I recently joined the anti-racism & learning technology group. If you’d like to learn more about the work of the group, there is a series of blog posts on the #altc blog which provide a great starting point:
The AR<CoP has been meeting since November 2020 to address these challenges and currently encompasses three areas of activity:
Guidance for Content Developers. The focus of this area of activity is to create a set of recommendations to incorporate anti-racism in digital learning content.
Research Connected Activities. Research, seminars and advances in the field of digital education are covered in this area. For example, diversity and digital leadership, and the influence of biases in Artificial Intelligence and machine learning.
Mentoring & Coaching. This area of activity aims at creating connections between colleagues who wish to support and receive support for career advancement and managing the complexities of an increasingly fast-changing work environment.
I am particularly interested in the mentoring and coaching area and also recruitment. I am currently in the process of recruiting for a member of staff and post no. 3 is very relevant to me, encouraging us to ‘disrupt the current procedures in place, and to ensure that we can action diversity rather than pay lip service to racism issues in the sector’. Specifically, looking at:
Gender empowerment and more diverse students/staff pool
Unequal pay between white staff and other ethnicities
Demographics of the UK and the geographical locations of applicants
Reflections
The first meeting I was able to join in with was on 29 July, and this introduced Bold Conversations for Equality, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging – activities planned for the autumn term. I really appreciate the opportunity to join the group’s discussions and the opportunity to educate myself, challenge my ideas and blind spots.
The main part of the session was about setting up circles for discussion and coaching each other, offering safe spaces for mindful listening and voicing issues around the core areas of activities. I found it really interesting to hear and listen to the approach modelled here and how it reflects the values of the group.
It was good to learn about a particular strand of work of the wider group, and I am particularly interested in the coaching approach used.
Come the new autumn, I am looking forward to being more actively involved in the work of the group and I am grateful to the inspiring group facilitators for moving this forward.
Just over a month ago, this project to write a book about leading virtual teams got underway. If you missed the first post that explains what the book is about and the open approach I am taking, then head here to catch up.
Progress since the last post
Since my last post, I have outlined what the book is going to be about and each chapter within it. I have set out word limits for the book overall and each individual chapter and I have gone through the material I already have and I have assigned it to each chapter.
Then, the task of writing the first chapter began. I picked Chapter 4: Pitfalls and problems of virtual teams to start with as this includes a section on the pandemic and crisis working, which is something I am thinking about a lot at the moment.
I have dedicated one afternoon a week to focus on writing and doing bits and pieces for the book around that. I started writing over 5 weeks and took some time off to have a holiday, and the chapter changed a lot from zero to 12,000 words and is now 9,475 words long.
It was really useful to start writing and I learnt a lot from drafting this first chapter. It still needs more references and the tone isn’t quite right, but having the first draft of the first chapter is a nice milestone.
For the next four weeks, I will be working on Chapter 3, on leading a virtual team.
As planned, I will be sharing extracts from work in progress (read the first extract below) and invite you to read along, reflect and share your thoughts. As part of the book writing process, I will also organise virtual drop in sessions which are open to all and free to attend and there is a regular newsletter with updates about the book and upcoming events or get in touch with me directly.
Chapter overview: Pitfalls and problems of virtual teams
Many unforeseen problems arise in a virtual team over the years. In contrast with managing a traditional, office-based workforce, there are a lot of factors at play that you have little or no control over when you manage people remotely, from moving house to problems with technical infrastructure. This chapter explores some of the difficult and dark times I experienced leading a virtual team and ways to cope with them. I also discuss ideas for establishing a positive life/work balance for remote workers and hopefully avoid many common problems from the outset.
One of the lessons I learnt about leading a virtual team is that many problems only arise over time. Something that isn’t an issue early on can become problematic a year down the line when you no longer benefit from things you have done when you were working together in person in the office. One example of this is the renewal of a contract last renewed when there was still a physical filing cabinet with the relevant papers in it next to your desk. In my case, it took literally a calendar year to sort out a complex mail forwarding arrangement that still gives me nightmares. Even in a relatively small organisation like the one I lead, certain processes only occur every 2-3 years or less frequently. I found that in particular governance, audit and quality assurance processes can become harder over time as the organisational memory of how things were done fades and you need to establish new ways of doing things remotely.
