Mark Fenton-O'Creevy is Professor of Organisational Behaviour in the Open University Business School. He led the design and development of the OU's innovative Professional Diploma in Management, a part-time Masters level course that forms the first stage of the Open University MBA. In it, he pioneered a practice oriented and integrated approach, suited to the needs of practising managers and contrasting with the conventional disciplinary-based approach to management education. One of his students commented that it was "probably the most difficult course I have studied, but I loved it: very challenging, great fun, with the best workbooks I have ever used. Highly recommended to anyone who wants to learn and not just pass an exam''.
The Diploma formed part of a successful bid Mark led for the OU's Practice-Based Professional Learning Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (PBPL CETL) , which he jointly leads with thee colleagues . He built a partnership with BBC2's flagship business series The Money Programme, establishing, with colleagues, a range of complementary learning resources for the audience on an OU/BBC website. He also acted as principal academic adviser to the OU/BBC2 documentary series Can Gerry Robinson Fix the NHS? Both the TV series are becoming important resources in OU course design. Another of Mark's innovations was a series of special interest groups to discuss the reading of relevant articles and their significance for teaching.
He says: "It was difficult initially to persuade colleagues of the value of cross-faculty/crossdisciplinary conversations. However, they have been highly successful. A good example is a discussion I facilitated which centred around reflection. The participants were engaged in the education of nurses, social workers, teachers, managers and engineers. All were intrigued to discover the commonality of some of the issues we all struggle with in our teaching but also some of the variety in approach. He is currently engaged in a large scale (4.5m euro) project, with European partners to apply his and others research on fiancial decision-making to developing approaches to technology-supported practice-based learning in financial decison-making for traders, investors and private citizens.