Marina Orsini-Jones

Research Skills; Academic Practice; Applied Linguistics; Threshold Concepts Pedagogy; Blended and Online Learning; Intercultural Communicative Competence; MOOCs; CALL

I am Associate Head of School (International) in the School of Humanities and Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. I am passionate about educational research and have coordinated the MA in English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics since 2009, when I led the launch of this programme. I have extensive experience as external examiner in the HE sector and as e-learning consultant. I have organised various workshops for other Higher Education Institutions both in the UK and overseas, for example on threshold concepts pedagogy and Online Intercultural Learning. I have presented at over 100 national and international conferences and am part of the editorial review boards of various journals and conferences. I have led numerous action research projects and teams and in 2013 I was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship from the HEA (Higher Education Academy), in recognition of the national and international impact of my innovative work in languages and linguistics. In collaboration with my colleagues in the School of Humanities I have set up new links with Turkey, France, Italy, Mexico, Finland, the Netherlands, Malaysia and China. I am fully committed to the dissemination of the values attached to the concept of global citizenship to both staff and students and to the internationalisation of the curriculum.

Research:

I have published work on digital literacies, personal development planning, intercultural communicative competence and threshold concepts, often in collaboration with my students, e.g.: Practising Language Interaction via Social Networking Sites: the “expert student’s” perspective on personalized language learning (Orsini-Jones, Pibworth and Brick 2013). I normally reflect on my practice ‘through the looking glass’ of my students’ perspectives (e.g. Towards a Role-Reversal Model of Threshold Concept Pedagogy, 2014). I am currently leading a research team working on an ongoing action-research telecollaboration project that explores features of online interaction and was awarded a £60,000 grant from the Higher Education Academy.

Area of Expertise:

• Computer Assisted Language Learning
• Student-Centred Threshold Concepts Pedagogy
• Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (both generic and with specific reference to teaching English and Languages in HE)
• Quality Monitoring and Assurance
• Ethics/Research skills Employability
• Academic practice