Your portfolio of problems will change over time, and there are several other factors, such as staffing changes or establishing a new service for example, that can cause new issues to arise in the dynamics of a virtual team. Each onboarding process brings with it an unknown quantity of home-working related variables that over time impact on your team. Everyday challenges can seem easy to overcome at first, but the lived experience of spending every day at home and working can be difficult to anticipate.
It’s worth taking a moment to reflect on how many things shape life at home and by extension working from home and how much things can change abruptly and without warning. It may be a new pet, a sudden illness or redundancy that causes home life to change overnight. Or it may be external factors such as a building site or noisy neighbours. Managing a virtual team involves to some degree connecting with the reality of home life of your workforce and all that brings with it.
Whilst a lot of what I focus on in this chapter is about creating balance between life and work, about maintaining a degree of professional detachment and separation between home and work, there are limits to what can realistically be achieved. There will always be situations when not going out to work means that there is no escape from a difficult situation at home and this is one of the most challenging aspects of managing a remote workforce.
I have divided this chapter into three sections: first, I want to focus on everyday challenges that virtual teams experience. That includes negotiating the tension between working from home and doing housework, working from home in different time zones and seasons as well as wellbeing for home-workers.
The second part of the chapter is about managing crisis and change as a virtual team, such as moving house (which can be more impactful than anticipated) and how to communicate and build trust when things really go wrong.
The final part of the chapter is dedicated to reflecting on working in times of pandemic. Before 2020 none of us had experienced this scale of global health crisis as a virtual team and we learnt a lot from the experience which we tried to meet with grace and compassion.
Draft Chapter extract
Below is an extract of the draft chapter. This is the third and last section of the chapter.
Working as a virtual team in times of global crisis
“Hello from month two of lockdown here in the UK. I initially started writing this post on 23 March 2020, but since then so much has happened that I stopped and now, a month later, I’ve started again.
I’ve been reading so much about the current crisis: at first there were emergency announcements and lockdown measures, then support and help for coping, then about the ‘new normal’ and now we’ve arrived at predictions for the future.
It is both incredibly busy and extremely boring.
I am not sure how I feel about the idea of ‘business as usual’. I can understand the desire for a sense of normality and keeping to a routine, but no one can really function normally just now, so I am starting to think about what measures we can take to lead our team through the coming months..
My ideas include a 20% reduction in overall productivity (to give us as a team more flexibility around care commitments etc), setting priorities for each week and creating a clearer overview for us as a team (kind of like what you would do for a project, ie treat the crisis as a project) and to try and set aside small pockets of time for thinking about things, rather than just doing…”
Reading the opening paragraphs of a blog post I published on 4 May 2020, and it takes me right back to those dark days. Obviously, the COVID-19 crisis had a much wider impact than I can comment on in the context of this book. The social, economic and political ramifications here in the UK and globally cannot yet be fully understood. The human cost, which continues to rise, is huge. Personally and professional we have all been affected.
In the context of working as a virtual team, the great pivot online introduced a great number of people to work from home and this is something I have discussed earlier, in the Introduction.
When the crisis hit, our team was already working from home, and in that respect we were safer than many others. Also, our organization was safer. We already had established processes for working from home and that was a huge plus.
However, no one had prepared for what was to come next, and I want to reflect on the practical as well as the leadership challenges of leading a team through such a crisis.
For me personally, the global pandemic coincided with a period of great personal upheaval including divorce and a move to a new city, which made this time one of the most challenging of my career as a CEO.
Practical measures
To begin with, we took a lot of practical steps to support staff during this time of crisis. This included:
Extra paid time off, extending Bank Holidays for example
Regular, individual check-ins with HR and support staff
Diverting funds usually spend on development like attending events to offer financial support for coaching, mentoring and counselling
Including wellbeing check-ins in weekly team meetings
Encouraging staff to share tips for wellbeing, for example links to online meditation sessions, helpful reading, recipes or entertainment
At times of high stress, even two weeks can seem like a long time and a lot can change in how a team is feeling or coping. It’s challenging to share how everyone is when some of the things that are happening to everyone are very personal.
What I focus on is to find some balance between work being an escape, a bit of “normality” for everyone and work being a source of social interaction and support. These two things are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but they can sit uneasily alongside each other when for example one person wants to try and have a ‘normal day’ and someone else feels like sharing their personal or crisis news.
