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Maren Deepwell Posts

Weekend post: leadership lesson from my favourite starship captain

As you may have gathered, I like Star Trek and Captain Picard is my favourite captain in that particular universe. I don’t agree with every aspect of his approach to leadership, but I like to think that we share a lot of values and every now and then I come across something he says or does that really resonates with me. I was watching an old episode of The Next Generation recently (fellow nerds: this…

My week as guest curator of @femedtech

This week I’ve been volunteering as a guest curator of @femedtech. I actively work to promote equality in everything I do, so when the opportunity came up to support this growing network as a Twitter curator, I took the opportunity to help out gladly – but I wasn’t really sure what it would be like, taking over the voice of this kind of account. So one week in and with one more week to go,…

Which direction to take… researching alternative ways of measuring impact in Learning Technology

This is the second post about my current work on researching alternative ways of measuring impact in Learning Technology. Go back to the first post in which I have set out the context of my work and what I am particularly focused on. Alongside the practical work with the ALT Journal Strategic Working Group, I am pleased that my proposal of a short session ‘The quality of metrics matters: how we measure the impact of research…

Re-post #altc: My Chief Executive Officer’s Report, May 2018

This is my report to Members of ALT for May 2018, originally published on the #altc blog here. Dear Members As I am writing this we are just beginning a particularly busy period for the Association, so my report to you this time will be a whistle-stop tour of what’s happening across our community. I am pleased in particular to welcome new member organisations who have recently joined ALT: Staffordshire University, Ajenta, MyKnowledgeMap, TES, Northern…

3 months in… hitting our first milestones as a virtual team

This is a joint post with Martin Hawksey (cross-posted here).  If you have missed our earlier posts we encourage you to revisit the beginning of the story of how we, as senior staff, lead our organisation to adopt virtual operations. April This month we reflect on the first 3 months operating as a virtual team, delivering our first few big milestones and look back at the OER18 conference. Maren: It’s been three months now since…

Critical Perspectives on Blended Learning: Hong Kong Polytechnic University BOLT Symposium

This week I contributed to the BOLT Symposium at Hong Kong Polytechnic University as keynote speaker. The symposium brought together colleagues from universities in the region to disseminate outputs from the BOLT project, showcasing successful collaboration, shared provision of staff development and initiatives to ensure that the sustainability of what has been achieved. As part of my work for ALT I have supported the project in a small way for a number of years, mostly…

More than swag: #oer18 material & visual culture

As an Anthropologist I’m interested in how human beings shape to the world and relate to each other. In particular, I’m interested in how what we make, exchange or treasure articulates our relationships. This past week participants from the OER18 conference have shared a wealth of… well, you shall see. This is my story of the conference told through its material and visual culture. It is a story of swag … of badges, stickers, t-shirts ……

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…

#femedtech #OER18 #OER17… because equality matters for all of us

If you have been following the reporting on the gender pay gap in the UK, then this has been a sobering week indeed. You can search for the reports from different employers here. I have had a look through many of the education providers and sector bodies that I work with and the scale of the ‘gaps’ highlighted in some of the reports is staggering. Not a surprise, given my day to day experience of…

Developing collaboration as a virtual team

Cover image: Education is Changing by @bryanMMathers is licenced under CC-BY-ND This is a joint post with Martin Hawksey (cross-posted here) This is the second in a monthly series of blog posts in which we take an open approach to organisational transformation. In this series we share our experiences as senior staff leading our organisation to adopt virtual operations. If you have missed the first post about how we began our journey you can revisit the story thus far here…