CEO Report to Members, April 2024
Dear Members,
I hope you all enjoyed the spring break. As ever, we have been busy and I will share some important news and developments with you here.
OER24
We enjoyed a fantastic OER conference at Munster Technological University in March with over 200 delegates joining us in Cork. Our Co-Chairs, Dr Gearóid Ó Súilleabháin and Dr Tom Farrelly, created a brilliant programme with two insightful opening keynotes from Dr Rajiv Jhangiani and Dr Catherine Cronin and Professor Laura Czerniewicz which you can watch online.
My highlight was the Gasta sessions. Gasta means ‘quick’ in Irish and these quick, often light-hearted, presentations are always great fun. Gasta Master Tom was, as ever, a brilliant host. The Gasta sessions are also available to watch online. A haon, a dó, a trí, a ceathair, a cúig, GASTA.
A huge thank you to Gearóid, Tom, the Conference Committee and the Technology Enhanced Learning team who put a huge amount of work into making OER24 happen.
Annual Conference 2024
Of course, once we have finished one conference, we are on to the next! We are incredibly excited to bring the conference back to Manchester 3-5 September with our Co-Chairs Diane Bennett and Scott Farrow. We have had a fantastic response to our call for Committee Members and look forward to working with the successful applicants to shape the conference with Diane and Scott. Registration for ALTC24 is open!
This year the conference theme is doing, reflecting, improving, collaborating. The conference will focus on cultivating collaboration, reviewing, reflecting, re-imagining and inviting improvement. New to this year is the emerging research theme. We invite research or case studies to be presented and the papers will be published in our conference proceedings.
The Call for Proposals is open until 17:00 on Thursday 9 May.
We are trying a new kind of venue this year and I look forward to hearing delegate feedback on it. If it goes down well, it will enable us to be more flexible with the conference timing in future.
Annual Survey results
The findings from ALT’s Annual Survey have been published. Unsurprisingly, ChatGPT and generative AI tools feature prominently in the responses. Blended and hybrid models of learning remain dominant with VLEs, blended learning and assessment top priorities for 2024. Learning Technologist is the predominant job title among respondents and while professional recognition continues to increase and structural support for roles has improved, more respondents are seeking to change jobs.
AmplifyFE
Our AmplifyFE project, in partnership with the Ufi VocTech Trust, reached an important milestone at the end of its third year. To celebrate, we published a project report that reflects all that has been achieved by the AmplifyFE team in that time. We are now looking ahead to the fourth year of the project and to its continued success!
CMALT Committee
This year we have introduced a new CMALT committee. We had a fantastic response to our call with twice as many applications than we had spaces for. Those selected represent all pathways, a variety of geographic regions and industries. Their applications expressed very clearly their knowledge of CMALT but also, what they hope to achieve as part of the committee. Congratulations to Abi, Andy, Darren, Devampika, Hennie, Jade, Julie, Karisha, Laurie, Matt, Richard, Sammy and Vicky!
Participation is key to ALT and all other aspects of our work actively involve our Members. CMALT was the only exception. The Committee will help us to shape the scheme and support for candidates and I look forward to our first meeting in May.
CMALT Course
Our work to create an online self-paced CMALT course continues at pace with King’s Digital (King’s College London) and our Working Group. The course outline and plan are being finalised with feedback from the Working Group with the King’s Digital Team ready to create content soon. We have also signed an agreement to work with Catalyst IT EU to host the course on their Moodle platform. I am really excited to see the course taking shape and can’t wait to share it with you all later this year.
New #ALTC Blog editors
We also had a brilliant response to our call for #ALTC Blog Editors, once again with more applications than we had spaces. We have invited 5 new Editors to join our existing Editors Cat, Karen and Rachel with our first meeting in May. Congratulations to all our new Editors, Abi, Anna, Debayan, Liv and Lucy!
As ever, we are always looking for new posts so please consider submitting a post yourselves. We have guidance and our Editors are here to help!
CEO recruitment
As you all know, I have been acting as an Interim CEO since September last year. Since then the Board of Trustees has been thinking carefully about what the organisation needs. Expect an advertisement for a new CEO soon!