One of the most recognisable features of working from home during the pandemic is the video call, which “can be cognitively demanding keeping an eye on the chat as well as listening to what the presenter is saying and looking at their slides”. ‘Why is video conferencing so exhausting?’, exploring factors like “non-verbal overload” and “constant gaze” as reasons video calls can be more tiring than meeting face-to-face.
As someone who does lots of online meetings back-to-back his is something I can relate to. I am not a fan of back to back video meetings and I find there are alternatives:
having a phone call (often more personal),
meeting around a document,
or screen sharing something that everyone can focus on instead of video,
or having an audio call maybe with video briefly at the start to wave hello.
If… nothing helps and you do have to have back to back meetings, as I often do, then what works for me is
to have them standing up (I currently have a standing desk only),
to keep each one to half an hour or less,
to take regular breaks between meetings,
and to check in with everyone participating at the start.
Being one of many faces in a grid of video camera pictures is not a helpful way to visualise what having a productive meeting looks like. We don’t all just stare at each other in person. So having a visual focus other than those individual feeds, like an agenda document or a shared screen is key to getting things done for me.
We also explored using a virtual backdrop in video calls, like in a meeting or at a conference, and I am in two minds about it. Whilst I prefer seeing people in their context, I appreciate that many are not in environments they are comfortable sharing widely or wish to protect their privacy.
Strategies for crisis working
As time went one and as we passed 100 days since the lockdown in the UK commenced, more strategies for working as a virtual team in times of crisis emerged .
As well as focusing on our own team, I received requests every week from organisations who were considering adopting working as a virtual team as their ‘new normal’. Every few days I had calls with senior managers who are trying to decide whether they still need a physical office, managers whose employees want to have more flexibility, less commuting and more virtual collaboration. We talked through things like PO boxes, GDPR for home-workers, financial support and line management – but we also talked about the reasons for such a shift, how important it is to think through strategy and values underlying those moves to virtual teams.
Over time, my concern grew that there is a lot that was being left behind, particularly messy HR problems, access issues and long term implications of not meeting in person. For a lot of people I spoke to, endless Zoom meetings or Microsoft Teams was all they have to go on when they start to think about what their virtual work world will look like.
When I started thinking about what our team would look like online, I must say that tools for video conferencing were not even on my list! I was thinking about consulting employees, drafting what I wanted to be the most equitable changes to employment contracts and setting out a blended model of working together that saved some costs, but also budgeted for others such as team days in person, equipment, travel costs, home-working allowances and so forth.
Even with an established distributed working culture the impact the crisis could be seen on our virtual team. Many went from having their own dedicated workspace in a calm home to suddenly discovering this had become a shared workspace with other members of the household. Sharing a workspace, an increase in video calls, homeschooling and childcare meant even established remote workers are also having to rediscover ways to make things work.
Whilst ALT is a distributed organisation there has always been a recognition of the importance of face-to-face time both one-to-one and through team away days. 100+ days of social distancing also meant we as an organisation missed our regular face-to-face team days. I found I really miss face-to-face away days and the opportunities to meet individuals in person. The longer the period that we do not meet up as a team the more I feel the impact of not having more informal catch ups.
Many of us were not able to easily find a quiet spot for a conversation in lock-down homes, and even when not surrounded by family, there is a lot going on within the home environment that can be distracting. All of which makes it more difficult to really focus on conversations, particularly in a Line Management context.
Fellow CEOs I talked to are finding they are similarly experiencing some deterioration in those important relationships. Some people find it easier to establish an equivalent level of trust and exchange than others.
Ideas we have tried to create different kinds of spaces to interact in are:
Meeting around documents
Walk and talk conversations on the phone, whilst we go for a walk individually
Good old-fashioned phone calls
Virtual get togethers for social occasions such as birthdays
In year one of us being a virtual team, we had a lot of change to cope with but enthusiasm was high. Year two was mostly about settling into being a virtual team and ironing out less straightforward issues. We strengthened policies for home working and collaboration that made our way of working more robust and sustainable. Year three started off with a new strategic vision to take us further, to build on what we had established and six months in we have a completely different business model and context to contend with.
What I am thinking about really is what year four should look like… . I read a lot about a desire not to return to the old ways, but I don’t really empathise because the way in which we work as an organisation had already departed from the traditional model well before the pandemic forced many into the great online pivot. Personally, I wouldn’t relish a professional life without face-to-face interaction with colleagues or Members. I miss it.
