 Start recording, that is right, we're all good, thank you Alison. Share my screen, hopefully everyone can see that. I don't have a great view of the chat Gemma so if anything's going on that I need to know about please give me a shout. Yeah absolutely. So yeah thank you everyone for joining today, this is quite amazing that it's such a popular topic. So my name's Alison Gibson, I'm a head of digital education here at the University of Birmingham, I say here so I'm sitting at the university, I'm in my house, but at the University of Birmingham. And one of the things we've been trying to do a lot in our team is think about professional development for the learning technologists in the team, what that looks like is incredibly varied and can be really a little bit tricky sometimes to talk about actually. And when I first suggested this as a possible topic for a webinar for Alt West Midlands I'd actually originally suggested something around career progression. I joined a learning technology team only about four years ago and one of the things I found quite quickly was that I wasn't really sure what the career paths were and what that looks like and I thought that might be quite a good topic for a webinar but when I started looking into it I realised one of the reasons it was difficult for me to know is because it's difficult for everyone to know actually it's a it's a really tricky thing to talk about and we will come come to it kind of towards the end of today's session. But myself and Gemma and Lynn were talking about this last year and thinking actually development seems like a more relevant way to think about it. It's more about our skills and our experience and our interests within learning technology that can guide where we want our careers to go. And so that's really where the idea of today's session is lying, what kind of opportunities are available. Hopefully by the end of today you'll kind of feel a bit more comfortable finding a direction that's useful for you and for your skills and your interests because it's such a broad industry learning technology and it's one of the wonderful things about it but it can be a little bit difficult to know what those pathways are when everyone seems to be on a slightly different one. So if I just go to my next slide but I am actually going to jump out of this and pull a poll in the chat so let me just do that quickly. So one of the things that came up when I started researching into the idea of career progression or career development for learning technologists is that we often come from quite a broad range of backgrounds but at the same time they tend to often fall into three broad roles so it tends to either be an IT background or an education background or more of a digital media type of background. Let me find my PowerPoint again. And this seems to be something that we kind of take for granted that these are the areas that are still feeding into our industry and so I was just kind of curious to run a bit of a poll of the people who are here today to see if that's actually true. So if you're able to just pop in what kind of professional background you came from and if it's something outside of those three main areas and we can have a bit of a think about that. I mean it's looking pretty broadly true at the moment that about 10 votes have come in, four for education background, four for digital media and one for IT and then one other one. Please do keep voting because I'm personally just really interested in this as well to be honest. But I think one of the things when we think about that broad range of people who are coming in to this industry is that it's really easy to get a sense of imposter syndrome. I think this is something that comes up a lot in the team that I work in because you can very easily be sitting in a room with half a dozen learning technologists and one of them can talk very intelligently about LPI integrations and VLE analytics and someone else wants to talk about the pedagogy of rubrics or assessment line and someone else wants to talk about generative AI and ethics and they're all very relevant interests and skills to have in our industry. But if someone's talking about an area that is different to your area it's easy to feel a little bit disconnected I think. And so one of the things, one of the hopes for today really is to encourage you to think about your own skills and experience and interests and focus on that as a way of finding opportunities for development rather than thinking oh I must know everything there is to know about LPI integrations just because I'm a learning technologist. So one of the things I started thinking about was what we actually do day to day in these sorts of roles and I kind of put a bit of a brainstorm together I suppose of what I think happens in my team or the teams that I work with and these were some of the things that came up. I'm very aware that this probably isn't absolutely true for everyone and please pop some things in the chat if there are other areas that you feel like you specialize in or that you're coming across every day. Even just looking at this you can see that there's a really broad range of things I mean there's a very big difference to supporting a PG certain higher education to answering help desk queries you know someone will get in touch and say oh where's my lecture recording and someone else might get in touch and then say I need to redesign my assessment can you help me with that and someone else might want to talk about generative AI and how that might work and or someone else might want a video created and all of these things fit within our learning technology teams. I can't actually see the chat I just realized but please do be putting some things in there if I've missed anything. There's nothing in the chat just now I was thinking around sort of sometimes in our team sort of projects more sort of evaluation of learning technology products and services and kind of getting involved in rollouts and things like that was something that I just just came up to the top of my head. Yeah definitely one of the huge things for us at the moment is around digital tool procurement as well and looking into the