Maren Deepwell

Tag: #altc

  • Career transition update: March 2023

    Career transition update: March 2023

    A month ago, I shared the news that I will step down as ALT’s CEO this September to focus on my work as a coach. It’s been a hectic few weeks since the announcement and I want to take a moment to step back and reflect. In 2018 when ALT started to work as a virtual team, we shared monthly updates on that transition and what we as a team learnt along the way. Just like big organisational change, leadership transitions like this too often happen behind closed doors. Obviously, like with any recruitment exercise, there are some aspects that are not appropriate to share as things progress, but I feel it could be useful to chart my perspective and share some of the experiences along the way.

    Reflecting on the past month

    After ALT made the announcement last month, I was overwhelmed by the many comments and messages I received. It was a wonderful moment for me and enabled me to connect with many people whom I have worked with over the past 15 years. It was bittersweet to be reminded of the many fun projects and events I have been involved in and to look back at how things have changed.

    I have always felt valued at ALT, and the warm reaction to the announcement has only emphasised how much we have achieved in recent years and how much the work we do means to our Members. Although it has been bittersweet, it’s also felt right to me to have made the decision to move on.

    Meeting candidates

    The recruitment panel who will appoint the next CEO of ALT is chaired by Professor Helen O’Sullivan. My part at this stage of the process is to meet candidates for informal conversations about the role, and I have been enjoying these meetings very much.

    It’s interesting to talk about how we work as an organisation, our journey through the global pandemic and what we are working on at the moment. I like answering all the questions candidates have, and to try and see the organisation through their eyes. As the recruitment process moves towards the application deadline next week, more and more of these meetings pop into my diary, and I am really pleased that I can play my part and help give candidates a sense of what it’s like to be ALT’s CEO day to day.

    The most commonly asked question, other than those around finances and strategy, is what it’s like to be the CEO of a fully virtual team day to day, whether I meet my colleagues in person and what I find easy/hard about it.

    Day to day

    Outside of the recruitment process, not much has changed in my day to day work. I have a long notice period, and my planned departure date in September is still nearly six months away, so at this time, my work continues as before. This week, two new members of staff join our team, one providing maternity cover for our Admin Officer who had a baby earlier this year, and also a new colleague to lead our refreshed hybrid events programme.

    With the OER23 Conference coming up in a few weeks, we have much to focus on and even more to deliver each week. One thing I am doing differently is documenting my work. I keep more meticulous notes than I might do otherwise and I make sure to document any processes I am the owner of, so that I can ensure a smooth handover when the time comes.

    Interested in becoming ALT’s new CEO?

    I can heartily recommend working for ALT! So, if you are interested in leading a learning organisation with a wonderful staff team and a dedicated Board of Trustees, head over to the ALT website to find out more, arrange an informal chat and apply. Applications close on 27 March 2023.

  • Career transition coming up

    Career transition coming up

    It’s a exciting week as I have news to share about my upcoming career transition. After 15 happy years at ALT, the Association for Learning Technology, I will step down as CEO this September to focus on my work as a coach.

    I would like to say a BIG thank you to all Trustees and staff during this period of transition. It has been a privilege to serve as ALT’s CEO since 2012 and lead the Association through times of great change. My work for ALT has been deeply rewarding and has offered me a unique opportunity to develop as the CEO of a leading educational charity. 

    It has been an absolute pleasure to be part of half of ALT’s history (having joined originally in 2008 on a maternity cover contract) and I very much look forward to being part of our community celebrating ALT @ 30 this year.

    Read the transition announcement

    Here is today’s announcement from the Chair of ALT, Prof Helen O’Sullivan:

    Dear Members

    Our current CEO, Maren Deepwell, will be stepping down from her role later this year to focus on her own business. 

    Maren has played a key role in developing and strengthening our Association for over a decade and the transition to a new CEO is a big and vital one for us. We have a robust transition plan in place and all of our activities will continue as usual, focussing on our events and membership activities.

    I am sure that many people will want to celebrate Maren’s work and contribution and wish her well on her new adventure in the coming months and we will make sure that there will be a lot of opportunities to do so.