I have put in place a feedback form that I hope we can complete every few weeks or months to ask individuals about their personal preferences regarding travel, having meetings or catch ups face-to-face and also going to events – taking into account their personal circumstances and wellbeing.
The differences between colleagues who live in different parts of the UK, even in our small team, have really become clear to me in recent weeks, particularly as the lock-down in Wales, where I live, was last to lift.
Dealing with precarity outside beyond our control
As life, in the UK at least, entered a new phase and restrictions were being eased, workers started to return to offices in greater numbers. Holidays at the end of a difficult year were on the horizon and in many ways things were starting to improve. We moved from crisis mode to post-pandemic living. And yet there was no let up in sight at work. For my team, work continued at full pace, and the strain of the last 18 months was showing. Everyone had their own particular challenges, their own struggles and personal circumstances that shaped their experience of this time. What we did have in common is less capacity to cope with stress, with things going wrong.
The continued impact of the pandemic, of self-isolation cases at school and at work, the lack of childcare, transitions and changes at work, as well as crowded family homes and all that we didn’t do the previous year catching up with us created a sense of continued precarity beyond our control. Many of us had been fully vaccinated by this time and grateful to be safer from a deadly virus, but we continued to have a lot to contend with in our own ways.
Acknowledging things not being normal
Through the loss of being able to run face to face events and also due to other factors, our organisation lost nearly half of its turnover in 2020. Like many charities, we struggled with that scale of loss and although our strategic response had a positive impact very quickly and helped us weather the most difficult period, we had to make savings and cuts wherever we could. A year on, I was pleased to see that month by month things were improving and new income generation strategies were starting to pay off. Yet we were still having to be extremely fastidious when it came to managing our resources. Some staff costs had to be cut in order to safeguard the future of the organisation and we were not yet in a position to relax those measures.
This was a singular context but it does translate into many situations when a team or an organisation is coping with a difficult period and it got me thinking about ways in which to provide support and acknowledge challenges.
Usually, I would have looked to structural changes first, to aim to provide more staffing resources, more support for existing staff or financial rewards and benefits.
In the context of post-pandemic recovery, my scope for those sorts of measures was extremely limited however and I had to think about other approaches. Something that would go beyond the formal support already in place and which had been positively received. One of the ideas we put into practice was a wellbeing day. A duvet day if you like.
A day when you don’t have to come to work, you don’t have to use a day of holiday. You can take it whenever you need to and you can focus on rest, relaxation, whatever you feel might improve your wellbeing.
I was glad when our Board approved this proposal and granted the extra day to all staff. The aim of this was partly to give everyone an extra day to breathe and also about acknowledging that things weren’t normal. That we still have a lot to cope with, a lot to contend with. Here are some of the ideas we came up with for how to use the day:
Mentoring & cake: Sometimes an extra day off is just what you need to do some thinking. Get in touch with your mentor, coach or a friend and arrange a chat over a long walk. Take a step back from your daily grind and get some head space. Aim to end your chat somewhere with excellent cake.
Early run and pub lunch: Maybe a wellbeing day for you starts with a nice run (jog, walk) along the river or around the park, enjoying the feeling that everyone else has to go to work, but you don’t. Follow your feet, and breathe in the morning. Job done for today. At lunch, head to the pub for an early lunch (int optional) and revel in the luxury of not having an improvised sandwich for lunch.
Bed: This needs no explanation. Stay in bed. Enjoy.
Tidy and new pictures: Maybe you want to use your day to make your working space the best it can be. Have a tidy and clean and then get creative by putting up some new pictures. Extra points for making something yourself. Also extra points for dog/cat photos. The nice thing about this kind of day is that you get both unlimited tea AND a nicer desk when you do have to go back to work.
It’s Mental Health Awareness Week and here in the UK restrictions are lifting and things are getting a lit bit easier and from next week, the slow return to offices and campuses is entering a new phase. Whilst the weather is still a bit mixed we are slowly moving into a brighter time of year. In this month’s post, we are checking in with mental wellbeing for virtual teams.
We are NOT going back
Over the past year, many of the organisations and individuals we work with have mostly been working remotely, deserting their usual busy workplaces, sometimes willingly and sometimes with regret. Now we are seeing the reversal of this shift and whilst it’s not happening as suddenly or as completely as the ‘great pivot online’, it is happening.
