 Hello and welcome to everyone and thank you for coming along to this session which is entitled 20 years in learning technology. We've got six former alt presidents here who are going to discuss what has changed over the last 20 years as far as learning technologies are concerned. So I'm going to hand you over to our speakers who are Jonathan Derby, Stephen Brown, Jane Seel, Linda Creener, Julie Sammon and Martin Oliver. The idea for ALT was born in 92. At that time I was directing something called the Confucian Teaching Initiative which was a short-term funded programme by government. We were coming to the end of our three years of funding and we'd been reviewed and we had a fairly short extension and as a result of the activities of the CTI and other programmes like it that was a distinct and identifiable community of people whose livelihoods were dependent on learning technology or who were getting funded to do something in that area and we were very conscious or I was very conscious of the fact that our existence was at the whim of the funders and it seemed really important to create something that would have a lifespan of its own that would not be dependent on this and also something that would be properly owned by the community and I put the idea to the staff of the CTI centres and it wasn't great enthusiasm for it I have to say actually but one thing led to another and the thing that really helped get ALT going was a chance encounter with someone from BT where I said about this desire to set up an association but how difficult it was going to be without the ability to employ anybody and a couple of weeks later I had a phone call from this person saying you know what you were saying about an association for learning technology would £50,000 help you get going and I said yes it would and that was how that came to be. Wendy yesterday referred to the launch of ALT what we'd done before is I'd written to everybody I knew about 200 people who had some interest in the area inviting them to become founder members and more than half of them did which was an extraordinary response and then we formally launched it at the Cal conference in 93 and what Wendy didn't say was that she came up and castigated me and the others who were involved in this and said have you noticed something you're all men and that's looked rather scarce because I hadn't noticed if I felt mortified to have it drawn to my attention so that was a good start for Wendy. Anyway the conference in 94 was the first time of course when the people involved got together and I looked up the the program and I saw my opening address was what do we need learning technology for and I scratched my brain and hunted through a few old old files to try and figure out what it was I was looking at and I realised what I'd been what I was doing at that point was challenging the audience for the question and this question had wasn't completely new to me I'd been at a conference a little time earlier run by edwcom before it was edw cause and one of the keynote speakers there Louis Perlman went on at some lengths told a story about going to buy a new car and in the car showroom the person selling in the car said and this model sir has headlamp washer wipers to which is reply was and what is the problem to which headlamp washer wipers are the answer and answer came there none I have been obsessed with this this question and I think I asked it even then what is the problem to which learning technology is the answer and if you look at the evidence of the sessions that took place in in in 94 and remember at this time this was pre-google you won't find the word internet anywhere in this book of abstracts you will find worldwide web you'll find information superhighway you'll find a few things like that what you did have was really quite good tools for constructing multimedia see a lot of a lot on multimedia and and so on and my conclusion at the time was that the honest answer to that was because it's there people using it because it was there now they're also using it a bit because they got money under false pretenses the teaching and learning technology programme had to be launched and this was predicated on the notion that it would be possible to substantially reduce the cost of delivering first year courses in university by having a common core of technology supported courses well I don't think anybody in TLTP seriously believed that was going to happen but they were very happy to to take the money and do something worthwhile with it um so I now ask the question again in 2013 what is the problem to which learning technology is the answer do we have a better answer to this question or a better question to this answer I should say than we we had then and I think there is some progress in this area but perhaps not as much as you would have expected in in in 20 years um we have uh the developments things like the OER university which is trying to use technology to specifically answer the question of under provision in in uh global higher education a big deficit there and MOOCs likewise um what you also have is a very considerable number of small scale examples of technology being used to address real problems real issues but the missing element is scaling up we heard from the provice chancellor at the opening session for Nottingham that still some sort of 18 years after VLEs first appeared still have the situation here in this university on whose campus we are where the VLE is used well by a small bunch of enthusiastic academics but in most cases it's just used as a dumping ground so there are still many issues I think we face in terms of what is it that we really should be doing with this learning technology thank you okay that was the early history now we roll forward 10 years um to a period when I think it would be fair to say that ALT was beginning to go through some kind of process of critical self appraisal and analysis but before I get into that I thought it would be quite interesting thing to do just to take a look at how the the association seemed to be viewing itself over the years and and a simple way um