Mr William Woods
Senior Learning and Teaching Technologies Manager
w.i.s.woods@open.ac.uk+44 (0)1908 654954
x 54954
William's Personal Website
William's Blog
Profile
I work in the Institute of Educational Technology at the Open University. IET describes itself as being a centre of international excellence in the research and development of online, open and distance learning at the heart of the Open University.
I started in IET back in 2000 as Senior Communications and IT Support Officer. Previously I worked for seven years as Networks Manager (Project Officer) for the Electronic Media in Education Research Group, researching new technologies for teaching.
Qualifications
- Honours Degree in Computer Science and Systems Engineering (Queens University Belfast)
- Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences
- Chartered IT Support Provider (British Computer Society Accredited)
- Solaris Systems Administrator (Sun Accredited)
- Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer + Internet (Microsoft Accredited)
Teaching Interests
Publications and White Papers
Building an Online Course - A personal Technical Perspective Will Woods, EMERG Research Group (1999)
This paper concentrates on the development processes of the T171 Technology level 1 course. This was developed to be a course studied completely on-line. The T171 course involved a dramatic shift away from standard OU course production
A large-scale on-line Open University course bringing computing and on-line skills to novices Gary Alexander, Will Woods (On-line Educa paper) (1999)
This paper describes the development and presentation of a new Open University course, aimed at first year undergraduates, which is being presented more completely on-line than any previous, large scale OU course. Our aim was to retain the Open University's traditional high educational standards and high production values, in an approach that is scalable to very large numbers of students.
Building The Knowledge Network Will Woods, IET (2002)
The paper explains the development processes that were required to build the knowledge network system. The document has a technical emphasis however it also covers some educational and managerial aspects of the development of the product, and explains how the teaching and learning requirements influenced the design and development of the system.
IT Story 2003 Will Woods, IET (2003)
A summary of the achievements made in IT within the unit over the past few years and a look to the future.
IT Story 2004 Will Woods, IET (2004)
A summary of the achievements made by the technical team in IET during 2004
IT Story 2005 Will Woods, IET (2005)
summary of the achievements made by the technical team in IET during 2005.
IT Story 2006 Will Woods, IET (2006)
summary of the achievements made by the technical team in IET during 2006.
Co-Authored Publications
Implementing Learning Design to support web-based learning Patrick McAndrew et al, IET (2004) (AusWeb 04 paper/presentation)
In this paper we consider an initial implementation of a system for managing and using IMS Learning Design (LD) to represent online learning activities.
Research Interests
I'm currently scoping out new areas of educational technology and I'm involved in TLRP (Technology Enabled Learning), EPSRC, JISC and EU funded projects in this area. Particular technologies currently being explored include:
- Personalised learning environments
- Context aware systems
- Adaptive content and services (i.e. delivering content appropriate for the viewing platform)
- Mobile (ambient) educational resources
- Just-in-time media services
- Gaming devices for learning
- Triangulation and resource discovery
- Interactive TV
- Knowledge bartering systems
- Voting and rating services, methods of refining content based on user feedback
- Advanced Wiki's maybe for document based discussion
- Learning architectures for VLE (not necessarily Learning Design!)
- Advanced searching and retrieval services
- Intelligent information gathering
Electronic paper for learning - Online surveying and statistical analysis
- Student tracking services
- eAssessment, eMentoring, ePortfolio and other e-learning developments.
Current Research Projects
My remit covers involvement in all instutional projects as defined in the IET unit plan, however here are a selection of the current projects..
OpenLearn
I created the functional specification (up to version 1.7) for the OpenLearn project, which is the Open University Open Content Initiative. I have been involved in an advisory capacity throughout the initital development phase of the project. Alex, our Senior Developer, is now seconded to the project.
For more information on OpenLearn visit http://oci.open.ac.ukhttp://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=project_joininD4LD
VLE/Moodle
The IET development team, in particular Juliette and Alex, have created a grouping services for Moodle as part of JISC funded JoinIn project, these services are to be incorporated into Moodle core by LTS.