functionality of different digital tools and trying to compare them and trial them and and support academics with using things that are really new. So that's a huge part of it which I haven't even put on there yet even though that's about 80% of my job at the moment to be honest. Yeah Gemma just put in the chat they've just rolled out Blackboard Ultra which has kept them busy. Yeah so the upgrades and keeping on in sort of up to date with things that are changing as well I suppose that keeping up to date is something that in terms of our CPD I really care. Yeah so I think when you start thinking about these sorts of day-to-day tasks that we're all doing and what kind of development opportunities they might lead to it can be a little bit tricky to see particularly direct pathways like I was saying. I've kind of started thinking about it and trying to break it down into these sorts of areas so I mean another thing to just mention I suppose is the opportunities that you have access to is going to change dramatically depending on the team that you're in and the manager support that you get and hopefully everyone's in a really supportive team hopefully everyone has managers who are really encouraging them but I think it's just worth noting that that's not always the case and I just wanted to make sure that we were talking about both options really things that you can do even without that support and then some other that you might need a little bit more well to start this money things that cost money obviously you're going to want a bit of manager support on and someone else to pay for it. So in terms of things that are quite straightforward to access and I'm sure a lot of us do a lot of this is just a kind of part of our jobs hopefully we've got a lot of future loan courses so I signed up recently for the generative AO I won that King's College has put together I tried really hard to get through it in the two weeks that I had and I didn't quite make it unfortunately but it was it was amazing to be able to access that for free and you know please as we're going along if you've accessed anything along these lines that you think it would be useful to share please do pop them in the chat for other people to see so participating in webinars and podcasts like this one obviously it's free to attend there are lots of podcasts which I'm only just starting to get into to be honest I've listened to my fair share of lifestyle and pop culture podcasts but the idea of listening to podcasts for work is actually something that's a bit new to me but there are some really interesting ones around I was listening to one the other day from the Swansea learning and technology team and they've got I think they're up to 50 or 60 episodes or something so that that idea of trying to find some free resources that are that can focus your interests a little bit another great option is the different community groups so just in particular has a lot of these so the National Center for AI has is just doing some really interesting work you can sign up you can attend webinars you can groups with them but also just the email traffic that comes through and a lot of those lists are really interesting you get a real sense of what's going on across the sector if you can engage on that sort of level and then obviously alt membership can anyone hear me I can't hear anyone speaking we can we can hear you Nat you might not be able to hear me if you can't hear anyone is everybody else able to hear okay if you could give me some thumbs up in the chat everybody else is okay I'm going to suggest Nat maybe um oh I don't know if you can hear me but if you maybe leave the meeting and come back in that might reset your settings I'll put that in the chat for you as well because you may not be able to to hear me yeah sure oh sorry Nat hopefully they're hopefully you can catch up on the recording as well so yes in terms of alt membership and groups like this one so this is the alt west midlands group running this although I expect there are people from from other areas of the UK joining us as well which is great and towards the end of today's session we'll be I'll be asking for any kind of development opportunities that you might be looking for because one of the really nice things about this group is is that you can directly feed into it we're looking for ways to support the learning technology community and that's something that we're very open to ideas on because that you know otherwise it's just us trying to think of things off the top of our our head so please if you do have some ideas of of what opportunities you'd like to have access to please do let us know the ones that are a bit a little bit trickier or potentially a little bit trickier because of the kind of budget concerns is attending conferences so if you're lucky enough to live in a larger city then you might have access to some potentially free conferences although sometimes obviously there are fees to to attend those presenting at conferences or presenting at webinars or going on podcasts this is the kind of next level up I think I've I only it never even really occurred to me to present at a conference until a until a colleague asked me to do it do it with them and it was such an interesting opportunity that I'd really encourage anyone to do I think even the the act of putting together an an abstract to submit to a conference is in itself a really interesting professional development opportunity because I think for a lot of us we're so busy we're going from one task to another our jobs are so broad it's tricky sometimes to focus in on a single piece of work and think about the impacts that it's had and if you're going to present to the conference or put a paper in for a conference that's really what you're asked to do you have to really distill your work down into say a 15 minute presentation and that in itself is is really good experience I think and there are so many webinars around that if if the idea of putting your name forward for something like DigiFest is a little bit tricky or you don't feel quite ready for that yet the range of other webinars around is is just huge and you know might might feel a little