About Studypatch Workshops

Studypatch Workshops provides training to help educators learn about and use technologies that have the potential to improve or enhance instructional and administrative tasks.

Patricia Thornton

Patricia Thornton researches the use of technology in foreign language learning. Recently, her research has focused on the use of mobile devices to support both classroom and out-of-class learning. Together with Chris Houser, she has created and tested educational systems using the web and email capabilities of modern mobile phones, systems for quizzes, forums, evaluations, polls, and the distribution of rich educational materials including video and animation. They have measured the educational effectiveness of many of these systems. Patricia teaches English language, comparative culture, and computer-assisted language learning in the Department of Language and Culture at Kinjo Gakuin University in Nagoya, Japan. She is a doctoral student researching Educational Technology at the University of Nottingham.

Chris Houser

For the past decade, Chris Houser has been an assistant professor of computer arts and sciences at Kinjo Gakuin University in Japan, where he teaches computer animation and programming - in Japanese. His research, published in 29 papers and 42 presentations, includes developing and testing mobile and web-based educational technology, novel user interfaces, and experimental programming languages and systems. Earlier, Chris spent a decade working as a programmer. He holds a PhD in the human use of computers; his dissertation examines the use of technology for efficient education. CV/resume

Chris has conducted workshops on Moodle, Podcasting, HTML, CSS, web design, Photoshop, Javascript programming, computer animation, and making web pages for mobile phones,