2,629 search results

Design thinking
Science, Maths & Technology

Design thinking

...world of stuff - In his book Creativity, Innovation, and Making Stuff (2007), Rich Gold calls the totality of designed things we have around us ‘the plenitude’. He looks around his kitchen and tries to count the number of things there are: I can easily count a thousand, but the actual answer is fractal. Every appliance, every tool, even every food (certainly if you...
Level 1: Introductory 10 hrs
Algorithmic Design
Science, Maths & Technology

Algorithmic Design

...world, and propel you to the cutting edge of where the design discipline is heading. [Described image] Figure 2 Algorithmically generated wallpaper pattern At the start of the course in Section 3: Playing with Code, you will learn some of the basic principles and skills of algorithmic design such as how to draw shapes and control colour by tweaking some code examples. In...
Level 1: Introductory 12 hrs
An introduction to interaction design
Science, Maths & Technology

An introduction to interaction design

...world around us. [Described image] Figure 2 Close up of someone using touch and gesture to interact with a learning application about white sharks on an iPad Consider how the interactive maps available on smartphones have changed people’s relationship with and experience of their surroundings. Do you remember what it was like trying to find your way around a new city...
Assessing contemporary science
Science, Maths & Technology

Assessing contemporary science

...world. For the last 20 years or so, I’ve been working on the recent Rosetta mission here at The Open University. For me and the team, the 12th of November 2014 was an incredible day. It was the day that the Philae Lander finally landed on the comet after its 10-year, 4-billion mile journey around our solar system. On-board, within the Philae Lander, was the Ptolemy...
Level 2: Intermediate 9 hrs
Exploring health: is your lifestyle really to blame?
Health, Sports & Psychology

Exploring health: is your lifestyle really to blame?

...World Health Organization (2002), they concluded that in high-income countries nearly half of the total current burden of disease (i.e. the number of years of life lost to disease and the number of years lived with disability as a result of disease) is attributable to unhealthy behaviours such as smoking, alcohol misuse, poor diet and a lack of physical exercise. The term...
Inclusive Leadership: Effecting change
Education & Development

Inclusive Leadership: Effecting change

...world, so that you reflect on personal and institutional responses to enacting leadership that support the involvement of all. If you haven’t already, you might want to consider exploring the related OpenLearn courses after completing this course: Inclusive Leadership: Collaborating for professional development Leadership for inclusion: thinking it through Leadership...
An introduction to social work
Health, Sports & Psychology

An introduction to social work

...world as a highly complex web of interacting systems which are mutually dependent (perhaps the food chain is the best-known example). When applied to social work, human society is seen as a network, implying that intervention in one part can have dramatic effects on others. The tendency to see such a network as concentric circles (with the individual in the middle and...
Level 1: Introductory 15 hrs
Ratting out disease: How animals are detecting disease - and other threats to life
Health, Sports & Psychology

Ratting out disease: How animals are detecting disease - and other threats to life

...world, other animals – mostly dogs – are being used experimentally to screen human samples for disease; the TB-sniffing rats of Tanzania are the only animal disease-detectives in routine use. When medics first hear about the programme, they are often sceptical about the idea of using rats rather than machines, says Christophe Cox, CEO of Apopo, the Belgian-based...