    For now, our focus is on finding a new CEO for our Association, to lead us in our next chapter. 

    ALT is celebrating 30 years as the leading professional body for Learning Technology this year, which is an important milestone for our community. Having supported our Members through the global pandemic, we are pleased to see our annual turnover return to pre-pandemic levels as we close our financial year. 

    There are many opportunities for ALT in the coming years, as we develop our services in response to our Members’ needs… [read more].

    Helen O’Sullivan
    Chair of ALT Board of Trustees

    https://www.alt.ac.uk/news/all_news/message-alts-chair-ceo-leadership-transition

    What’s ahead for me after ALT?

    I am looking forward to the next six months as ALT’s CEO. ALT is in a strong position and I will do everything I can to support the Association in a smooth transition. There is much to do yet between now and September, so you will continue to see me actively lead the organisation in the run up to our Annual Conference.

    If you have been following my blog posts and podcasts, you already know that I have been coaching individuals and teams in the past few years, and gaining my professional accreditation as a coach. It’s work I really enjoy and a role that gives me the opportunity to work with emerging leaders in education and the not for profit sector. My work as a coach is closely related to my interest in leading virtual teams, an area many organisations are now focusing on.

    So, that is what I will be doing full-time from October and you can find our more about my work as a coach and join a free course on leading virtual teams that I am running later this spring.

    Over the next six months I will share more reflections about my time at ALT, and there are many wonderful people, inspiring projects and proud moments to look back on. For now however, I will be focused on continuing the work we do, serving our Members and preparing to celebrate our 30th anniversary in proper style.

    Interested in becoming ALT’s new CEO?

    I can heartily recommend working for ALT! So, if you are interested in leading a learning organisation with a wonderful staff team and a dedicated Board of Trustees, head over to the ALT website to find out more, arrange an informal chat and apply.

  • Wakelet from #LTHEchat 254: Hybrid working: new frontiers in professional practice

    It was a great pleasure to return as a guest to the wonderful #LTHEchat for a conversation all about hybrid working.

    For #LTHEChat 254 we shifted our focus from learning to work. We discussed ways in which learning and teaching practices can inspire a more sustainable and equitable hybrid workplace. If you haven’t yet seen it, read the original post on the #LTHEchat site.

    I was very curious to hear different perspectives and see where this conversation would leads us, and it was a very fast paced, lively discussion on the evening. I found it hard to do more than read, and like or retweet during the live conversation, and I also wanted to give as much room as possible for everyone to express their views and share their experiences, instead of dominating the conversation.

    It’s been such a pleasure to work together with the amazing people who organise and support this important community activity, and I am so grateful for their support and guidance before, during and after the chat.

    The chat in action

    Here are the questions we explored:

    Q1: What is your experience of hybrid working? #LTHEchat
    Q2: How has hybrid working made a positive impact in your institution? #LTHEchat
    Q3: What can we learn from hybrid learning to develop effective hybrid working? #LTHEchat
    Q4: What role should staff play in the hybrid learning/working skills development of students?   #LTHEchat
    Q5: What do you see as the biggest challenge for the future of hybrid working #LTHEchat
    Q6: Share one hybrid working tip that you would recommend to others (and why). #LTHEchat

    LTHEchat 254

    There was a lot of rich conversation and I am still reflecting and delving back into various exchanges, which I hope to write about more in due course. For now, here are a few moments that jumped out at me on the day:

    Screenshot of a tweet from the chat

    It was inspiring to see how many different answers everyone had in response to “What is your experience of hybrid working”. It’s easy to loose sense of how different contexts impact on our ways of working, both personal and institutional, and this opener to the chat provided a vivid reminder of the broad range of hybrid working models that are happening across this community.

    Screenshot of tweet

    Another aspect of hybrid working that came across strongly was the enduring importance of social connection. This is something many contributors mentioned in a number of ways, regardless of whether they had long term experience of working in remote and distributed team or whether they were relatively new to it.