bit more accessible I'm not actually I've put podcasts there but I'm not entirely sure how you get invited on to anyone's podcast I've never done that I've never even tried to do that but I presume there are ways that you can do that you know reach out to someone and say hey I you know I listen to your podcast I heard you talking about you know pedagogy of rubrics the other day and I have some some interesting thoughts about that and maybe we could have a chat on that so that that was just something that occurred to me the other day and I was like maybe I should do that if I'm suggesting it maybe that's something that I should do and then we're going to move on a little bit now some of the more kind of official routes of development I suppose you might call it the the accreditation so Gemma do you want to jump in and and have a bit of a chat about that I'll just join to the I'll just jump to the chat there's something that's some interesting suggestions before we're going to move on to that so so there's some all sorts of interesting resources that we've got in the chat and so I'm just going to scroll scroll up a bit so there is apparently Edinburgh University has a good future learn course on video creation which might be of interest to people and then futureteacher.eu suggested by David and also you know that's got popular a few people had thought about future teacher University of Kent digitally enhanced education webinars are free to attend and yeah loans plus one on those and Gemma has said Cardiff uni Digi Ed team have just started their own podcast Spotify anchor there's a link in the chat Spotify anchor web link better than numbers so so yeah if maybe you might be looking for collaborators there Gemma on that podcast and then we've had a little bit of a chat about conferences just DigiFest has got some are there streaming some of their keynotes and things for just DigiFest live for free when that runs which is next week isn't it all the week after and open learn getting a mention in there as well so there's all sorts of different resources and free resources I think is really good for us to be able to share those and yeah yeah Gemma always looking for a collab if you want to pop any contact details in the chat there Gemma if you want any anyone then or if you've got any especially subjects that you're looking for people to see then get into it with Gemma right fantastic good yeah I'll have I'll have the next slide please well I'm hello everyone I'm just do a quick introduction I'm Gemma Whitten I am an academic developer in the learning enhancement and academic development team at the University of Wolverhampton I'm also the chair of West Midlands I am one of the things that I do as part of my role is I run our advanced HE fellowship scheme at Wolverhampton and one of the things that I've been really keen to do is look for ways to recognize the contribution of professional technical staff like learning technologists and technicians in faculties and all that different non non traditional academic roles and how we can recognize their contribution to supporting learning in higher education through advanced HE fellowships and one of the things that I was really pleased about we've just re-accredited our internal scheme to the new professional standards framework PSF 2023 and the changes that advanced HE have made to that in collaboration with the sector are really good very inclusive of a range of different roles so I think more so than ever for learning technologists and people in learning technology or technical or professional roles and the professional standards framework categories and dimensions really are much more inclusive of those different sorts of roles I'm going to talk some of you might know lots about this already some of you might not know much so I'm just going to just give a little overview about how I think this might be useful and where you might sit within some of these standards framework I know somebody mentioned in the chat earlier on apologies I can't remember the name of who it was was that they were thinking of looking at fellowship at some point already so it must be on some of your radars already and most of you will probably have accredited schemes within your institutions as well but there are four descriptors in the professional standards framework and they are associate fellow fellow senior fellow and principal fellow and what I think is really interesting about learning technologists and that is that very often you'll be looking at a senior fellow role because of the impact and the influence that you have and I'll talk a little bit more about that later on but it's not about your seniority in your role and I think that it's not a hierarchical structure these descriptors for the professional standards framework it's very much about the job that you do and the impact and influence that you have and I think learning technologists will work with a really broad range of staff and have lots and lots of influence over the way other people are teaching or supporting learning so really something to consider there when you're thinking about what descriptor I will put a link into the chat and if it's this is something that you haven't done before and you are interested and then advance actually have a great tool it's called the fellowship category decision tool or something like that and there's the link to it in the chat and it takes you through a series of questions for you to sort of reflect on your practice and where your role sits and you kind of get a set series of multiple choice and at the end you get a lovely graph out which I really appreciate which tells you how many percent of fellow or senior fellow or principal fellow you are and yeah and that's really interesting it also maps across where you sit in terms of the dimensions as well and so there are 15 dimensions that you have to demonstrate and they're split into three areas and I won't go into too much depth about them today because you know we're only here for a minute but there are professional values and they're all around sort of accessibility and inclusion and evidence informed approaches collaboration and sort of understanding