The following pages formed my submission for CMALT – Certified Membership of Association of Learning Technology – which I was awarded on 17th March 2017.

You can find out more by clicking the digital badge at the bottom of the page or following this link.  

This content is available to share and adapt under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence – I would have liked to make it CC0 but many of the videos here are used by kind permission of the University of Southampton and I do not own them.

Contextual Statement

I joined the University of Southampton in May 2014, after working in Further Education as a Head of Creative Arts. The department included subject areas of Gaming & Computing, Enterprise, Fine Art and Performing Arts. As a manager my focus was on teaching & learning, working to ensure every student had a rich, broad and exciting experience for the duration of their programme of study and the skills and opportunities to continue as independent learners as they progressed into employment, higher education or further study.

During this time we launched a yearly festival of new technology and gaming, inviting students throughout the region to bring their ideas to life and take control of their learning. I soon recognised a desire for students to move from content consumers to content creators and that learners were on a similar journey to staff as they adopted new technologies into their own personal learning environments.

Prior to working in education I trained as a filmmaker, working in feature film production before moving to the BBC and into documentary. I worked within BBC People as a Content Producer for Informal Learning, creating online films on subjects as diverse as philosophy, journalism, values and ethics.

Currently my role at the University of Southampton is to manage the Digital Learning Team within iSolutions. Our aim is to create engaging, high-quality content that supports academics, students and researchers, whether video, multimedia, audio or enhanced learning packages. we have produced work for MOOCs, distance courses and for all aspects of teaching & learning. Our primary function is to support the move to Blended Learning across the University.

Whilst I have creative oversight for the learning objects produced by the team, we work in close collaboration with academic teams, helping them to tell their stories and deliver learning. In particular, my interest is in encouraging students to use media for assignment submission and to evidence learning and for researchers to learn the tools to tell their own stories to increase public engagement and evaluate the impact of their work.

My links across sectors remain and I often advise colleagues about their ways to implement new technology into the curriculum. I am proud to be member of ALT having delivered and chaired sessions at conference. I am also a member of Media Enhanced Learning Special Interest Group (MELSIG) and Evaluation of Learner’s Experiences of e-learning Special Interest Group (ELESIG) . I am a member of the HEA and I have plans to enrol in an MSc in Digital Education.

Why CMALT?

CMALT is about understanding what I’m about. At the moment I feel like I’ve been given the keys to the sweet shop. I want to explore what it is to work in this area of education. We talk about disruption and the need to disrupt current thinking of the way we deliver teaching and learning. Does the research support the idea of change, after all – many of us were taught by the traditional methods we seek to question? Are we who work with Learning Technologies sufficiently led by the evidence? These are some of the questions that I hope to explore as I work through the portfolio, sharing my practice and contributing to a community of practitioners working with Learning Technologies.

I’m really keen to invite feedback and guidance, so please contact me either at Southampton or via twitter@dotsandspaces

*Note that all the videos and images included in this blog have been produced either by myself or ILIaD Media Development and form part of the evidence for this submission.

This work is my submission for Certified Membership of ALT (CMALT) and was submitted on Tuesday 31st May 2016.  

Resubmission on Tuesday 29th November. All changes in Green.

CMALT Awarded on Friday 17th March 2017