There are a lot of interesting discussions just now about how to return: some employers are conducting pilots and research, others have already consulted staff and taken their decisions… and other again are hoping to return to the routines they knew before March 2020. A great deal depends on context and the culture of the organisation, but it is fair to say that we expect more blended, flexible and all together online working arrangements to be one result of this pandemic.
In our case, we moved online a few years ago and the strategic reasons for our move continue to be valid, more so now than before. Hence, for the second time in as many years, we avoid the practical upheaval that comes with shifting work around. Like many others, we worked from home when all this started, and we will still be working from home when… when the pandemic has loosened its grip.
Mental wellbeing is still at risk
I don’t underestimate how much we gain from being a distributed organisation in terms of strategy, operations and resilience. The gains are huge, especially for a team of 6 working for an independent charity. We made the right choices a few years ago and over the past year, especially last year, that has made a big difference to our organisation and us as a team.
So whilst we don’t have yet another workplace transition coming up, the last year has still put a huge train on everyone’s mental health and wellbeing. Even with some experience and a good home-working set up, working through pandemic times has been extremely challenging and I am mindful that now there are a whole new set of worries to take into considerations as family life, schooling, social activities and work are all changing again.
This Workplace Mental Health and Wellbeing Checklist is a good starting point for any workplace to monitor the progress of their mental health support for staff. Although I am aware of what we do, I still found it helpful to complete the checklist and to reflect on how we meet our duty of care, how to communicate what we do to staff and what I personally can do to help in my capacity as CEO.
I am glad to say that we are already actively doing things across the board that the checklist suggests, which I felt was reassuring. Effectively managing staff’s mental health and wellbeing concerns is, I find, quite hard when you never see each other face to face. It’s definitely possible, but depending on the individual, it may take some ingenuity to find ways to achieve the best outcomes, and plenty of busy managers will probably give up well before then.
Mental Health tips for virtual teams
Over the past few years, we found ways that works for us:
Create time and space to talk: For many people working from home seems to be a never ending marathon of back to back meetings in Teams or Zoom. That’s a tough context in which to create time or space to talk about mental health. I’ve often blogged before about different ways of working, around a document, whilst walking, offering time to reflect and write together… and you really need to find pockets of time and space that suit your team(s) in order to get meaningful conversations. In addition to our weekly group meet ups, we have one to one catch ups and we don’t schedule meetings back to back for the whole week. We have informal and formal spaces which are always there, for meet ups, chat and conversations.
Read the signals: For some, what works for everyone else isn’t a good fit. That applies to in person management just the same, but I feel working virtually increases the danger of missing obvious signals. If you have just come from one meeting and the other person has done something different, it’s easy to talk at cross purposes. So if you are talking about personal stuff, asking about wellbeing or mental health, you need to be prepared to look out for subtle signals, including tone of voice or chat, body language and even emoji. We don’t record our informal chats, so that there is a space in which to chat that is safe and personal. We can use that space to talk about things that may be difficult to talk about in more formal settings. We also don’t have to have catch ups in the same format each week. Sometimes we go for a walk. Sometimes we have phone calls. Sometimes we have cameras off. We don’t always feel the same, so our working practice isn’t always the same either.
Talk about mental health: in our small team, we check in on how we are doing every week, we have social times set aside, we talk about it with our HR professionals, at appraisals, and we have organised coaching, therapy and other support. Our Team Days are a big part of the way in which we touch base with each other. They give us time and space for personal conversations, to talk about our wellbeing and life outside of work. One of those days is coming up later this month and I am really, really looking forward to hanging out with my colleagues. Yes, it will be virtual team day, but it’s not all online, ‘real’ things will be shipped by post for use on the day and this year we even have a guest coming along to help us create what has become a bit of a tradition in our team: an alternative team portrait. It’s a great way to talk about how we are as a team, what working remotely feels like and how we feel about where we are at.
All previous Virtual Team blog posts and podcasts are available here.
