Daniel Scott: Award Winning Learning Technologist
Daniel Scott was recently awarding Learning Technologist of the Year by the ALT community. In his own words, Daniel talks about his professional activity.
“In my current role at Barnsley College (rated as “Outstanding” by Ofsted) as the Learning Support Technologist for nearly 7 years. In this position I research, develop, promote and evaluate a wide range of Learning Technology for creative use in learning and teaching in order to enhance the learner experience and enrich the curriculum. My main objective is to consistently look at new ways that learning and teaching can be improved with digital technology and solve any pedagogical problems.
In July 2014, I started to line manage and develop the learning company Elephant Learning Designs, employing apprentices for the Level 3 and 4 Diploma in Digital Learning Design programmes. We create appealing and interactive e-learning materials. I manage the recruitment, training and assessment of their work as well as promoting the company. I also lead the internal verification and quality assurance of these programmes”.
Daniel recently participated in an ALT community call which you can watch here:
Typical demands of the job.
“Typical activities include giving advice, support and training to academic staff in implementing digital technology into their lessons, courses and curriculum areas. As a Learning Technologist, I like researching new blended learning models that encourage better implementation or facilitation of digital technology. This includes sourcing industry good practice and articles and tasking apprentices to see how they can apply these into current and future designs. A large percentage of my current role is about solving problems both creatively and technically. In our team, I encourage everyone to share their problems on a day to day basis. I also encourage them to share these in our online Yammer group to build up a knowledge bank of problems and solutions that can support future members of staff”.
Daniel’s networks and principles.
“I like to collaborate with people through the ALT mailing list, Twitter and LinkedIn. I like to discuss my issues or plans and with others. I attend online events and find using models and articles useful too. In terms of e-learning, eLearning Industry put out some good articles that I send to apprentices to consider applying in their work. I also subscribe to eLearning Feeds and encourage others to do so.
When implementing learning technology I have the following in mind; underpinning pedagogy/framework, reflection in and on practice, flexibility and accessibility, digital literacy of both learner and tutor/assessor. As well as considering all elements of Salmon’s 5 Stage Model.
When designing e-learning, I am guided by Gagné, Briggs and Wager’s 9 events of instruction useful for instructional design. As well as using Quality Matters and Albion’s work for quality checking an e-learning activity”. Jisc produced a case study on Daniel’s work on rethinking assessment of work based learning at Barnsley.
We think you’ll agree that this entrepreneurial young man is doing a professional job in supporting skills development.
Daniel Scott, Learning Support technologist, Barnsley College.
b.danielsc@googlemail.com
If you enjoyed reading this article we invite you to join the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) as an individual member, and to encourage your own organisation to join ALT as an organisational or sponsoring member