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John Woodthorpe




I am a lecturer in ICTs in Teaching in the Department of Communication & Systems in the Faculty of Mathematics, Computing and Technology.

I'm also a cricket-obsessed, bass guitarist with a love of a wide range of music.  
 
Contact information
T. +44 (0)1908 652356
 

Teaching

I have worked for the OU in various roles since spending my holiday as a Summer School tutor on the Technology Foundation course (T101) in 1983. I have an MA in Metallurgy and Materials Science and over twenty years experience as an industrial scientist, developing new materials and components for aerospace and automotive applications. After tutoring several of the OU's engineering courses, I gradually moved into a consultancy role on several courses including T171 - You, Your Computer and the Net, leading to a lectureship in 2004. Other roles have included:
  • revising and supporting two courses for presentation by the Arab OU
  • applying electronic learning techniques to some of the OU's commercial customers.
  • acting as an Assistant Staff Tutor in various Regions from time to time.
  • Working for the Start Writing range of courses in the Arts Faculty.
I was course team chair for the Faculty's Level One ICT course - T175 Networked Living: Exploring Information and Communication Technologies from 2005 to 2009 and am currently co-chair of its replacement - TU100 My Digital Life.

I've written material for several courses. Most recently I've been working on a new second level course (T215) and am currently writing for TU100.

I've also tutored on a dozen OU courses, mostly in the engineering and ICT area. I've recently reduced that to just T175.

Academic interests

I teach information and communication technologies, specialising in online communication and collaboration.
 
My main research area is online learning, focusing on collaborative learning using communication technologies. I am a COLMSCT Teaching Fellow looking at how our courses can use student-generated resources. That's being conducted through a website called fOUndIt at http://foundit.open.ac.uk.
 

Recent output

My peer-reviewed publications can be found by following the link below to the Open University's research archive Open Research Online.
  • Kear, Karen and Woodthorpe, John (2009). Using wikis for collaborative learning of technology. In: 7th International Conference on Education and Information Systems, Technologies and Applications: EISTA 2009, 10-13 July 2009, Orlando, Florida, USA.
  • Shaw, Jill and Woodthorpe, John (2009). fOUndIt? Sharing online resources to support subject communities. In: 7th International Conference on Education and Information Systems, Technologies and Applications: EISTA 2009, 10-13 July 2009, Orlando, Florida, USA.
  • Woodthorpe, John, Shaw, Jill, Hauck, Mirjam and Beaven, Tita (2009). What’s in it for me? The stick and the carrot as tools for developing academic communities. In: 7th International Conference on Education and Information Systems, Technologies and Applications: EISTA 2009, 10-13 July 2009, Orlando, Florida, USA.   
  • Kear, Karen, Woodthorpe, John and Moss, Nicky (2006). E-learning for Networked Living. In: EADTU (European Association of Distance Teaching Universities) Annual Conference 2006, 23-24 Nov 2006, Tallin, Estonia.