Creating harmony from Discord ™: Using innovative technology to create a sense of community in distance education

The proposed project extension seeks to advance the initial research that explored the role of Discord as an educational tool within the Open University (OU) and was focused on both student and tutor perspectives. The preliminary study contributed to a nuanced understanding of how Discord can foster community-building, pedagogical engagement, and diverse interactions, especially in a distance learning environment. Despite its comprehensive insights, the study primarily relied on a smaller scale of user experience from the tutor perspectives, not adequately capturing the variability in how different tutors and wider student cohorts could leverage Discord's features. 

To address this limitation, the extension aims to involve 3-6 associate lecturers (currently 3 signed up) in employing Discord within their respective distance-learning undergraduate modules. By widening the scope of participation among faculty, the project aims to offer a robust assessment of the platform’s scalability and adaptability across different pedagogical frameworks and student demographics within the OU.