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I am a Staff Tutor, which means I look after those people who teach at the OU. For me, YXM130 provides opportunities for exploration and looking at a problem, or theme, from all kinds of perspectives.
If I was to study YXM130, I would explore how people can make themselves heard, how we listen to one another and how we can communicate in the modern world. I am curious about our diversity in communicating and the challenges for those individuals or groups who find themselves struggling to be heard.
I have found it tough to whittle down my course selection, but I would prioritise the following areas of study on OpenLearn:
- The history of communication from earliest pictorial characters to our modern emojis. Maybe we are coming full circle?
- The science of sound, including a technical perspective which is useful for my online teaching and creation of audio-visual resources.
- My digital presence within wider society.
- Adolescent mental health. I spent over twenty years teaching adolescents in Secondary and Higher Education. The air of each classroom was dense with hormones and possibility, but it is also a hugely challenging time of life. I feel I shall always have more to learn about mental health in this time of change and growth.
- Inclusion and belonging for those with learning disabilities. I feel uncomfortable with the use of the word ‘disability’ and the course I have suggested here considers why we might label people and how we can respectfully support everyone to participate in society.
- Protest via riots and graffiti. I grew up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, when it seemed riots were a frequent occurrence. They happened in NI, but also it was the time of miners’ strikes and the Brixton uprising. People gathered to make their voices heard and violence ensued. I want to have a better understanding of the drivers for a riot.
- Human language and how the brain takes sound waves and gives us meaning from them.
As a scientist, I have snuck a little science and maths into this pathway. Going beyond the 150 hours of study, I would increase my understanding of how animals communicate, and perhaps how sound can also be used to increase bone density and ‘see’ under water.
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