    The LTHE chat to me always feels like a valuable opportunity to connect with folk in and of itself, but this topic brought this to the forefront of my mind more than usual. It was amazing to glimpse a little of what folk feel is the reality of their home office life, office days and travel.

    Screenshot of tweet

    A lot of posts sounded very positive about hybrid work, with many contributors feeling more productive and seeing many upsides to the increased flexibility. But we also spoke about a lot of challenges: from equipment and connectivity to the lack of leadership, appropriate policies and lack of trust.

    There is so much more to dive into.. have a look at the chat for yourself.

    Explore the Wakelet

    You can now explore the whole conversation on the Wakelet: https://wakelet.com/wake/hx_8tyRERoRoSUhq-AFyj

  • Personal reporting in Asana

    In my last post, I reflected on the benefits of a monthly newsletter as a tool for reflection and monitoring progress. For example, I shared how looking at my blog posts for the month gives me a chance to think about aspects of my work I have enjoyed and want to do more of, things I’d prefer to spend less time on, what I want to focus on in the coming month and what is going on the back burner or stopping all together.

    This kind of approach, focusing on what to stop/start or do more/less of is generally helpful, but I find it particularly effective when I review what I have been working on and can use specific examples. Now, in my CEO role, my team and I have started to use Asana last year to support collaboration and reporting across the organisation. I found it extremely useful from the start, but transferring all of my personal to do lists and productivity habits into a new platform has taken some time. As I became more confident in the platform, I found new ways to manage my workload and to review my own progress.

    One example of this, is that I have started to use Asana more for my weekly work planning, and I wanted to share some tips about how I do that:

    1. Reporting

    The reporting menu in Asana comes with a “My first dashboard” set up, and I have used this to set up a personal view of tasks by going into each one of the charts and adding a filter that selects only me as an assignee of the tasks being reported on. This way, I can see all of my tasks at a glance.

    It’s the first time in my career that I can analyse my workload at this level of detail, and it’s fascinating to compare my own sense of how things are going and what I am spending time on with what the dashboard view captures. It’s a useful exercise for me to consider what’s not being captured and why.

    Most of the time, I find leadership related activities are absent from the reporting. Although I have both shared and private plans that capture most of what I do “think about staffing problem” or “ruminate on difficult email response” type tasks are not always easy to quantify.

    2. Unscheduled tasks

    One of the key priorities for us as a team in order to make the most of Asana, is to ensure ALL tasks we add have a deadline and are assigned to someone. I get a lot of tasks assigned to me, and using the reporting feature helps me identify the proportion of tasks that are currently without a due date and thus falling off my radar. 

    I love the discipline and accountability a tool like Asana brings with it, particularly as it helps you capture what you are doing wrong (planning work without giving it a deadline or a lead) as well as what you are doing right. It’s fascinating for me to reflect on why this is happening in certain areas of the work we are doing, as it often points to a lack of communication or clarity elsewhere, which in turn helps me understand what I communicate effectively and what I need to do better to get across.

    3. My Tasks

    In Asana the Board view of My Tasks is starting to feel more helpful to me. I have set up a “To do this week” section, which I add tasks to at the start of my week. That helps me get a sense of whether my workload is reasonable or not. 

    I have also set up a CPD section for myself, in which I dump all CPD related stuff. I then have a recurring monthly task that reminds me to review this section. I intend to use this section as a short-cut to complete my CPD list during my next appraisal. 

    Here is a glimpse at my personal dashboard:  

    Screenshot of the dashboard showing graphs of completed and incomplete tasks in different ways.
  • Mission Mastodon: Get involved in a new server experiment

    Mission Mastodon: Get involved in a new server experiment

    Yesterday saw the start of a new server experiment on Mastodon. Over the next three months ALT Members are invited to join in an exploration of this social space, and learn more about how to use it for personal and professional use along the way.