Women in Tech Week, University of Oxford, October 2026;
ALT Annual Conference, Conference Committee Member, Cardiff, UK, October 2026;
OER26 Presentations: From Experiment to Enterprise: Open EdTech Case Studies and Walking the walk of Open Leadership; Conference Committee Member, OER26 Conference, Milton Keynes, UK, 22-23 June 2026;
AI in Education and Training: horizon scan and best practice from across sectors, talk at Preparing for AI: Essential considerations for Independent Training Providers, AELP and Ufi joint event, 16 November 2023;
Openness in Education as a Praxis: From Individual Testimonials to Collective Voices. Open Praxis, 15(2), pp. 76–112. DOI: https://doi.org/10.55982/openpraxis.15.2.574 . Bozkurt, A., Gjelsvik, T., Adam, T., Asino, T. I., Atenas, J., Bali, M., Blomgren, C., Bond, M., Bonk, C. J., Brown, M., Burgos, D., Conrad, D., Costello, E., Cronin, C., Czerniewicz, L., Deepwell, M., Deimann, M., DeWaard, H. J., Dousay, T. A., Ebner, M., Farrow, R., Gil-Jaurena, I., Havemann, L., Inamorato, A., Irvine, V., Karunanayaka, S. P., Kerres, M., Lambert, S., Lee, K., Makoe, M., Marín, V. I., Mikroyannidis, A., Mishra, S., Naidu, S., Nascimbeni, F., Nichols, M., Olcott. Jr., D., Ossiannilsson, E., Otto, D., Padilla Rodriguez, B. C., Paskevicius, M., Roberts, V., Saleem, T., Schuwer, R., Sharma, R. C., Stewart, B., Stracke, C. M., Tait, A., Tlili, A., Ubachs, G., Weidlich, J., Weller, M., Xiao, J., & Zawacki Richter, O. (2023);
Keynote: Hope on the Horizon (slides and a summary), EDEN Annual Conference, 18-20 June 2023;
The Future of Learning, panel discussion hosted by Instructure, 12 October 2022,
Digital Learning in Higher Education – COVID-19 and beyond; launch webinar and co-author of chapter (Further non-teaching perspectives on aspects of the higher education sector impacted by COVID-19) with Matt Smith, Interim Head of Primary Education, University of Wolverhampton, June 2022;
Open Apereo 21 #ALT & #Apereo Screenside Chat: ‘Ethics & Learning Technology. Perspectives from the Pandemic’. With @bellaabramsIT, @drchuck, @14prinsp, @MarenDeepwell & @iandolphin24 – 8 June 2021;
EdTech Update – 2 summit sessions including an edtech chat with colleagues from Uhi and the launch of the Ufi White Paper chaired by Louise Rowland with Paul Milner, Ziad Dajani and Jeff Greenidge, 28 April 2021;
FEresearch podcast episode episode 24 talking about the FE Community of Practice sector audit and AmplifyFE, hosted by Jo Fletcher-Saxon, 8 March 2021;
New #APConnect workshop programme – we’re bringing the outside in, #constellations keep their borders open: workshop with Emma Procter-Legg focused on AmplifyFE;
What’s next for VocTech and FE? appearance on the VocTech Podcast #214 during the Week of VocTech, listen here, November 2020;
OLC Global Leadership programme, talk on digital transformation, 15 October 2020;
CPD Panel at MoodleMoot Ireland & UK, 30 September 2020;
Learning from 25 years of TEL history to prepare for an uncertain future (slides) – Keynote at the 2020 International eAssessment Question Virtual Conference, online, 23 June 2020;
Panel: Technology Enhanced Learning – NO BUILDINGS FROM SEPTEMBER: What on earth do we do about the learning experience?, online, 7 May 2020;
Radical Openness: OLCIdeate Salon with Maren Deepwell, Robin DeRosa, Gerry Hanley, Leigh Graves Wolf, Rajiv Jhangiani, 24 April 2020;
From empowered professional practice to empowerment in the age of surveillance (slides): joint keynote with Martin Hawksey, Data Human Interaction workshop, Edinburgh, 7 February 2020;
Wanted: a digital vision (PolicyViewSpring2018), opinion piece in InTuition magazine, Issue 31, Spring 2018,
Seminar for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport: Staying one step ahead at the intersection of technology, industry and education, 14 March 2018;
Awarded CMALT by the Association for Learning Technology and you can read about and access my portfolio openly at https://goo.gl/44I4Bd;
Highlights from the Bett Show 2016, joint #altc blog post with Martin Hawksey;
Futurelearn guest blog post: How can we support teachers and trainers using digital technology, 26th Jan;
Short article about FE policy and the Bett Show in FE Week, 22nd Jan;
Bett Show 2016: presentation as part of FE & Skills learn live programme (20th Jan) on Blended Learning Essentials, an open course for vocational teachers and trainers on FutureLearn funded by the Ufi Trust.