I thought to try doing this would be to take the um editorials that appeared in the association's journal I'd just stick them into Wordle and see what happened this is the very first editorial of the very first issue of the association's journal and just look at the words you know what what's really coming out here what's this association about these words oh don't be shy look technology npc pc max um it it's sound cards television this is this is the technology in the association for learning technology writ large before your very eyes courtesy of wordle um learnings in there mind you over there on the right hand side it's it's not too bad um can I can control this wonderful um roll on 10 years what have we got now uh learnings still in there it's about the same size but but the um and video is there it's pretty large as well but can you see the emphasis is changing you know there's not so much technology there's more stuff about people stakeholders tremendous um well I think so um and then if we roll on another 10 years this is where we are now and I think that's a really striking transformation yeah learnings still about the same size but believe me I did not doctor this I just took the editorial stuffed it into wordle pressed go and that's what came out so I think that says a lot about where we've come over the last 20 years but let me just go back 10 years to where we were so halfway between the beginning and where we are now um I think we did some very clever things uh in in the early days of all some things which have done us a lot of good we we began as a a small group within universities um a community of interest a sig if you like a kind of a sig but but set up as a as an association with some funding we took a decision to open up from higher education to include further education to include schools to include industry and also to engage with government through commentary on government white papers to be to become a a player on a much broader stage than we were it right at the very start um I think that was that that was a good thing to do um we've also set up the seamalt scheme which I also think is a good thing to do um because I think it's that if you take those things together it's it's building up the professional um status of the association I think we're on a kind of a trajectory um whether uh whether this is where we want to go to is something that I think that members need to debate but if you take um what we've been doing and add it all together uh that increasing professionalisation establishing some kind of accreditation system for learning technologists the way we're engaging with government in terms of policy issues and strategy and so on we could be looking towards maybe in the next 20 years uh some kind of a chartership status for the association we would be the association for learning technology in order to do that we'd probably have to change just as much as we have over the last 20 years but well we were we to do that uh I I for one think that would be a uh a really um stunning achievement and um I hope I'm still around to see it if it happens so thank you thank you Stephen so um you're listening to all the past presidents um and we each have an agenda and we each have a different voice and I think um it's important that you understand my voice and where I'm coming from I'm a professor of inclusive education and in a sense voice and inclusion is really important to me um so when I first encountered adult was back in 1997 when I went to the Telford conference um and then and now I if I was to label myself I would label myself as a lecturer slash researcher so as a lecturer slash researcher the old community back in 1997 welcomed me with open arms and it was all inclusive and you've heard Stephen talk a bit about that in terms of who's in that we welcome in schools FE universities industry etc etc but I think what what my um kind of reflections are going to be about is in terms of what we've achieved and what the dangers are I think we're coming to a point where we have to seriously think about um what we're saying to people about who's in and who's out whose voice is important and whose voice we're not listening to so that's my kind of agenda if you like so thinking about alt as a community I'm talking less about learning technology what's been achieved but thinking about alt as a community the positive things in terms of voice for me in in terms of whose voice um is I think the association has achieved a great amount in terms of giving learning technologists a voice um so in terms of professionalising a group of people who see it as their role to promote and support the use of tech technology in whatever institution they're working with another president that you'll hear later on we'll talk more about that so I won't labour that point um and so thinking about well what kind of voice if we know who's got a voice learning technologists and for me that's well well I am I a learning technologist I don't know I don't have a role in supporting staff to use technology I'm not an educational developer I just use technology in my own practice am I in am I out I'm not sure I know about that and I'll say a bit more about that in a sec but what kind of voice do we do we have as an association to learning technologists have it's a growing political voice I think another one of the great achievements of alt is that it it moved into trying to influence policy have a voice in that wider funding and policy agenda and so the committees and particularly the the board of trustees have worked hard to make sure that you as a membership have a voice have a say respond to all the consultations that come out from governments and other bodies and I think old is being taken seriously um and you can follow that google trail if you want in terms of what alt has said at various points so I think um we as a group have a growing political voice and that's something really to to cherish um I also think we as a group have a literature informed in voice so that voice so that we um are very capable of um when we're talking about what we're doing our own