Currently leader of OpenLearn at the Open University, Patrina’s path of strategic leadership in OER champions the cause of openness in education. She has led projects and policy to extend the reach of OER, drive its scholarship, and support learners with career and life-enhancing content, enabling a reach to millions of learners (16 million in 2022) more than 60% outside the UK, many of them students without ready access to learning materials. Patrina has managed the OER Operating Policy, making possible for OER to published across the most popular third-party channels such as YouTube and Amazon, all part of extend the social mission of open education.
Patrina identified early on that the Open University’s (OU) endeavour to produce OER at scale through OpenLearn was one which had become disassociated with institutional OER research – a separation of policy and data. She has driven strategic projects to research learners’ motivations for, and expectations of, their learning experience with OER and has completely changed the face of OER delivery at the OU, pioneering the work to deliver millions of free certificates and digital badges for OER against a backdrop of MOOC providers charging a fee in recognition of studying equivalent micro-credentials.
Under Patrina’s leadership OpenLearn now underpins all formal student induction, employability, course choice and subject mastery as well as serving a global, growing population of millions of international learners. She has ensured that the scholarship of OER is built into new staff induction, providing extensive support and training to ensure open practice is embedded into academic life. Patrina’s inspirational work has driven projects with Government departments, international bodies, private sector, NGO and not-for-profit organisations and has attracted extensive funding from multiple donors.
Shortly after the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, Patrina led the commissioning and publishing tailored resources for Ukrainians, and the expanded effort that she led is also recognized this year with the OEAward Special Award for Resilience.
Award Nominator
I am inspired to nominate Dr. Patrina Law for this award because the global reach of OER through OpenLearn is now considered by many to be the jewel in the crown of Europe’s largest distance learning university, and this is largely down to her contribution.
This is an extremely strong and compelling nomination which details how leadership over many years can result in significant global impact. What I see I is one person’s drive to bring openness mainstream and to continue to find ways to lift people up all over the world.
Award Reviewer
Explore more about this award…
Podcasts from Open Education Global
In our long overdue newest episode, we spoke to Patrina Law about her recognition with a 2023 Individual Open Education Award for Excellence in Leadership. We recorded this back in late September 2024 just prior to the announcement of the 2024 OEAwards. We are confident when you listen to Patrina you will find the wait was worth it!
Patrina shares her path from starting in the field of working in a charity organization, then joining the Open University where she ultimately came to lead OpenLearn, and recently circling back to charity in your current role with the Royal Society for the Arts. You will hear her passion for making educational opportunities available as widely as possible to society and her interests in digital badges, research, and aligning programs to documented impact.
at Descript.com
In This Episode
FYI: For the sake of experimentation and the spirit of transparency, this set of show notes alone was generated by the AI “Underlord” in the Descript editor we use to produce OEGlobal Voices.
Join Alan Levine as he interviews Patrina Law, a renowned leader in Open Education Resources (OER), in this latest episode of OE Global Voices. Patrina, a 2023 award winner for leadership in OER, shares insights from her extensive career at the Open University, including her impactful work with OpenLearn.
Explore how Patrina’s passion for open education and inclusion has driven innovative projects and research, such as the introduction of digital badges and alternative learning formats. Learn how these initiatives have empowered diverse learners around the world and the significance of data-driven strategies in shaping educational content.
In this captivating conversation, Patrina also delves into her transition to the Royal Society for the Arts (RSA) and her current role in advancing the Digital Badging Commission. Discover the RSA’s mission and the potential of digital badges in recognizing and validating non-formal learning in the workforce.
Don’t miss this episode filled with inspiration, innovation, and a deep commitment to making education accessible to all. Tune in for a journey through Patrina’s remarkable contributions and her vision for the future of open education.
- Intro music and highlight quote
- Welcome to OE Global Voices
- Conversation with Patrina Law
- Patrina’s Background and Education
- Journey to Open Education
- OpenLearn and Its Impact
- Challenges and Achievements
- Digital Badges and Inclusivity
(end of AI generated show notes)
Additional Links and Quotes for Episode 77
I think the first side of it was having the freedom to develop the team that develop all the content. And I was very lucky that I had a really fabulous team when I was there of really dedicated and enthusiastic folk who were very good at making open educational resources.
And I think probably I would put that as down as one of the great successes because they had the skill set to work with academics who in some senses were often dealing with very challenging subject material or very deep subject material that was aimed at undergraduates Level Two, Level Three undergraduates, and they had to rework that material and make it accessible to all, and so I and they made wonderful animations, they made great videos, they made great audio they turned that material into real living, breathing, fantastic, engaging learning content, so I think one of the successes for me, although I can’t say that it was all my doing, but as a team, was the team.
Patrina Law on her team at OpenLearn
- Open Education Award for Excellence 2023 Leadership Award (OEGlobal) https://awards.oeglobal.org/awards/2023/leadership/patrina-law/
- 2023 Open Resilience Award Winner Responsive OER for Ukrainians (OEGlobal) https://awards.oeglobal.org/awards/2023/open-resilience/responsive-oer-for-ukrainians/
- 2021 Open Resilience Award Winner OpenLearn’s response to the pandemic (OEGlobal) https://awards.oeglobal.org/awards/2021/open-resilience/openlearns-response-to-the-pandemic/
- Institute of Educational Technology (The Open University) https://iet.open.ac.uk/
- Open Learning: Bridge to Success (The Open University) https://oro.open.ac.uk/35734/
- OpenLearn https://www.open.edu/openlearn/
- Royal Society for the Arts https://www.thersa.org/
- Nobody Tips a Scandiscope (Energyphile, story of chimney sweeps and the brush) https://energyphile.org/nobody-tips-a-scandiscope/
- Cities of Learning https://www.citiesoflearning.net/
- UK Digital Badging Commission https://www.badgingcommission.org/
- Mozilla Open Badges (Wikipedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Open_Badges
- 1EdTech https://www.1edtech.org/
- Open Badge standard https://www.1edtech.org/standards/open-badges
- Ufi VocTech Trust https://ufi.co.uk/
Because so much of OER is really aimed at just everybody. And it’s, a whole point of it is to be totally open, but to have sat forward and undertaken some learning yourself, I think you should be rewarded for that at some level. And digital badges seem to be that happy marriage. So it’s great to be working in open badging again for the RSA, for all the right social good reasons as well.
Patrina Law on recognition of Open Badges
Our open licensed music for this episode is a track called Let the Flames Lead the Way by Jon Shuemaker licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Like most of our podcast music, it was found at the Free Music Archive (see our full FMA playlist).
Finally, this was another episode we are recording on the web in Squadcast, part of the Descript platform for AI enabled transcribing and editing audio in text– this has greatly enhanced our ability to produce our shows. We have been exploring some of the other AI features in Descript, but our posts remain human authored except where indicated otherwise.