the context of higher education and then there's some core knowledge and that's around understanding learners and learning and different approaches to teaching about gaining new knowledge as well through evaluation of tools and systems there's a special bit of core knowledge just about digital and technology and tools and also quality assurance and enhancement and I think that's something that links in with learning technology really well and then there are five areas of activity which is around how you plan for or prepare for teaching and learning or supporting learning how you engage with learners or deliver learning and assessment feedback and support and guidance and also enhancing practice through continuing professional development so I think those are all all dimensions that align really nicely with with learning technologies roles have the next slide Alison please so what I've put on this side is a little bit more information about Senior Fellow because I think actually it can be used really effectively as an aspirational guide for your continuing professional development and some of the things that we've thought about today that Alison talked about earlier on like going to conferences and publishing and sharing what you've learned and sharing what you know is a really good evidence of leadership and influence on the academic practice of others and so on this side I've just put the Senior Fellow descriptor, descriptor 3 in 4 and it's suitable for individuals whose comprehensive understanding and effective practice provides the basis from which they lead or influence those who teach or support high quality learning and so if you've been in a role in learning technology for sort of 3, 4, 5 years or more then you probably have got D3.1 which is a sustained record of leading or influencing the practice of those who teach or support learning I think you would have that and I think you'd be very likely that you would integrate all of those professional values those core knowledge and those areas of activity and it would definitely extend beyond direct teaching or direct engagement with students or your learners and your learners are staff I would say but for the most part they will be colleagues so there's a few questions in there around thinking about when you lead or influence others when you you know might share aspects of your practice and how it's inclusive and thinking about what CPD activities will help develop your practice towards Senior Fellow and I think if you are going out there and maybe writing a blog or going on a podcast or presenting at a conference about what you know then you're certainly extending your reach beyond if anybody's got any other suggestions around that then please feel free to put that in the chat but I hope if anybody wanted to chat more about Advanced HEE in the future I'm sure and the sort of fellowships and working towards it as a learning technology store technical role then that would potentially be something that we could do in the future have you got time to take any questions if there are any Alison? Yeah I think so I was just going to say Gemma I haven't mentioned this but I'm going for my Senior Fellowship hopefully in the May for the May deadline. I'm happy to hear it I should think so too I'm happy it's been on my to-do list for probably two and a half years. Yeah yeah it does I mean it's one of those things it's really you really have to be quite I'm trying to think of a polite way of saying it but you really have to be determined to to make that time because you know we get bogged down with the day to day but I think I really think the main point that I wanted to get across around a sort of senior fellow is that if you don't have you know leadership and influence doesn't mean management you don't need to be in a senior role to I mean obviously you are but you don't you don't have to be I certainly wasn't when I got my senior fellow I still don't mind manage anybody now at principal fellowship level so you know it's certainly worth doing and it's a nice way of in terms of for me in terms of my sort of professional identity and that imposter syndrome that you mentioned earlier on Alison it really helped me to write it down and then have somebody stamp it and say yeah you're you know what yeah you are a principal fellow and yeah to have that seal of approval is really useful in terms of confidence and sort of professional confidence in our identity and trying to lessen some of that imposter syndrome so and definitely a worthwhile exercise if you can if you can find the time yeah I think I think your point there around but when do we lead or influence others I think it's so easy to to overlook the influence that we have and then people working in these roles have so much often one-to-one time with academics they're directly influencing academic practice which goes on to have an impact on thousands of students experience it's it's really quite immense when you break it down like that but often it's just oh I had a chat with someone over there and then I had a chat with someone over there yeah it is it's all about and some of it is semantics it's some of it is about the language we use to talk about what you do it's not necessarily you know you you might it might feel like just a chat about this why x y and z but actually it is quite impactful when you when you add it all up and so if you can kind of get the language right and maybe maybe that's something that we can look at that language of leadership and influence yeah I persuaded someone to do this and yeah yeah absolutely yeah procrastination fill in the chat I said Seymour and I've done a chief fellowship they really lend themselves to procrastination yeah I was I had a draft of Principal Fellow on the go for about three years before I actually submitted one I wrote rewrote it about five times so um John can probably tell a story about that when uh when we come to John in a second I think we've got Seymour's accreditation up next don't we should we move on move on to John hello can you all hear me we can hear you John thanks nice to speak to today I'm one of Gemma's colleagues at University of Wolverhampton in the lead team I'm an academic developer and I've been a Seymour holder 15 years so I've done lots of reviews of my own practice to get reacqueditation for that and I um I'm a reviewer I've been a reviewer for about 10 years so I've gone through many submissions from other people if you don't know what Seymour is let me paste a really nice succinct um overview of what it is in the chat now and I'll cover that as well so basically Seymour is a portfolio based professional accreditation scheme for people who're involved with using technology in their work so it might be a learning technologist it might be an administrative staff member it might be an academic staff member or a manager you don't have to purely be based in a learning technology role and what it does is it basically shares if you gain accreditation if you gain membership of Alt it basically just shares the fact that you are your capabilities of using technology it's certified by peers and it demonstrates that you're really keen to engage in your CPT and of course every three years you have to reapply so it makes sure that perhaps unlike other schemes you have to keep it relevant all the time feels that I have a vaguer collection of being in a foundation Seymour and actually interestingly a few years ago I helped co-develop the associate Alt membership pathway so we have three different routes we have associate membership we have certified membership Seymour and senior senior certified membership I'm a certified member like many of you talking about procrastination I've been so busy I've never got around to doing my senior and I was completing my senior my Seymour submission a few months ago to renew every three years and I thought I should have really crapped on with senior so that's my aim for next time so yeah I'm struggling as well but I guess when you want to submit if you're interested in looking at it I've pasted earlier up in the chat about the about the scheme and about some events that you can attend a we do webinar so you can attend a webinar and then the three submission dates across 2024 this year I'll paste those in the chat as well we've had the first one so the first one was in January so I'm now reviewing submissions I've just done done mine we've got another submission date for your application for your submission in May and another one in September so they're nicely spread out you get lots of time to plan and prepare and to build a kind of a portfolio of evidence ready to submit you can attend the webinars that I've pasted in earlier and basically let's cover Seymour if you're looking to go for Seymour what it is is it's a contextual statement so you'll be writing about who you are what your role is why you do what you do you'll have a core area one which is about operational issues like the way that you use learning technology core area two is about learning and teaching so the interplay of pedagogy andragogy with technology so how do you do that you know where's your evidence for that the third area core area three is a wider context one and that tends to be around policy and legislature say for GDPR for example or copyright the fourth area is communication with others so it's really important how do you communicate and collaborate with peers so for learning technologies that would probably be working with academic colleagues working with people in your team perhaps working with external relations to come promote the work you do and then you have a specialist option which you can choose so that's something you decide to specifically focus on and share with whoever's reviewing your portfolio and I see everything from kind of rollout of new VLEs to creating cool new moodle things to adopting social media sites within education and then you have your future plans that's one of the last sections and that's that's just what what you plan to do in the future and that ultimately is referred back to when you do your three-year review and you have to reapply again which isn't as onerous so you write a little bit less it's more kind of rounding up what you've been doing over the last three years the structure and this is really important the structure of your submission is basically a description for each of those core areas I've talked about you need to be writing a description about what you're sharing so for example if you're talking about learning and teaching you might write about a new approach to using moodle that you've adopted for a chemistry class for example so you write a description short about that then the reflection is where you personally and professionally reflect on it that is the area that applicants most struggle with so when you write reflection yeah that's great David cry that thank you for that it's really important that and then there's lots of reflective models so there's Brookfields reflective lenses there's Gibbs reflective cycle cold cycle there is Sean and I think Sean's a really good reflective tool to use which is reflection in action which you should be doing if you're applying for membership of all because you have to do it every three years and it's reflection on action so you can stop you get a moment in your career when you can consider what have I been doing why have I been doing it did it go well what would I do differently and often I see a lot of applications where people are really good at describing but they don't really dig into their own reflection about what they've learned about what they've done why they would do it that way why they do it differently the impact that it had people are great at doing descriptions and including evidence but if you think about applying for CML please please please really engage in in kind of a reflective voice make sure that's part of your submission otherwise most of the kind of referrals I provide back are just we're missing that reflection on you personally people write about oh my institution does it like this why do you do it that way and I think it's really similar to Gemma talking about her advanced hate she fellowship scheme a cornerstone of that scheme is reflection again so it's the same for applying for CML it's about that reflective element so you write a description you reflect