Professor Timothy Drysdale

Chair in Technology Enhanced Science Education

Email: 

Telephone: 

+44(0)131 6505798

Location: 

1.11 Alexander Graham Bell Building

Personal Page: 

Social Media: 

Engineering Discipline: 

  • Electronics and Electrical Engineering

Research Institute: 

  • Imaging, Data and Communications
Head shot of Tim Drysdale
Professor Tim Drysdale

Biography: 

Prof Timothy Drysdale is the Chair of Technology Enhanced Science Education in the School of Engineering, having joined the University of Edinburgh in August 2018. Immediately prior to that he was a Senior Lecturer in Engineering at the Open University, where he was the founding director and lead developer of the £3M openEngineering Laboratory. The openEngineering Laboratory is a large-scale online laboratory offering real-time interaction with teaching equipment via the web, for undergraduate engineering students, which has attracted educational awards from the Times Higher Education (Outstanding Digital Innovation, 2017), The Guardian (Teaching Excellence, 2018), Global Online Labs Consortium (Remote Experiment Award, 2018), and  National Instruments (Engineering Impact Award for Education in Europe, Middle East, Asia Region 2018, and the overall Global Award in 2019). He is now developing an entirely new approach to online laboratories to support a mixture of non-traditional online practical work activities across multiple campuses. His discipline background is in electronics and electromagnetics. He has been researching surface wave antennas for cubesats and orbital angular momentum radio links. He is Associate Editor of the IET journal Microwave Antennas and Propagation.

Academic Qualifications: 

PGCert Academic Practice, Unviersity of Glasgow, 2007

PhD Passive Devices for Terahertz Frequencies, University of Canterbury (NZ) 2004

B.Eng (First Class, University Prize) in Electronics and Electrical Engineering, University of Canterbury (NZ) 1998

Professional Qualifications and Memberships: 

Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Member IEEE

Teaching: 

Engineering Design 1

Electrical Engineering 1 (Course Organiser)

Electromagnetics 3

Research Interests: 

My research interests are primarily focused on technology enhanced approaches to teaching engineering education. What can technology do for us, and what should it do? Building on my background in large-scale automated remote laboratories, I'm now developing a vision that encompasses all forms of non-traditional laboratory work (remote/virtual/simulated laboratories) so that they can be used in any course, whether or not the course organiser and teaching team are an expert in digital teaching tools. Non-Traditional Practical Work opens the door to new pedagogical approaches that improve the engagement of the learner with the concepts, develop enquiry skills, while offering instant automated feedback, authentic assessment, and student co-creation. More on my thoughts around this are available at: https://beardyprof.com/practable.

Specialities: 

Non-Traditional Practical Work

Remote laboratories

Electromagnetics

Further Information: