Dr Kate Bradshaw

I have been working in interactive media production since 1995 and have significant experience in courseware, website development and video work. I began with a five year stint as a multimedia academic in the then OU Earth Sciences Department, and then moved to the Science Deanery as a project officer in 2000. Early projects included a TLTP module for Earth Sciences, and working with the OU-BBC on S103 multimedia. As part of the latter, I produced a virtual fieldtrip to SW England, focusing on teaching students how to describe outcrops (now part of S104).

In 2001, the Science Web and Interactive Multimedia Group (SWIM) was set up to broaden the brief to developing materials for the whole faculty. Our production process involves working closely with academics to develop specifications, leading to generation of instructional web design, photography, video and graphics work, as well as content generation.

Over the last ten years many of my projects have been large offline websites for delivery on CD/DVD (e.g. SA188), although latterly many moved to online delivery (see Project Portfolio). I have also produced custom non-course websites, such as the original CEPSAR website and the FAST site. More recently, as academics have become interested in producing podcast and video material for teaching and research, I have switched almost entirely to video production. The main exception is Technipedia which is an ongoing project to gather material on scientific techniques from OU modules into one easily searchable location. It is likely that this will become part of the Wolfson Open Science Labs.

In 2015 I became involved in the new live broadcasting to students from one of our labs. These events aim to deliver a variety of live opportunities for students to interact with Faculty lecturers. Events may be demonstrations of experiments, interviews, tutorials tackling tricky a area of study or remote fieldwork/labwork contributing to their study. These events look to become a key part of a student's program of study over the next few years.