Teesside Professor wins top teaching award

Professor Philip Barker has won one of the country’s most prestigious teaching prizes – a National Teaching Fellowship Scheme award. The award, worth £50,000 for research purposes, was delivered in recognition of Professor Barker’s excellence in learning and teaching.

It is the fifth National Teaching Fellowship Scheme win for the University of Teesside since the Scheme’s launch in 2000.

Based in the School of Computing, Professor Barker is originally from Wales and now lives in Middlesbrough. He has been a pioneer in the field of e-learning for more than 25 years and is committed to using computers to support all areas of education. As well as teaching a module on human-computer interaction, Professor Barker has developed a series of online lectures and practical classes.

A graduate of the University of Wales, Professor Barker first joined the then Teesside Polytechnic in 1971 after working as an independent process control consultant for oil and chemical firms in his native Wales. He then worked for Durham University for several years, before returning to Teesside in 1979. Professor Barker recently celebrated his 25th anniversary here.

Professor Barker said: “It was almost like I had a vision of how computers could be used to benefit education – I saw that it could be a tremendous teaching and learning resource if developed properly and it really made me want to get into education. In the early days, computers were just used to support the teaching of maths and science but I was convinced we could do so much more with them. I became fascinated by the idea and by the time I returned for my second stint at Teesside, we were beginning the microcomputer era. Instead of large, mainframe computers, smaller, more powerful machines were becoming available and I was heavily involved in developing new uses for them. At this time we had only three modern computers on campus, but now we have a few thousand!

“I’ve seen a massive change in our campus and student numbers over the last 25 years and I would really like to see us develop into more online teaching. I would love to one day see an online student community as large as our current on-campus student body.

“I was thrilled when I found out that I had won the award and I’ll be using the research money to further my studies into all aspects of online learning and electronic education support for students. The last 25 years have been so exciting for me at Teesside that I wish I had another 25 years here to see what happens next. I think we have a great future and I’ll be here for as long as I can.”

Outside of his work at the University of Teesside, Professor Barker is also the editor of the prestigious international journal Innovations in Education and Teaching International, the European Editor of the Journal of Interactive Learning Research and an associate editor of Alt-J, the journal of the Association for Learning Technology. He is also a lecturer for the Open University, has authored and co-authored many books and papers and regularly travels around the world delivering lectures to a variety of audiences.

A keen hiker, cyclist and swimmer, Professor Barker has two daughters, Hannah, 15, and Stephanie, 12.

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