Dr Chris Davies

Chris graduated in English at Selwyn College, Cambridge and gained a PGCE at the West Midlands College of Education. He taught for several years in comprehensive schools in Oxfordshire, and was Head of English at Bartholomew School, Eynsham until 1985.

He took an MSc in Educational Studies at the Department of Educational Studies in 1983. He came to Educational Studies in 1985, and gained his DPhil, entitled “Ideologies of the subject and the professional training of English teachers”, in 1994.

He is Vice President of Kellogg College, Oxford University’s college for part-time students. He is course leader for the MSc in Learning and Technology, and supervises research students in this field. Together with Rebecca Eynon, he co-ordinates the Learning and New Technologies Research Group.

Research

From 1998-2003, he co-ordinated the Oxford-Intel Project, which involved helping to develop ground-breaking educational software, kar2ouche, which went on to win first prize from the British Computer Society in 2002. From 2002-2004, he worked with the Oxfordshire Community Network and the Oxfordshire LEA to conduct research into the implementation of broadband technology in Oxfordshire schools.  This work was carried out in partnership with the Oxford Internet Institute.

From 2008-2011, Chris was Principal Investigator for a Becta-funded project investigating learners’ uses of technologies away from formal education. During that time he was also co-organiser of an ESRC Seminar Series concerning the impact of new technologies on adolescents. During 2009-2011, he was a member of a team testing the feasibility of computer-based “learning companions” to support the self-directed learning of senior citizens. In 2011 he became director of the Kellogg Centre for Assistive Learning Technologies, which is carrying out a large-scale review of the field, as well as a number of case studies in schools and higher education. He is co-director, with Naomi Norman of Epic, of a new project funded by Wikipedia investigating the quality and accuracy of its content, and is also currently a member of Microsoft’s worldwide Partners in Learning initiative.

Chris is a Research Associate of the Oxford Internet Institute.

Publications

• 2012 (with Rebecca Eynon) “The role of the Internet in reshaping learning and education” in (ed. Dutton) Oxford Handbook of Internet Studies, OUP
• 2011 “The role of parents in helping their children use technology for learning at home” Special Issue of Journal of Computer Assisted Learning: Parental engagement in children’s uses of technology for learning: putting policy into practice in the home.
• 2011 (with John Furlong) “Young People, New Technologies and Learning at Home: Taking context seriously”, in Special Issue of Oxford Review of Education: The Educational and Social Impact of New Technologies on Young People in Britain.
• 2010 (with Rebecca Eynon) “A Companion for learning in everyday life” in (ed. Y.Wilks) Close Engagements with Artificial Companions. Natural Language Processing 8. John Benjamins Publishing Company.
• 2009  (with Sue Cranmer & Jenny Good). “Increasingly autonomous: learners using technology in the context of their family lives and beyond”. Becta.
• 2009 (with Jenny Good) “Choosing to use technology: how learners construct their learning lives in their own contexts” Becta.
• 2008 “Digital Literacies: A view from young people” in Report 3 from ESRC Seminar Series The Educational and social impact of new technologies on young people in Britain, published by University of Oxford and LSE
• 2008 (with Jingjing Zhang, Setsuo Yokoyama & Youzou Miyadera). “A Hybrid Online Research Instrument beyond the Traditional Web Survey and its Application” in  The International  Journal of Technology, Knowledge and Society,  Volume 4, Number 1  pp. 151-157.
• 2007 “What can technology do for/to English?” in Teaching Secondary English with ICT  Eds. Anthony Adams & Sue Brindley, Open University Press, Buckingham
• 2005 “Does access to broadband technology in schools result in a shift towards independent and active learning in classrooms?” in ed. A.Méndez-Vilas. Recent Research Developments in Learning Technologies
• 2005 (with Peter Birmingham) e-Learning in broadband-connected classrooms. Becta:   Coventry
• 2005 (with Geoff Hayward and Lina Lukman) Digital Technologies in 14-19 Education. Literature Review, Nesta Futurelab: Bristol
• 2005 (with Peter Birmingham) “Implementing Broadband Internet in the Classroom: Key Issues for Research and Practice”. Oxford Internet Institute Research Report, January 2005.
• 2002 (with Peter Birmingham and Christian Greiffenhagen) “Turn to Face the Bard: Making sense of three-way interactions between teacher, pupils and technology in the classroom.” Education, Communication and Information 2, 2/3, 139-161.
• 2001 (with Peter Birmingham) “Storyboarding Shakespeare: Learners interactions with storyboard software in the process of understanding difficult literary texts”. Journal of Information Technology for Teacher Education 10, 3, 241-253.
• 2000 (with Maria Birbili) “What do people need to know about writing in order to write in their jobs?” British Journal of Educational Studies, Vol. 48, No. 4, December 2000, 429-445