This year’s Vice-Chancellor’s Awards celebrate exceptional contributions made by colleagues in the areas of collegiality, quality, internationalisation and sustainability. This short series of articles will share what makes the teams and individual winners special.
Individual award – Kate Borthwick
The nomination for Kate included the words:
Kate’s award is for Internationalisation. Kate has championed Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in the University and has become our leading expert, designing, developing, producing, managing and disseminating fully online learning in the form of two immensely successful MOOCs for the Faculty of Humanities (Agincourt and Understanding Language). These MOOCs have been delivered across global markets.
Receiving her award, Kate said:
“This is fantastic and I am really honoured to receive this award. The fact that I was nominated by the people I work with everyday makes me very proud and I consider myself very lucky to have such lovely and generous colleagues.”
Kate went on to explain:
“Internationalisation is not just about drawing a more international cohort to study with us at Southampton, it is also about reaching out to the world. The MOOCs which I have worked on do this tremendously well by taking our people, our research and our teaching to a wide and diverse international audience. For example, through the course ‘Understanding Language’, our academic staff have gained thousands of new learners – in an instant.”
Kate continued:
“MOOCs are also highly social experiences and the knowledge shared by learners enriches the experience of all involved in the courses, creating stimulating new international learning communities at the heart of which of course, is the excellent research and teaching going on at the University.”
Internationalisation is one of the four underlying principles central to the success of our strategy and will underpin our strategic activities. Internationalisation: delivering across global markets and building strong partnerships with other leading universities.
Read about other 2016 Vice Chancellor’s Award winners:
Louis Pliskin – Quality: iSolutions MySouthampton Open Day App.
Future Worlds Team – Quality: Start-up incubation.
Kathy Potter – Quality: Cancer Sciences