Professor Kate Borthwick

I currently convene and lead the teaching team on the postgraduate module Digital Education and English Language Teaching. I supervise Masters dissertations and post-graduate research projects.

I am an experienced PhD examiner.

I am a Professor of Digital Education. I am Director of Open Online Courses for the University (MOOCs), the chair of the University's Digital Education Advisory group, and a lecturer in digitally-mediated teaching and learning in Modern Languages and Linguistics. I currently Chair the Generative Artificial Intelligence working group which is developing policy and practice in relation to GenAI tools and am the Academic Lead for GenAI in Education for the University.

I am an award-winning teacher and online course designer with a passion for understanding how digital technology supports and enhances excellent education. I'm interested in open content, inclusive education and collaboration, and my PhD research explored open educational practices with language teachers using participatory action research. I am an experienced language teacher, developer of online learning materials/courses and e-tutor. I was involved in the creation of two repositories of OERs: LanguageBox and HumBox. I am the course designer for 6 (and counting) FutureLearn/UoS MOOCs. I attend conferences regularly and am a regularly invited speaker. I was awarded a Vice-Chancellor's Award for internationalisation in 2016, for my work on the MOOC 'Understanding Language' and a Vice-Chancellor's Award for innovation in Teaching in 2018. In 2021, I led the MOOC team to a Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence (CATE) from AdvanceHE. You can read my 2021 blogpost for AdvanceHE on how we use MOOCs in teaching here. I was elected on to the executive board of the European Association for Computer Assisted Language Learning (EuroCALL) in 2018 and elected Vice-President in August 2021 and re-elected in 2024.

From 2008 – 2016, I managed and coordinated activities in relation to online and blended learning at the Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies (LLAS), initiating and managing projects, devising and delivering CPD training, creating resources for teaching and learning, and organising and running events. I directed and managed the successful LLAS elearning symposium over this time, an annual event which brought together practitioners and academics from all over the world. I devised and managed multi-disciplinary, national and international projects related to Open Education and Open Educational Resources, including the JISC/HEA HumBox (2010/11), FAVOR (2011/12), Community Café (2010/11) and OpenLIVES (2011/13) projects; the HEA iTunes and You (2012/13) and XML Projects (2014). I managed the project that developed the HumBox OER repository and led community engagement and feedback in the development of the LanguageBox OER repository. I also directed and delivered training and development of the LOC authoring tool (Learning Object Creator), an online authoring tool for online materials developed at the University of Southampton. I was part of the project teams on: The OneShare project (JISC) 2009/10; Faroes (JISC) 2008; and L20: Sharing Language Learning Objects (JISC) 2006/7.

I'm a linguist with a degree in Russian from St Andrews University. My Masters from Newcastle University is in the area of Applied Linguistics and technology for teaching. I've lived and worked in China, Japan and Russia. I joined the University of Southampton in 2005, becoming one of our first e-tutors for distance online courses and in-sessional language support classes and an online materials designer for the commercially available ‘Study Skills Toolkit’ and ‘EAP Toolkit’.