2015
OEB15 presentation: Peer based accreditation for agile profesionalisation in Learning Technology, 3 December, and a number of related blog posts;
Learning Technology: Re-thinking what’s essential. Article in FE Week as part of the Learning Technology supplement [PDF], December;
Policy article, FE News, on education and training issues we share, 19 November;
Parliament TV, giving evidence to the BIS Select Committee as part of the digital economy inquiry as chief executive of the Association for Learning Technology, 10 November. I am in the second evidence session, starting about 1 hour into the programme.
Leadership and professional development in Learning Technology: series of bog posts and original drawings about undertaking CMALT, Sept – Nov;
A series of blog posts as part of #rhizo15 open course organised by Dave Cormier May – June;
Building a global ed tech future brick by brick , The Future of Mobile and Technology Enhanced Learning in Higher and Further Education Conference 29 April 2015, The University of Salford (see presentation);
Interview for the Digital Leader in a Digital Age project, Education and Training Foundation/Oxford Brookes University;
Member of the Online Educa Berlin Advisory Committee (since 2012);
Member of the Editorial Board for Research in Learning Technology (since 2012).
2014
The Big Digital Question, my Generation Tech video on the future of tech in the classroom;
Representing ALT as a Member of the Education Technology Action Group, ETAG;
Representing ALT as a Member of the Further Education Learning Technology Action Group (FELTAG), convened by Minister of State for Skills and Enterprise, Matthew Hancock at the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. See http://feltag.org.uk/ ;
9 December: Inside Government conference talk ‘Building a global ed tech
future brick by brick’ (Inside Government_MD_2014 PDF);
August: 1 August, workshop at UCL as part of the Changing the Learning Landscape programme about students and digital skills;
July: Learning from Learning Technology, talk by me for the New Data Scientists workshop organised by Jisc and the European Commission, Amsterdam;
June: opening keynote at the ALT Scotland SIG conference, 3 June, on Open Scotland – Open ALT;
May: tutoring on week 1 of ocTEL 2014 – the Open Course in Technology Enhanced Learning and other blogs for the course;
April: Implementing innovation? making it work at scale. Talk by me at the STOA Workshop ‘New learning and Teaching Technology Options- European Parliament, Brussels – presentation on new data scientists and learning from Learning Technology
Doctoral Research, Department of Anthropology, UCL
Contested Futures – The Development of West Norwood Cemetery into the 21st Century. A Material Culture Perspective.
In the context of the challenges facing historical cemeteries in England, this thesis poses the question of how issues such as space shortages, decay and lack of income have developed over the last century, and examines how these issues are or how they can be addressed in order to provide a viable future for such cemeteries. Based on an in-depth ethnography of West Norwood Cemetery in London, with an emphasis on phenomenological exploration of its landscape and material culture, this thesis addresses the development, contemporary significance and situation of West Norwood Cemetery in order to gain insight into both its’ own and, by extension, other cemeteries’ contested futures.
Acknowledgements: This research has been fully funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Further support has been provided by the UCL Graduate School. The data presented in this thesis was gathered with the permission and the help of many individuals and organizations, and I would like to acknowledge the co-operation of the Friends of West Norwood Cemetery, Lambeth Council, Stephen Barker, British Institute of Funeral Directors, Colourful Coffins Ltd, the Cemetery Research Group, Association of Burial Authorities, Friends of Highgate Cemetery and all cemetery staff, the Department of Anthropology, UCL, and Prof Chris Tilley.
You can access either the full text or abstracts to most online via the links provided.
Virtual, Eco-friendly or Domestic: Questioning the Transformation of Death in 21st Century Britain, 2008, http://blogs.nyu.edu/projects/materialworld/2008/10/material_culture_seminar_serie.html;
Contested futures: contemporary practices in West Norwood Cemetery, 2007, http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/chp/crg/bookingpack07.pdf;
Theory & Practice: Contemporary Approaches to Anthropological Methodology, 2008, Research & Methodology Seminar, University of the Arts;
Contested Futures: The Material Culture of Cemeteries, 2006, http://www.gg.rhul.ac.uk/cultspaces/papers/Kurz.a.dol
Art
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Foundation Course in Art & Design, Kingsway College, 1997-1999
BA (Hons) Fine Art and Critical Theory, Goldsmiths College, 1999-2002
Research Fellowship, Athens School of Fine Art, 2002-2003
