The Virtual Workplace

Is Higher Education Ready For Virtual Hybrid Working?

The Virtual Workplace report mockup

This report answers the question of whether virtual environments can support effective, collaborative hybrid working by providing detail and explanation of the Digital Working Environment Exploratory Project (DWEEP) carried out within the Learner and Discovery Services Unit at The Open University in the spring / summer of 2022.

As part of the project a series of virtual events have been run and observed to gather data and evidence to help provide an assessment on whether virtual environments can support remote collaborative working. One of the main project aims is to evaluate whether this type of event is, or could be, more effective and efficient than Teams, Zoom, and other remote working tools for remote collaboration, and could therefore help support sustainable hybrid working in the future.

Over one hundred members of staff took part in the project, using a virtual platform as an alternative to video conferencing tools to undertake a series of team events, with mostly positive outcomes. We did, however, identify a number of challenges, particularly around the implementation and use of virtual technologies within a University environment, that would need to be addressed before such technologies could be rolled out more widely across the Higher Education sector. These are explained in detail in the summary report and the accompanying research paper.

DWEEP is part of a larger programme of work, the Supporting Digital Transformation in Wales project, which is funded by The Open University in Wales and the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales. The DWEEP project has been led by the Learning Innovation team with support from the Learning Design team at The Open University in the United Kingdom.

Working in partnership with

Logo for the Higher Education Funding Council for WalesLogo for the Learning Design team at The Open UniversityLogo for the Learning Innovation team at The Open UniversityLogo for The Open University

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