practice we can link it in some way to what's been written um in the field about what we've done but I'll say a bit more about that on the not so positive side what's not so positive then um I've already started to give you some hints about that I'm starting I'm not saying that that everything's gloomy but I'm what I want to forewarn us about as a group is as we start to think about the future I think we have to start to think about whose voice has been privileged in this association and I am concerned about a move towards people like me lecturers who are who don't have a formal kind of institutional role in technology kind of being pushed out a bit from having a voice in this association and I'm starting to be a bit concerned about what I would call the othering of people like me the othering of lecturers where staff developers and others stand up on this stage and talk about these poor deficient lecturers who are so ignorant and stupid about technology that they need our help and we need to come in and rescue them and we problematise them and they become this deficient other um and so I would just warn us as a group about you know are you happy do you a do you agree with me and if you want to disagree that would be great perhaps I'm just a bit too worried about that but you know should we be worried about the othering of people like myself lecturers and perhaps there's others that I've missed out there what kind of voice is missing although I think as an association we have a literature informed voice my other concern is I actually believe we're very superficial about our engagement in literature in research and I think as an association we're in danger of not developing growing celebrating a really critically evaluative voice that kind of scratches underneath the surface of what we're doing and I still think we're in this danger of the celebratory mode of what we do and not really being very critically evaluative so my challenge for the future is think about who's in and who's out and do we care um and think about what kind of voice you want um yes we want to influence people but we want to influence people with authority and we'll have to think about how we do that so thank you that's my two penna right well what I would like to do is to reflect on three aspects of where learning technology has made a difference and where alt has had a role in that so to start off with I'd like to look at it from an institutional perspective and then back in 1993 or thereabouts learning technologies we've heard was very much a niche area and um most of us were who got involved around that time were in short-term contracts were in project funding so there's lots of interest lots of excitement but it certainly wasn't mainstream it was seen very much as a a techy area and there's lots of acronyms there which if you're old enough to remember them all then you know you've been around for a while and I think since then thankfully within institutions learning technology is now a strategic importance within universities and colleges most of us I think have learning teaching strategies we have strategies which incorporate technology and focus on digital education it's something that has become a high priority generally for institutions we have learning technology teams we have permanent posts we have budgets we have career options again alt has clearly done a lot to promote learning technology as a profession and as a discipline there are qualifications there are master's programmes that is also um seamalt of course as we've heard I think another aspect for institutions to think about is the impact there has been in physical teaching spaces perhaps not as much as we would have hoped I think the main impact has been on learning centres and libraries perhaps the actual teaching spaces haven't changed as much as as they could have but hopefully that will progress in future so have we seen transformation in institutions in the last 20 years not completely but I think we're heading along the right road learning and teaching central to what we do so back then the focus was very much on developing standalone content I'm sure many of you will remember developing computer-based learning materials um aimed at individual students sitting at a PC working the way through these things there was a huge novelty factor in the use of technology back then very few academic staff involved and they were just enthusiasts now of course digital content is everywhere the problem for us is how to manage it how to critique it how to evaluate it and use effectively it's co-creation and collaboration rather than individuals working on their own and in the terms of the technology of course the VLE has become mainstream and very very boring we all hate it really the exciting part is still there though with the new things I've been coming on and will continue to come on stream in terms of technology we now have many more academic staff involved but the issue here is at what level we still I think have very few academic staff who are really engaging in an exciting innovative interactive way in using technology so there's still a big job for us to do with our academic staff and to keep ourselves up to date so are we ahead of the curve in learning and teaching no we're not we still have a long way to go when you look at how technology has transformed other aspects of our lives we're way behind when it comes to how it's transferred education um transformed education and we've heard about that a few times over the last couple of days finally looking at research um back then the focus was very much on evaluation it was focused very much on how to usability factors and again the usability related to usually one student working at with one um package on one pc and the evaluation was very much focused on the technology now I think we have moved a bit more towards a theoretical basis with a lot of literature around now which is helping us to inform directions I think Jane has a point when she says we need to be more critically evaluative perhaps where we're still uh a bit behind in that area we tend to have more