Gabi Witthaus

Gabi Witthaus
Forename	Gabi
Surname	Witthaus
Type	Staff
Country	United Kingdom
WPs	WP2 Cross-sector analysis and comparison"WP" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 2., WP3 The role of Community in OER"WP" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 3.
URL	http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/education/people/ili-staff/gabi-witthaus
email	Gabi.Witthaus@le.ac.uk

Gabi Witthaus is currently a researcher on OpenCred, a study being carried out under the umbrella of the European Commission-funded Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) for the OpenEdu project. OpenCred aims to ascertain what kind of activity is taking place in Europe for the accreditation of non-formal and informal learning. Gabi is also a researcher on POERUP, a European Commission funded project that is carrying out research to understand how governments can stimulate the uptake of open educational resources (OER). Previously she led the SPEED project, in which a team from the Institute for Learning Innovation (formerly Beyond Distance Research Alliance) supported colleagues at four partner universities in embedding good practice in learning design within their institutions. She is also

From September 2011 to July 2012, Gabi worked on TOUCANS project (Testing the OER University Concept and Aspirations: a National Study), a SCORE fellowship in which she investigated the possible implementation of the OER university concept in the UK Higher Education sector.

From Sept 2010 to Aug 2011, Gabi was responsible for supporting project teams at the Universities of Bath and Derby in the development and release of open educational resources as part of the OSTRICH project. Before that, as coordinator of the OTTER project, she facilitated the publication of a number of the University of Leicester’s teaching materials as open educational resources (www.le.ac.uk/oer). Gabi also worked as a Teaching Fellow on the online MA in TESOL and Applied Linguistics for the DUCKLING project during 2009 and 2010. In this role she was responsible for spearheading the use of specific innovative technologies – podcasting, e-book readers, voice boards and virtual worlds – in distance learning. Gabi is still a tutor on this programme for distance students.

Gabi started her career in the NGO sector in South Africa in the eighties, and later established a training consultancy that worked with a wide range of clients, including South African Airways, the national electricity supplier ESKOM, and several large mines. Gabi facilitated the South African Qualifications Authority’s standards generation body which created qualifications for adult basic education practitioners in the late nineties, and participated in developing the Independent Examinations Board’s adult basic education exams. She has worked in Spain as an EFL teacher and in Oman as an author of EFL materials, and spent five years leading a curriculum development team that produced multimedia EFL training materials for Qatar's energy industry.

As of February 2013, Gabi also began working part-time as Distance Learning Manager for the University of Bradford's School of Management, alongside her role at the Institute for Learning Innovation in Leicester.