For more information on JoinIn visit
DALS
The IET development team, in particular Hassan, have successfully developed and rolled out the DALS system (Developing Asoociate Lecturer Feedback from Students) to over 1000 AL's and we have now handed over the operational service to AACS. The system won an OU teaching Award (2007)
Ambient Technology Research Labs
I developed a proposal for an ambient technology research facility along with Anne De Roeck from Computing which, with funding from HEFCE and extensive input and work from Peter, Doug, Josie and many other IET and Computing department colleagues, will become the heart of the new Jenny Lee Building project which is planned to be completed by March 2008
Developing for Learning Design(D4LD)
The development team, in particular Alex and Simon, have been extending the Learning Design Player (SLeD) to make ist robust and easier to install and use. We have been working with Liverpool Hope University who have been using the system for a group of 30 students on one of their short courses. For more information visit
Rebranding and redesign of Public Website
The development team have been rebranding and redesigning our public website presence and creating new services and tools, including RSS feeds and dynamic news and job listings. To visit the new site go to http://iet.open.ac.uk
KN1.6 and KN2.0 projects
We're refreshing the current Knowledge Network and improving the interface and the search functionality which should be available by May for people to use. We're also beginning a scoping process to create a completely new Knowedge Network (KN2.0) which will be based on Web 2.0 principles and be based around user empowerment. The KN2.0 system will be available in early 2008.
Personal Learning Environments (PLE's)
Martin Weller has put in a bid to Eduserve to create PLE's based on Tony Hirst's StingLE environment (String and Glue Learning Environment), which is a mash-up of technologies to create a learning environments that is user controlled. The project will take this work further and create API's to allow users to adapt and reuse common VLE environment functions and customise these to their taste.
JIME
The development team are working on rebuilding the JIME system (Journal of Interactive Media in Education) using a secure document based discussion system, currently we're exploring Open Journal and eRooms as contenders to do this. We hope to have a replacement service available later this year. To look at JIME visit http://jime.open.ac.uk
Database and Data mining services for Online and Paper-based surveying
The Development and Support team are working on several projects around collecting paper-based and online survey information, storing it, adding demographic and other data, merging and analysing it and creating reports. We're also looking at having an end-to-end online service to replace ELSA (Electronic Survey Alliance) which will allow us to send out electronic surveys to students and to collect the data. We have applied for Strategic Development funding to assist with replacing the ELSA system.
EPD
The Support and development teams have both been involved in improving our Educational Professional Development services, this has included
- Support for EPD events - Setting up equipment, services and venue support.
- Creating the new EPD websites and LearnAbout Guides http://epd.open.ac.uk
- Purchasing new equipment to assist with events - In particular a new Video Conferencing system, new laptops and tablet PC's.
- Improving the venues and training facilities - installing projectors, upgrading presentation PC's and arranging soundproofing, plasma screens, electronic whiteboards etc.
There is still mroe work to do and we're working closely with the others in the Centre for Educational Development (CED) to improve this.
Technology Coffee Mornings
We have organised a series of coffee mornings to informally introduce people to a range of new technologies and to give them a flavour of how we are using these technologies. These have been well attended and although these are mainly for IET staff we welcome people from outside IET to come along and share experiences. For further information visit http://kn.open.ac.uk/public/index.cfm?wpid=7034
Usability and Accessibility in the OU
Patrina Law and I have been working with our teams (LTD and C&IT) to develop methods of embedding good usability practise in all OU developments. This involves a range of projects including making a case for using the new Lab facilities (see Ambient Technology Research Labs section for details) to support good usability proactise with everything produced by LTS and AACS, also providing workshops and courses to promote good practise in both usability and accessibility of all OU online services.
Publications
Blog posts
01Nov
Community Engagement
26Jun
Personae gratae
22May
Nevolution
08May
Agile Ballooning
24Apr
Musings on Moot
03Apr
Transience and protectionism
13Mar
Monetising knowledge