    We are excited to partner with Reclaim Hosting to offer 3 fun, informative sessions focused on Mastodon. The sessions are open to all and free to attend so you should have no issues accessing them here. The sessions will offer interested parties valuable insight into how the federated social media software Mastodon works, with everything from joining a server, to helping them find their way around, as well as providing a peek behind the scenes of the moderating and hosting process. We need you to join the sessions, participate and report back:

    • Session 1: Mission briefing: 19 January 2023 at 16:00 GMT (WatchRecording)
    • Session 2: Verifying your progress: 23 February 2023 at 16:00 GMT (Watch Live)
    • Session 3: 30 days until self-destruct: 23 March 2023 at 16:00 GMT (Watch Live)

    For any of the above sessions you can join the Reclaim Discord server to join the chat during the live broadcasts: https://reclaimed.tech/discord .

    If you’d like to register and get reminders about each session, head over to the ALT website and register now.

    Why are we doing this?

    The server we set up will act as a platform for our communities to explore and get to know Mastodon. The server will be temporary, but depending on what we learn along the way, we will decide how to proceed. So, whether you are completely new to the fediverse, or looking for other edtech folk to connect with, join us to explore and learn together.

    ALT and Reclaim EdTech are already active on Mastodon, and many in our communities are, too. We are looking to learn more about how we can support folk in this space, how community servers might function, how they could be moderated and what the costs involved might be, too.

    This is an opportunity to learn more about being active on Mastodon as well as learning about setting up, hosting and moderating servers for communities like ours and complement what we can learn from already established communities and servers with hands-on experience. 

    Join the server

    Curious? This is your opportunity to join our Mastodon server and get involved. Watch the recording of the first session and join in with the experiment. Everyone welcome!

    Reposted from the ALTC Blog.

  • CEO Report to Members, January 2023

    CEO Report to Members, January 2023

    Dear Members

    This is a special year for our Association as we celebrate thirty years since ALT was established in 1993. As we prepare to mark this important anniversary as the leading professional body for Learning Technology in the UK and as an independent charity serving our membership, we want to focus on how we can build on what has been achieved as well as what’s ahead.

    Help shape what’s next

    Our work across sectors, serving a growing community with diverse needs and priorities depends on your input and we invite you to complete ALT’s Annual Survey for 2023. Help shape what is ahead and contribute to our unique insight into how Learning Technology is used across sectors as well as identifying emerging trends in current and future practice. The survey provides an important insight into how professional practice within the field of Learning Technology is developing. The purpose of this survey is to:

    • Help map professional practice and development in Learning Technology;
    • Chart how Learning Technology is used across sectors;
    • Understand current practice to better meet the needs of and represent our Members. 

    The Annual Survey also helps to improve ALT’s monitoring and reporting in order to promote equality, diversity and inclusion. The closing date for responses is 5 February 2023 . Complete the survey now. 

    New events programme launching for 2023

    Our events programme is at the heart of the work we do and attracts over 5,500 participants a year. Through a varied programme of webinars, workshops and conferences we increase access to expertise and continuing professional development (CPD) for Members and participants from across education and training sectors. ALT’s new events programme that has been developed to meet the needs of our community and deliver value for our Members. 

    • We are launching a new annual virtual summit for (emerging) leaders which  will focus on key issues identified through our annual survey; 
    • Our highly successful CPD webinar series will expand to include experts from across sectors, offering regular professional development aligned with the CMALT accreditation framework; 
    • ALT’s flagship Annual Conference and OER Conference will continue to innovate as leading hybrid conferences in their field;
    • Our new in person 1 day events, taking place annually across the UK, will expand opportunities for networking and knowledge sharing. 

    We are really excited to bring new events into our established calendar of activities and to continue our CMALT Webinars and support the work of ALT Member and Special Interest Groups.

    Find out more about new event benefits for Members.

    New MoU between ASCILITE and ALT

    I am delighted that we have an updated Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with ASCILITE. There is a long-standing collaboration between ALT and ASCILITE and in recent years we have actively worked together on initiatives including CMALT Australasia and baselining best practice Open Access journal publication. 

    This Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) provides a framework for areas of joint working between ASCILITE and the Association for Learning Technology. It sets out how the two organisations will work together to ensure that shared objectives are taken forward and provides a platform on which to build joint working.

    Did you miss…?

    A quick summary of highlights from across our community: 

    This post was originally posted on the ALTC Blog.