Scenario 1 Learner profile: Bronwen Jones, born 1994

  • In 2026, Bronwen is nearly finished with her interactive printing and cooking course.
  • With personal drone flights now so cheap, Bronwen travels all around the world, enjoying studying from a variety of locations and time zones.
  • She particularly likes 'edgy' places, and some of those are off the network, for political, cultural or resource reasons.
  • All EU organisations must now comply with the 2023 European Data Ownership Regulation (DOR, 21342/2023), which means that all data generated by Bronwen on her device, biochip, personal video capture swarm, and laptop is only accessible by her.
  • When Bronwen finishes her next piece of work, she will need to give specific access to the materials to her tutors, using the Rijndael 2021 encryption approach.
  • On her previous feedback report, she could select specifically which elements of feedback were relevant for her learning. However, her parents, Owain and Rhiannon Jones, did see the full feedback (in line with the DOR, Principle 13, Parental Access Right).
  • Bronwen has not logged into her university's online learning system for two weeks now, and has spent most of her time accessing WebOfScience Data4All databases (helping out several friends who struggled with finding literature at Cardiff University), but she is unsure whether to share this use data with her tutors.

Discussion: How could we apply digital innovation at the OU to improve learning and teaching in this scenario, or using ideas inspired by this scenario?

Scenario 1 Educator profile: William Robinson, born 1975

  • In 2026, William has been teaching for 25 years and is now a fully-accredited Super Teaching Tutor for interactive cookery at level 9, the highest available.
  • Since the Data Ownership Regulation (DOR) came in to force in 2023, getting data from/about students about their progress is increasingly difficult, or even impossible.
  • William feels that his primary role of providing support and feedback to students is severely hampered by the lack of data, and he spends most of his days asking students to get permission to mark their work.
  • William has found out that one of the external services hosted by WebOfScience Data4All does provide individual IP-address information, which he is able to link to email header data. Constructing his own merged data files, he is fairly confident that his student Bronwen is making good progress, but what about his other students...?
  • William has also been concerned about an incident in the US, where all tutoring interactions are made available online. A French-American interactive cookery tutor was at the centre of a social media storm after a dispute with a student about the correct ingredients for Coq-au-Vin (the student insisted on using Jack Daniel's and Diet Sprite, rather than brandy and red wine). William is concerned that if that happened to him, he would be unable to share the video stream that might vindicate him.

Discussion: How could we apply digital innovation at the OU to improve learning and teaching in this scenario, or using ideas inspired by this scenario?