News Story

Studio Properties: A Field Guide to Design Education

Thursday 21 Aug 2025

Authored by six internationally recognised experts in design education, Studio Properties: A Field Guide to Design Education serves as an essential reference for scholars and educators in the field. Among the contributors are Derek Jones and Nicole Lotz, both longstanding academics at the Open University.

The book exemplifies a core strength of the OU: the transformation of teaching into scholarship and research, and the reintegration of this knowledge into teaching practice. This ‘virtuous circle’ of knowledge creation and dissemination is a foundational principle at the OU, where teaching is valued as a mode of knowledge construction rather than merely a process of exchange or transfer. The institution maintains a strong culture of drawing upon high-quality scholarship and research to inform learning and teaching materials.

Derek Jones and Nicole Lotz wish to acknowledge the collective effort involved in producing a work of this scale. They extend their gratitude to colleagues in the Design Group, the wider E&I community, and the institutional groups whose input and values have shaped their thinking and guided the project.

The book has also benefited from the support of the OU eSTEeM Centre for Scholarship and Innovation, both through a series of scholarship projects that evolved into this publication and through more recent direct support. Thanks to eSTEeM, the book will be available as an Open Access educational resource.

In the coming weeks and months, several launch events and workshops are planned. Further details can be found on the website, and those interested in studio pedagogy are encouraged to make contact. The OU’s own teaching model may be more closely aligned with studio practice than many realise.

To find out more, check out the website https://studioproperties.org and the book’s webpage on the Bloomsbury website: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/studio-properties-9781350407503/