
Journey

6. Exploring Learners Journeys: Exercise 1
Think about the learner and think about the
value you want to create, the nature of the
transformation
• Draw out an “rich picture” of your “ideal”
[transitional/workplace] learner
• Draw out a “rich picture” of your “actual”
learner
Ideal
Learner
Actual
Learners
The
learner
Journey

7. Exploring Learning Journeys: Exercise 2
• The ideal learner tells us a great deal
about the resources and capabilities of
the organisation – it is often what they are
good at delivering
• The actual learner also tells us a great
deal about the resources and capabilities
• [often] both highlight the limits of our
knowledge about learners needs and
wants
Ideal
Learner
Actual
Learners
The
learner
Journey

8. Linked Phases of Content Production
• Know the Learner
• Map the Learners Journey
• Planning/Structure the Learning
Journey
Design Phase
• Collating
• CreatingWriting Phase
• Technical
ProductionProduction Phase
• Qualitative and QuantitativeEvaluation Phase

9. For example …
Live
Course
Production Authoring
Collating
and
Review
Designing
At least 2 design workshops
Diverse and consistent design team
Set homework between meetings
Clear design brief,
2 to 3 drafts,
Continuous Contact,
Shared Spaces,
(AV, IP & Assessment
can take longer)
Technical
production,
Minimal
changes,

10. THE REALITY OF DESIGN WORK

11. Designing for Openness
Need to “know” your learners, but it is more than a simple
customer/consumer relationship
Value(s)
[personal,
professional,
organisational]
What is
Transformed
[Learners]
How it is to be
tranformed
[the learning
journey]

12. Designing for Openness
Past mistakes: earlier
iterations we had
focussed on the
transformation of the
learner, and in doing
not HOW, or the
implications for change,
or the relationship to
organisational values
Value(s)
[personal,
professional,
organisational]
What is
Transformed
[Learners]
How it is to be
transformed
[the learning
journey]

13. Designing for Openness
Accept the value even when you have tried to account for the
value for the learner, the value is learning comes into being
when enacted, it is uncertain.
Value(s)
[personal,
professional,
organisational]
What is
Transformed
[Learners]
How it is to be
tranformed
[the learning
journey]

14. Reflections on our Practice

15. Reflections on our Practice

16. Reflections on our Practice
Interview Themes
• Take care over the course
because they care about
people, course has high
retention;
• Seeing things in new ways –
better advocates, but not
always recognised;
• Asking difficult questions about
local support

17. Openness Technology and Change
• Lets not pretend its neat.
• You can use open online to reach people, but …
• Open online can be used strategically to colonise a
public space discourse – go to places

18. Openness Technology and Change
• Lets not pretend its easy
• Blurring the boundaries around an organisation creates
tensions at operational level
• Partnership asks questions at a strategic level,
organisation sense of self as site of knowledge

19. LISTENING TO LEARNERS

20. Scottish Union Learn
The Gap in provision ...
• Employer and funding pressure meant offer was
increasingly focussed on work related learning
• Why Mind ..
• Values of the organisation, focus on collective
models of learning and lifelong learning, beyond
instrumental values
Gathered as part of Open Educational Practices Scotland – see herehttps://oepscotland.org/2015/10/22/oeps-working-with-
scottish-union-learn-education-champions/

21. Scottish Union Learn
What difference did open make
• developing new education opportunities and support
digital participation
• The approach – built on organisational values, self
directed and social support, collective learning,
• Still digital challenges, employers attitude, capacity to
support those that are supporting others in the
workplace
Gathered as part of Open Educational Practices Scotland – see herehttps://oepscotland.org/2015/10/22/oeps-working-with-
scottish-union-learn-education-champions/

22. Emerging Patterns and Practices
Partnership with “trusted
sources” embedding
openness in context, it works,
Challenging notions of open
as only “self directed”
through social and collective
approaches
Macintyre R. (2015) Union Learning Workshop: Glasgow, CC BY NC SA 4.0Gathered as part of Open Educational Practices Scotland – see herehttps://oepscotland.org/2015/10/22/oeps-working-with-
scottish-union-learn-education-champions/

23. VALUES AND MINDING

24. Reflection on Value(s)
• What is the relationship with the state and “Public
Value”?
• Third Sector organisations can act as spaces of
resistance to dominant/ing discourses from private and
public sector
• .. .while also getting funding to make things “freely
available”

25. Reflection on Value(s)
• For values based organisations values inform “the way
we do things around here”
• This means applying models with assumptions of about
value (e.g. shareholder), or the nature of the “customer”
interactions might not be appropriate
• Design based approaches need to be applied with care,
they have their own assumptions, esp. about needs

26. Minding the Gap
• Digression into what it
means to mind
• Common usage, to be
careful
• In Scots, to recall or
remember,
• e.g. Begbie on the
overnight bus to London
in Trainspotting, “Did
you mind the cards”
Bluewhale646 (2013) Francis Begbie,
http://villains.wikia.com/wiki/File:Francis_Begbie.jpg, CC BY SA

27. Minding
• Holes in Provision
• Work on failings of Public and Market suggest we read those
failing through their absent presence
• Work on Third Sector and on Values based organisations
suggests we see their role as filling structural holes
• A shared sense of “minding”, of concern, or caring about
the gaps in peoples learning journeys – remember to
care.

28. SOME BROADER PATTERNS

29. Emerging Patterns and PracticesGrowing Interest
from values based
organisations in
free open online
Agree Disagree
II would like to use free open online content to
support my clients
Gathered as part of Open Educational Practices Scotland – see here https://oepscotland.org/
Participants were asked to place a dot on an imaginary line between the two positions at the SCVO event “The Gathering”,
the largest Third Sector event in Europe, (n=52)
Emerging Patterns and Practices

30. Emerging Patterns and Practices
Growing Interest
from values based
organisations in
free open online
I am confident in my own ability to
use free open online content as
part of my role
Agree Disagree
Gathered as part of Open Educational Practices Scotland – see here https://oepscotland.org/
Participants were asked to place a dot on an imaginary line between the two positions at the SCVO event “The Gathering”,
the largest Third Sector event in Europe, (n=52)

31. Emerging Patterns and Practices
Concerns
Agree Disagree
I am worried if we move towards using too
many digital materials the people I support
will be excluded
Gathered as part of Open Educational Practices Scotland – see here https://oepscotland.org/
Participants were asked to place a dot on an imaginary line between the two positions at the SCVO event “The Gathering”,
the largest Third Sector event in Europe, (n=52)

32. Emerging Patterns and Practices
Concerns
Agree Disagree
I think my organisation is taking a
leadership role in the development and
use of online content
Gathered as part of Open Educational Practices Scotland – see here https://oepscotland.org/
Participants were asked to place a dot on an imaginary line between the two positions at the SCVO event “The Gathering”,
the largest Third Sector event in Europe, (n=52)

33. Questions – if time

34. Acknowledgements
• Much of the work presented here would not have been possible
without funding from the Scottish Government for Open
Educational Practices Scotland (OEPS) a programme hosted by
the OU in Scotland, and special thanks to Pete Cannell the
Director of OEPS.
• The team at Parkinson’s UK, in particular Claire Hewitt who has
been an important influence on this work.
• The team at Scottish Union Learn, in particular Tommy Breslin for
helping me get close to and understand workplace learning.

35. Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership
The Open University Business School
The Open University
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA
www.open.ac.uk