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Category: staff development

Hybrid Working Habits – It’s a wrap

Over the past four weeks I have run a free and open course all about hybrid working. This week, we are wrapping up the course for 2023, and I’d like to take the opportunity to have a BIG thank you to everyone who took part, and contributed! I love the format of the course, which is podcast cased with new topics released every week, as it allows folk to follow the course at their own…

Are you returning to the office, five days a week? The week in hybrid working click bait headlines…

This past week all my networks about hybrid and virtual working have been dominated by attention grabbing headlines from this year’s KPMG CEO Outlook survey: Most bosses think you’ll be back in the office 5 days a week within 3 years (Fortune) Two-thirds of CEOs think staff will return to office five days a week (The Guardian) Most executives expect a full return to the office by 2026 (The Times) These headlines are usually accompanied by…

The story behind… Hybrid Working Habits

In this week’s podcast I share some of my personal history and how I came to be so interested in all things hybrid and virtual working. From Germany to London in my art school years, and from Athens to Oxford as my work moved from Art to Anthropology and then Education, this episode sets out what I think is interesting about hybrid and virtual working, why it’s important and why now is the time to…

Leading Virtual Teams: Missed moments

With the holiday season coming up, our team has had a long overdue in person Team Day and we are also planning a virtual get together in a few weeks. These social activities are important to virtual teams, and I really value the opportunity to spend time with colleagues in a more relaxed way. Blended approaches to working together can help shape the dynamic of the year, and punctuate long periods of remote working with…

We are looking for a COO… a look behind the recruitment doors

We are currently recruiting for a Chief Operations Officer for ALT, and I couldn’t be more excited! It’s always great when you get to grow your team, particularly when there are only seven of you and each individual makes a big impact. Why this role, why now? We are the leading professional body for Learning Technology in the UK – and we have been pretty busy in the past eighteen months! Learning Technology has never…

Discussing (gender) equality in technology and education at the University of Sussex

Recently I was invited to take part in a seminar on ‘Technology and Education: opportunities and challenges for equality’ organised by the Technology Enhanced Learning Team at the University of Sussex. Here is what the seminar was about: Technology has always played a significant role in education – whether it was the fountain pen and printing press of the past or today’s mobile devices, online study and immersive technologies. It cannot be assumed, however, that…

Positive feedback by post: what happened next…

In a recent post on positive feedback I talked about how to use positive feedback for personal & professional development. As I wrote the post I had an idea to try out a new approach to giving and receiving positive feedback in a virtual, distributed team: I made a template and sent an envelope to each of my colleagues in the post, enclosing a piece of positive feedback from me to them, as well as…

Positive feedback by post: on open practice and reflecting on your ‘best self’ in a virtual team

I recently came across this article in the Harvard Business Review on how to use positive feedback for personal & professional development. The article points to a tool/service but in itself contains useful pointers and ideas explaining why positive feedback is important, how to give/receive it and reflecting on why this may be difficult: ‘Most people are well-attuned to critical feedback; it is jarring, threatening, and emotional, and as a result, quite memorable. In contrast,…

Being grounded in itinerant professional practice

Recently, I have started writing a series of blog posts with my colleague Martin Hawksey. It’s an interesting undertaking in which we take an open approach to leadership, to sharing our perspective on leading the organisation we work for through a period of change towards adopting a virtual mode of operating. And it’s got me thinking on parallel lines about my own professional practice and how it’s developed over the last 20 years, from being…

“How to…” heroes – or how to do CPD at a micro scale.

In my organisation I lead on providing CPD for a small team and providing meaningful, cost-effective opportunities for learning and gaining know how at a micro scale can be challenging.  We’ve taken part in open online courses like Blended Learning Essentials and 23 things, we have a regular ‘show & tell’ slot at weekly team meetings, we take part in events and the networks we support and we sometimes have guests who share their work…