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Mr John Woodthorpe

Photo of John Woodthorpe

Profile summary

  • Central Academic Staff
  • Head of School, C&C
  • Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics
  • School of Computing & Communications
  • john.woodthorpe

Professional biography

John is a senior lecturer who is Deputy Head of School and Director of Teaching for the School of Computing and Communications. He first worked for the Open University on residential Summer Schools in 1984 before becoming a part-time tutor on a range of Engineering, Technology, Computing and Arts modules. One of those modules regularly attracted 10-15,000 students per year and was the largest wholly-online module in the University. He took on a variety of consultancy roles with the OU's commercial and licensing activities, and supported groups of part-time tutors as the number of online modules and students increased. Most of this was while working as a materials scientist for the R&D centre of a multinational automotive and aerospace component manufacture.

In 2004 he took up a full-time lectureship with the OU, working on the production and presentation of a range of new modules. From 2014 to 2019 he provided the link between the School's student support team and its curriculum, while the University made two major reorganisations of its student support activities. In that role, he increased the integration between the curriculum and student support areas, and is working to improve that even further as Director of Teaching. He is no longer a part-time tutor for the OU, and so has a bit more time to spend with his ever-expanding collection of Raspberry Pi projects and grandchildren, and in listening to music, and playing bass guitar.

Research groups

NameTypeParent Unit
Technology and Education Research Group (TERG)GroupFaculty of Mathematics, Computing and Technology

Publications

Bob or Bot: Exploring ChatGPT’s answers to University Computer Science Assessment (2024-01-14)
Richards, Mike; Waugh, Kevin; Slaymaker, Mark; Petre, Marian; Woodthorpe, John and Gooch, Daniel
ACM Transactions on Computing Education, 24, Article 5(1) (pp. 1-32)

From forums to wikis: perspectives on tools for collaboration (2010)
Kear, Karen; Woodthorpe, John; Robertson, Sandy and Hutchison, Mike
The Internet and Higher Education, 13(4) (pp. 218-225)

Reviewing three case-studies of learning analytics interventions at the open university UK (2016-04-25)
Rienties, Bart; Boroowa, Avinash; Cross, Simon; Farrington-Flint, Lee; Herodotou, Christothea; Prescott, Lynda; Mayles, Kevin; Olney, Tom; Toetenel, Lisette and Woodthorpe, John
In : Sixth International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge (LAK '16 ) (25-29 Apr 2016, Edinburgh) (pp. 534-535)

Introducing TU100 ‘My Digital Life’:
 Ubiquitous computing in a distance learning environment (2009-10)
Richards, Michael and Woodthorpe, John
In : Ubicomp 2009 (30 Sep - 3 Oct 2009, Orlando, Florida, USA)

Using wikis for collaborative learning of technology (2009-07)
Kear, Karen and Woodthorpe, John
In : 7th International Conference on Education and Information Systems, Technologies and Applications: EISTA 2009 (10-13 Jul 2009, Orlando, Florida, USA)

fOUndIt? Sharing online resources to support subject communities (2009-07)
Shaw, Jill and Woodthorpe, John
In : 7th International Conference on Education and Information Systems, Technologies and Applications: EISTA 2009 (10-13 Jul 2009, Orlando, Florida, USA)

What’s in it for me? The stick and the carrot as tools for developing academic communities (2009)
Woodthorpe, John; Shaw, Jill; Hauck, Mirjam and Beaven, Tita
In : 7th International Conference on Education and Information Systems, Technologies and Applications: EISTA 2009 (10-13 Jul 2009, Orlando, Florida, USA)

E-learning for Networked Living (2006-11-24)
Kear, Karen; Woodthorpe, John and Moss, Nicky
In : EADTU (European Association of Distance Teaching Universities) Annual Conference 2006 (23-24 Nov 2006, Tallin, Estonia)