STEM Faculty

Brian Richardson

Senior Manager, Digital Development Services

Professional biography

I have been designing and producing interactive media for teaching in the STEM faculty for over 25 years as a producer and now manager of the Digital Development Services team. The team are responsible for planning, designing and delivering internal and external web and digital multimedia services.

We support the design, creation and maintenance of faculty websites using WordPress, including research group sites, news, project pages, faculty school sites and any other external facing faculty content. We also deliver a range of graphic design projects for print and digital as well as user interface and UX design.

I also (along with others in the DDS Team) work with module teams to facilitate ideas and design and produce innovative, interactive and multimedia teaching materials for STEM modules and advise the faculty on all things related to learning technologies, digital media and online learning.

I've worked on the production of many different modules over the years including, SD226, S288, SD329, SDK125, S317, S112, ME620, SK298, S290 and more recently, T272, S286, S226 and S291. In 2012 I became a Production Manager for the 'THE' award winning OpenScience Laboratory (https://learn5.open.ac.uk/) an online centre that has transformed the teaching of practical science at The OU. This has now evolved into The OpenSTEM Labs (which was awarded the Queens Anniversary Prize for education in 2024) covering the wider faculty teaching and the team works extensively on the design and development for many of the OSL activities along with our academic colleagues. Other large scale projects the team are involved with include the XR Studios, the OpenLiving Lab and the Live Lab and Field-Cast Programme.

BSc (Hons) Environmental Biology

Certified PRINCE2 Practioner

Teaching interests

Environmental and life sciences along with innovative ways of teaching it and the use of media and technology to inspire life long learning.

Latest publications

Displaying 6 of 6 publications

Richardson, B., Bradshaw, K., Collins, T. and Hawkridge, B., 2019, ‘Practical STEM at the Open University: The Use of Live Video in the OpenStem Labs to Innovate Teaching and Create a Community of Practical STEM Students’, in EdMedia & Innovate Learning Conference 2019, 24-28 Jun 2019, Amsterdam., https://oro.open.ac.uk/62273/.
Minocha, S., Davies, S., Richardson, B. and Argles, T., 2014, ‘3D virtual geology field trips: opportunities and limitations’, in Computers and Learning Research Group Annual Conference 2014, 10-11 Jun 2014, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, UK., https://oro.open.ac.uk/40406/.
Garrow, K., Braithwaite, N., Richardson, B. and Swithenby, S., 2013, ‘The OpenScience Laboratory: a globally available online lab at the cutting edge of practical science teaching’, in ED-MEDIA 2013: Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications, 26 Jun 2013, Victoria, Canada., https://oro.open.ac.uk/41847/.
Argles, T., Richardson, B., Davies, S., Minocha, S. and Braithwaite, N., 2013, ‘3D virtual geology field trips: opportunities and limitations’, in HEA STEM: Annual Learning and Teaching Conference 2013: Where practice and pedagogy meet, 17-18 Apr 2013, Birmingham., https://oro.open.ac.uk/37420/.
Minocha, S., Argles, T., Richardson, B. and Burden, D., 2013, ‘A 3D virtual geology field trip in Unity’, in Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education, 24-27 Jul 2013, Second Life (3D virtual world)., https://oro.open.ac.uk/39530/.
Richardson, B. and Bradshaw, K., 2011, ‘Practical science at the Open University: developing an interactive and immersive module teaching experimentation and practical skills at a distance’, in World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications (EDMEDIA) 2011, 27 Jun - 1 Jul 2011, Lisbon, Portugal., https://oro.open.ac.uk/41421/.

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