heavily and then you um you provide evidence as well uh yeah I mean you can write loads down David don't talk about writing a lockdown that's great I think that's what I did with mine I tend to keep a record of everything I've done over the year then each year I pull few I pull a few elements that I want to go into my seam out and then I might say that's the one that I'm going to talk about for my learning and teaching in core area too for my legislation I'm going to cover this element in core area three and then I spend my time just sitting somewhere quiet maybe going to a different campus and reflecting on why I did it that way what the difference was what the impact it had within my institution within the stakeholder students staff and make sure you get some then some evidence to round it out and if you do that then you'll submit an upload to um the portal on alt your weight um and I think it's normally a couple of months for us to get around to doing our reviews and then you um you'll find out and some people get through first time so you might be um there's a bit ranges between adequate to strong evidence for us as reviewers so you'll get a pass or pass as distinction if you require some revisions that's fine it comes back and you can just edit those elements that we require a bit of clarity on and like I say that's normally around reflection on your own practice which we really need you to dig into to just share a little bit about you and your kind of passion and your beliefs and why you do it that way um but yeah I'd recommend it I need to crack on with my senior c mal it's really good for continuing your engagement within the field of learning technology and I'm not massively involved or interested in hardware but what I am interested in is the way that software and webware can enhance improve engage and um that's my passion really and I get a chance to share that with people in a submission every three years and they have to read it so I call that something's actually listening to your voice and so reflecting that document how does that sound uh everyone is that is that okay Alison and yeah that's really really helpful thank you John I think I've never really known much about c malton to be honest the doing it again every three years has always put me off a little bit but I think you've actually sold it really well there it's a nice way to revisit your practice and and to make sure that that accreditation is up to date it's um yeah that's that's really interesting and we don't get chance to often do it but you get an opportunity for a couple of days every three years just to check whether the direction you're going in is is the right direction for you and your career development are you having an impact and I've seen my career transition from a senior uh technician in the arts to become a learning technologist education developer academic developer uh principal fellow just because those three year cycles are really important for me doing my c malton they give me a chance to see okay I'm actually going more in this direction I'm starting to see successes in this area and then my my career progression has followed those three years um so I'd recommend it to everyone to consider it yeah that's really interesting I'm I'm going to focus on my fellowship this year but maybe I'll think about c malton next year linds put a really nice comment in the chat about c malton actually because um about um I don't know whether you want to come on and and talk about this lind um but um unlike most professional accreditation you can do the pack portfolio in any form on any platform that you like for c malton um and share it that way and I think if you are sort of creatively inclined that can be um quite a nice draw as well can't it oh yeah I absolutely agree I mean that's one of the strengths of it for me that in terms of getting your authentic voice across you are not in some straight jacket some professional accreditations which will remain nameless are virtually a word template that you type into but obviously being in in the the sphere we are we've got tons of digital evidence we want to be sharing videos and blogs and blogs so the opportunity to use a padlet or wordpress or us or heavens I'm not sure who it's um oh jemma yeah google um it is just just freeze you up to to get your authentic voice across and I think that's a really um really powerful thing yeah that's such a good point um Lynn will you there do you want to jump into your partner that would be really good thank you yes let me uh pop my video on so you can see me um first of all apologies my my um my guest appearances is a head cold today so if I have to take a sneeze break you'll excuse me um lovely to see so many people here today thanks so much Alison, Gemma and John really sort of fascinating stuff there um and I'm talking about raising your professional profile in you know perhaps what we might think non-conventional ways um for those of you I've seen quite a few um friendly sort of names um in in the delegate list for those who don't know me my name's Lynn Taylorson um I am um director of real-time education you can follow me on ex twitter there that's where I hang out an awful lot um in terms of projects at the minute I'm um working on some um AI strategy for FE uh middle management and leaders for education training foundation and I'm also this is this is I think timely but possibly a little early I'm co-designing a new microcredential um for digital learning um for the digital learning institute and that's for learning technologists unfortunately because we're at storyboarding stage um it's a little bit early to talk about it today but I'm having terrible trouble with my co-designing you might have heard of her her name's Marin D Pwell and I'm having to keep her in line so uh so we're having we're having tremendous fun and I might come back and talk about that because actually it's a great career progression thing however today um it's not just about your CV is what I want to talk about if I can have the next slide please Alison we probably don't want to get you know hordes of paparazzi every time we do walk out the front door but a really important part of