Michael Sharples (born 14 December 1952 in Sale, England) is a British academic working in

educational technology Educational technology (commonly abbreviated as edutech, or edtech) is the combined use of computer hardware, software, and educational theory and practice to facilitate learning and teaching. When referred to with its abbreviation, "EdTech" ...

. He is an Emeritus Professor of Educational Technology at

The Open University The Open University (OU) is a Public university, public research university and the largest university in the United Kingdom by List of universities in the United Kingdom by enrolment, number of students. The majority of the OU's undergraduate ...

Background

Sharples graduated from St. Andrews University in 1976 with a BSc. Hons in Computational Science, then moved to the Dept of Artificial Intelligence at the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

as a post graduate student. His PhD thesis was on the topic of Cognition, Computers and Creative Writing.

Career

Sharples held various academic appointments before becoming director for the Centre for Educational Technology and Distance Learning at the

University of Birmingham The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a Public university, public research university in Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingham (founded in 1825 as ...

and later professor of learning sciences and Director of Learning Sciences Research Institute at the

University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public research university in Nottingham, England. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. Nottingham's main campus (University Park Campus, Nottingh ...

Research

Sharples' research focus is on adapting and developing new technology and socio-technical systems to facilitate learning, such as the use of mobile devices. In 2022 he published the book ''Story Machines'' with Rafael Pérez y Pérez. The book is about the history of story-generating machines. A review of the book in

Science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

described it as "a readable, engaging, and instructive introduction to the mechanisms according to which computers have been made to produce “stories".

Books

* Sharples, M. (1985) Cognition, Computers and Creative Writing, Chichester: Ellis Horwood. * Sharples, M., Hogg, D., Hutchison, C., Torrance, S., Young, D. (1989) Computers and Thought: a Practical Introduction to Artificial Intelligence. MIT Press. 406 pp. * Sharples, M. (ed.)(1993) Computer Supported Collaborative Writing. Springer-Verlag. * Sharples, M. & van der Geest, T. (eds.)(1996) The New Writing Environment: Writers at Work in a World of Technology. Springer-Verlag. * Sharples, M. (1999) How We Write: Writing as Creative Design. London: Routledge. * Littleton, K., Scanlon, E. & Sharples, M. (eds.)(2012) Orchestrating Inquiry Learning. Routledge. .

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sharples, Mike Living people People in educational technology People from Sale, Greater Manchester Alumni of the University of St Andrews Academics of the Open University 1952 births Academics of the University of Nottingham