Congratulations to KMi’s newest Doctor, Venetia Brown, who has successfully defended her thesis "The role of interactive web broadcasts in fostering distance learning students’ engagement with practical lab and fieldwork".

Chaired by Dr Aisling Third, the examiners, Professor Eileen Scanlon (WELS, IET) and Dr Lynda Yorke (Senior Lecturer in Physical Geography, Bangor University), commented on the potential value of Venetia’s contributions for professional development, and for distance learning beyond the OU context.

Dr Trevor Collins and Professor Nick Braithwaite celebrated Venetia’s PhD success. They supervised her study, which used a qualitatively driven mixed-methods approach to investigate how large-scale Interactive Web Broadcasts support practical lab and fieldwork across STEM disciplines. Venetia’s research explored the purposes for using web broadcasts, the strategies and types of interactions that staff and students used to engage and interact with one another, and how the web broadcasts benefit the stakeholders who produce, present and participate in them.

Venetia will continue her work at KMi as a Postdoctoral Researcher in mixed-methods research, investigating the pedagogy around ethics and fairness within Dr Tracie Farrrell’s Research Team, who is investigating how AI could contribute to creating a more just society.