Dr Steve Rycroft

Managing and developing teaching & learning platforms at the OU

Steve Rycroft has a background in experimental physics, commercial publishing and software development, and is a digital leader with 20+ years’ experience in media creation, systems management and product development. Highlights of Steve's interests and experience include:

• Award-winning digital innovation at scale in the Higher Education sector
• Collaborative leader, engaging stakeholders and empowering teams to achieve outstanding results
• Passionate about usability, accessibility and creating great user experiences
• Strong advocate for using technology-enhanced learning and education for social progress

Steve runs the Learning Systems Team in the Learning Experience & Technology (LXT) unit within the Digital Services department at the Open University. Team members are passionate about creating great user experiences and our goal is to enable an effective, innovative and high-quality teaching and learning journey and create a vibrant community of online learners.

• The Learning Systems Team is responsible for the maintenance, development and support of the University's teaching and learning systems and tools, and for planning and communicating the rollout of new features to staff and students.
• The VLE incorporates open source Moodle components, customised production and learning tools, and external services such as Adobe Connect for online tutorials.
• This activity is business-critical, with around 60,000+ students using our systems every day in peak times, hosting 500+ live module websites per year, and many thousands of tuition events taking place in our online rooms.
• We work very closely with colleagues in faculties, production areas, IT and the Design team to prioritise edtech innovation, UX, usability and accessibility improvements. VLE development themes include collaborative tools, content creation, digital assessment, infrastructure and maintenance, and continuous innovation and enhancement.