you know your your career progression is being able to showcase your expertise your authority and your experience to the to the technology community but also you know to your college your university your employer out in industry um and you know we've spoken you know already um I think Alison's covered really well the conventional routes like perhaps conferences or journal articles but um the one thing I say about journal articles you know if you're going for a peer-reviewed journal that is a very you know advanced piece of writing it's going to take an awful lot of time and care and love it might be rejected sometimes you have to pay for the privilege and you might be at the stage of your career where you're doing an awful lot of really creative things but you're not quite ready for the peer-reviewed journal so so what do I do if um if I'm thinking of doing that in the future but I want to ease myself in well seeing as we're so expert in the digital domain we've got an awful lot of choice nowadays and these are some of the things that I want to talk about for this this 10 minutes um why not do a blog instead why not do a vlog why not set up your own youtube channel we've got the opportunity of podcasts or webinars social media interactions and I've put that final bullet points at the end because you know please get in chat and you know if I am looking to raise my professional profile across my sector um and if you haven't listed anything so far um then please please please do pop it in chat we'll be really really interested to uh to to share um your thoughts on it if I can have the next slide please my um other hat at the moment other than the two I'd mentioned is working for ALT and the ufi voctec trust for those of you who've not come across ufi they are promoting and funding throughout through grant calls and things like that anything to do with what they call voctec which is any learning technology or digital tools that is to do with movement into the workplace so a vocational learning and training and as I say my other hat at the moment is amplify fe I just want to clarify that at the moment we are further eds um fastest growing community of practice we're very proud of that but when we say amplify fe we are talking really about anything post-16 education so I'm not um just ring fencing this to people in an fe college or a sixth form college anything but and I will elaborate on that for a moment but um I'd like to talk a little bit more about amplify fe and more widely opportunities about how we might raise our professional profile so if I can you could flip me onto the next slide please so as I said it's led by um ALT and ufi voctec trust I'll be really interested in chat to um have a thumbs up from anyone who's heard of it or interacted with amplify fe yet so if you have let us know how um so relatively new um and we like to think of it as a community of communities of practice so it's been around since october 2020 and I'm sure that's out of date I think it's about 2900 professionals now so in further vocational technical education um which gives us a um a strong community and collaboration is the key thing and getting voices out so that's what we're all about so if you can flip me onto the next slide please alison so what does the amplify fe space have in its strand it's all about sharing and learning from each other so sharing learning technology expertise so we're not operating in silos but it's not just about the technology we want it to be rooted in digital pedagogy um and we want to give people professional development opportunities um we like to champion accessible inclusive learning tech as we all do um my other hat is as a researcher at the moment for amplify fe so I've been conducting research in how we narrow the digital divide for vocational learners who are most at risk of being impacted by lack of access to digital um so there's definitely a research branch as well my lovely colleague emma proctor leg um does research into digital communities as well so I'll give you links where you can check all of those out in a while what I want to focus on today is that fourth strand which is amplifying the voice of professionals in strategic developments and here we're talking about expert webinars podcasts blogs but also just social media promotion of anything that you're doing so amplify fe has got a presence on threads on twitter x um also on linkedin on facebook and also via the website um which will enable you to shout about what you're doing um I'll listen if you can flip me on to the next slide please so the way that this manifests itself is regular expert webinars and podcasts and we've featured individuals talking about their research perhaps a team uh with you know a new product or service that they're wanting to sell um whole organizations um anything to do with what we call voc tech innovation so if you are using a learning technology or a digital tool somewhere in the vocational sphere so in other words looking towards learning for work on the workplace then it's for you so what have people done in the past they've showcased new designs and new products for people who know pete kill coin he's done a webinar actually um outlining the main benefits of teachermatic which is this new ai tool which automatically creates things like lesson plans and schemes of work and quizzes we've had some lovely colleagues from jisc come along to talk about ai also individual you know companies people like vvox and h5p have come across blended learning consortium and text help but also um when it comes to things like organizations we've had um the esau community do a webinar university of sheffield and coventry city council have all you know come forward and taken their um their place at the microphone and what we hope this does is it allows people to make contact with really key end users so some people have used their space to shout about um a really successful project that they've launched an award that they've won some new innovation other people might have a product um or an idea that's in the development stage and what they want to do is connect with their target audience and maybe you know show them some wireframes