evidence informed practice we mostly I hope remember to think about pedagogical factors and we're looking at embedding technology however have we come of age as a discipline I don't think we're quite there yet although again we are heading in that direction and we've made significant progress in 20 years but I think we'll have to come back to that one next year perhaps on our 21st birthday thank you someone's ex-presidents glasses still here that you wonder if you've been looking for um I'd like to try and answer Jonathan's question um these were printed out for me before I came on the 3d printer from our design school in Melbourne um 11 an award this is for drinking beer out of fortunately this is a miniature version and this was um little figure from where you do an architectural join and then it's very easy to print it out they were printed out in a matter of moments and the printer it was printed on probably cost about 2000 Australian dollars but reckon they're all going to have us in our homes in a couple of years so if you'd been shown that 20 years ago what would you have said you certainly would have started thinking I'm certain about the learning and teaching applications and that's what we all do isn't it you see something that is a bit of a novelty and start thinking how can it help students and I think that's the same then as it is now so you know keep giving me the novelties I think I want to take a slightly different tack I'd just like to remember Professor Robbie Mason who was very instrumental in the early days and throughout until her death a few years ago with Alt I believe that she had one of the first sort of what we'd now call learning technology PhDs in the world and then she went on to supervise me and I got one of the soon to become after PhDs after that and I'm sure there's loads of people now and with PhDs that have technology in them perhaps almost any learn and teaching PhD would so I think we are moving from that very early start to really looking at learning technology as a discipline and I don't think it means that you have to have that kind of label all of us are academics here and do have an academic and research base to what we do even if our primary discipline is located elsewhere if you'd like to know more about Robin if you don't know about her I've put the URL up there and I also started thinking about kind of macro myopia in when you look back to look forward you start thinking about all those incredible predictions like when Jonathan said well it wasn't that easy to get it off the ground I'm sure that's true and people are very sceptical but actually the longer term impacts are far greater than the myth of the short term impacts and you know when we suddenly see something that catches media interests such as MOOCs and all the other things that we've seen over the years I think it's important to keep working at it keep making it meaningful keep providing the evidence and and I think oh it's a wonderful example of of macro myopia really um I started to think rather differently about 1993 and what was happening in the world at that time you know at the time oh it was established it looked like a pretty interesting time and almost everything where you can see the seed that was planted in 93 um also you know has had huge impact you could look at the news if you like now and think about all kinds of things where you could track them all the way back during that time so we do need to put our experience in the world and everything that's going on at that moment um in Australia people talk about the seventh wave so not only have we got trends we've also got things that are coming in from left field the seventh wave is that really great wave that you're waiting for that you know well when you're surfing um and and that's what we all need to look out for not only the trends and plod along because everyone can do that but as learnings technologists we're the people who can spot that seventh wave and do something more radical and more worthwhile for our students with it um and it's pretty hidden you know I think you need to look at it and I think one of our roles for Alt is actually to dig about and to dig it out rather than do what's kind of obvious or what the vice chancellor thinks we should do that day or what a technology provider I think we've got something special that we can do to try and work out whether you know it's a black zebra with white stripes or a white zebra with black stripes so I started to think about what else was going on around 1993 this was um just before then Madonna did the blonde ambition tour um and she started wearing her underwear as outerwear um and I think that's what we've got to do really so that's my invitation to you uh you know she changed the world of underwear and I think we need to change the world of learning technology so congratulations we're underwear with pride thank you I think when we got the the set of questions to prompt us about this and one of the things we're told to do was think about what's been most surprising I think in many ways the most surprising thing is that Alt's still here and if you think about the number of groups that have been started up and how many of them have how many of them have lasted this long this is a major achievement just that we've come here that there are people in this room that we're able to do this so I think you know credit to everyone who's been involved in making that happen that is quite incredible the thing that that struck me um you know looking back over the 20 years is is how some things have changed and things have stayed the same and that the terminology is one of these things and you've seen that the wordles that have come up there's a lot of stuff which goes on where to some extent we're being told it's different every couple of years there's a study I did with a colleague um where we were interviewing staff who were moving their teaching online and these interviews were really quite telling for me because the member of staff was saying things like well you know it's transformed my teaching but actually you know it's all pretty much the same and we're trying to sort of get to the bottom that well you know it can't be both things what do you mean and they explained that actually what they were doing on a day to day basis was totally different if they were facilitating facilitating a discussion they were no longer looking at the audience to see who was busy doing their emails and who'd nodded off or and who was actively talking and inviting people in had been quiet they were going to the VLE and generating all this to participants and seeing who hadn't posted yet and emailing them so with that level there was no resemblance with what they'd done before but at the level of values at the level of what was important to them as a teacher they were still facilitating learning they were still encouraging people to participate they were still contributing and I think what we need to do is to start pulling out from this constant churn some of these more permanent things some of these underlying features some of the things which give the field stability and coherence because otherwise I do think we risk losing ourselves in this churn the noise and not actually seeing these patterns underneath it we have done some incredible things and it's been mentioned before but I will bring home the point this trajectory of the learning technologist I mean it started before old you know you can track things back a good 15 20 years before old started there were people called educational technologists working then but we have given collectively coherence and focus to that which I think has been hugely important but it's not stopped I think one of things that's interesting is you know the current word that's being done with teaching administrators where these are people who historically would not have been seen as learning technologists but they're taking on these strategic roles in relation to supporting learners and are now gaining recognition so you know we're not at a point where we have stability we are still welcoming in more people and I think one of things all has done brilliantly is welcome I think one of things that's a challenge for all is what you do after you've welcomed all these people you know what happens after you've got semalt what happens after you've published in our journal what happens after you've done a presentation here and I think there is something which going forward would be quite important to do in terms of challenging those people we've welcomed in to take the next step not just to sort of rest on their laurels right you've made it in you know isn't it nice here but also to think about well okay what are we going to do to up the game what are we going to do next where are we going to go I think one of the things and this this kind of ties into both those points things we haven't done yet I mean one of the I feel quite restless with this as a field I think we've achieved a lot but there's so much more that we could and should do we haven't saved the world this quote from Diana is great you know education is on the brink of being transformed through technology but it's been on that brink for some decades now and I think there's a really important sense in which a session like this is actually like Wendy's keynote yesterday it's hugely important to us as an association we need to know our history we need to know where we've come from we need to know that bigger picture to make sense of our position in it all and this is a quote from an article by Terry Maze is one of Alts ambassadors from just a couple of years after all was founded people have been involved with any length of time with educational technology recognize the experience of this cyclical failure to learn from the past we're frequently excited by the promise of revolution in education through the implementation of technology we see the technology today we confidently confidently expect to see its widespread effects of its implementation but tomorrow never comes and he talks about these previous cycles and we can add now many cycles to this you know we're looking at tablets and mooks and so on we have these things we do see constant turn constant revolution but there is this question about so what back to Jonathan's question what is all this for what do we what do we can we stand back and say we've really achieved with this so I think this for me is the sort of the opening out from a celebration of what we've done to the push to what we need to do next I think we need to come to terms with this growing diversity in terms of all this a community in terms of sectors in terms of categories of staff in terms of the international participation we're now seeing we need to see that recognize and all structures and also find ways to to build that in a into the rich and vibrant community our structures as well as in terms of our welcoming people in but I think we also need to do this moving out I mean this idea that you know for example lecturers need to know about technology we kind of feel that they should come to us we kind of feel that we're important enough and it's obvious enough that we have this expertise why aren't they asking us but it's not so often we actually go and ask them what are you doing what can we learn from you what is it you need to know and I think there is this sense in which we have to be active and reaching out to other groups other organisations other people other disciplines. Neil Selwyn has characterized some of what happens in this field as an ed tech bubble you know we're very good at building our own work but we can be a bit self congratulatory about it and his challenge is really what can we do that then speaks back to the foundational discipline disciplines that we can and should connect to education psychology computer science and so on we should have things to say back to them that make them stop and think because if we can't do that then you know this question about what learning technology is for really starts to buy it so I think you know a huge achievement to be here you know well done to all of us but it's not done yet I think we need to think now about where we go from here thank you