ask them some questions about their needs it can be anything like this it can be demonstrations of a new digital strategy that you're using with learners provided it's digital and it's towards sort of work facing then we'd love to hear from you if i can have the next slide please alison so um in terms of the things like blogs and podcasts i always think it's really helpful if people can see a little bit of what's gone before so i've put qr's and bitly links there so on the left hand side you can read some of the past blogs um so you can see we've got stuff from jisc um immersive learning fizzy newt um for those who've heard of it is an attendance monitor so you know a great variety there um and also past podcasts so the value of an effective vle the power of twitter chats the power of curiosity for learning and i will also drop links into the chat for you absolutely we will share this presentation with you so you'll have chance to follow those and use the qr codes the easy way as well so please take the opportunity to have a look at what's gone before if you want to contribute it should give you a good idea of how you do it if i can have the next slide please alison so to join the conversation that will get you on to the signup list so then you'll be having regular mailings from us and it'll highlight things like upcoming podcasts but if you are immediately and i hope so inspired to do a podcast host a webinar write a blog anything like that then my wonderful colleague chloe hines at alft is the person to contact so the qr will lead you to the signup page and then you'll find that chloe's um email address is there you can always contact me as well so um get in touch if you would like to discuss the opportunity of a podcast or a webinar or what that might look like if i can have the next slide please so we'd love you to get in touch with amplifi fv and and take your part at the microphone but i've got one shameless plug before i leave and it's circling back to john's topic of seamalt so um i'm a senior seamalt i'm being joined by my colleague from esol rachel owner who has seamalt and sammy white who is a master guru and um she has associated seamalt and on the 11th of march from half past 10 till half 11 we are doing an amplifi fv webinar on experiences of seamalt in further well that's that's the wider post 16 education so if you are not perhaps in school or in a university you're in an fe college or a sixth form or an independent training provider anything like that a learning technologist in a private company and you're considering doing seamalt then this will be your chance to hear some perspectives on it and also to ask any questions oh thank you so much for helping all of those those links in chat that's really really really welcome and and that's me so please pop any questions or comments on anything you think i've not covered on raising your professional profile in a more unconventional way provided it's not interpretive dance just just pop them in chat for us thank you thanks so much and i think that's such a nice way to phrase it as well in unconventional ways um if any industry is going to lend itself to being unconventional i feel like learning technology is is it so i think that's a beautiful way to to talk about it i'm just aware of time in the comments as well we are at digifest so if you're coming along to digifest please come in and see our stand come and say hi there to um to marin and to jemma and to chloe and myself that's another way you can get in touch yeah definitely digifest is going to be good um i'm just aware of time and i know some people are dropping off obviously to attend a few of other things myself and jemma and luna happy to hang around a little bit after three to kind of finish up the conversation but obviously if if anyone needs to go that time i just wanted to end on the idea of actual career pathways i suppose in terms of learning technology which feels like a bit of a funny thing to drop in at the end here but it just it did strike me when i was looking into this webinar that they didn't feel like a huge number of options um and i'd be really interested to know if anyone has anything else to add to this so when i was looking into it it seems like you know there are these progression into learning technology and then there's maybe senior learning technology roles as well um there's all this career development that we've been talking about today in terms of what you can do while you're in these roles and then in terms of other sorts of progression opportunities they seem to sort of mainly fall into these four um areas and i'm to be honest i'm not even sure these are progression it's hard to know what what is progress i mean we can get all existential about that if you like um but you know there's there's the idea of management roles leading teams within higher education or further education um academic development so looking more into educational research um there's the sort of corporate or commercial side and i've seen a comment from from someone in the chat around this as well which was really interesting i know some colleagues who've moved in that direction as well out of out of the university say and into into more of the corporate or commercial sector and then there's seems to be more and more freelance consultancy going on um i get emails asking me to recruit various consultants so that's clearly something that people are doing um and doing quite well and at the last alt conference i actually had quite a long conversation with someone who was there as a freelance consultant um and really enjoyed it and and had some really interesting things to say about how he made that career choice work for him you know there was a lot of variety um like a lot of freelance work it can be difficult um you know you not necessarily knowing where the next job is and that those sorts of some people it seems like a really really interesting and useful option um but i'm really going to leave it for today um this was a kind of chance to to go over to you um everyone who's been participating today but the chat's been so active i feel like we've gotten a really good sense of where people are um but if anyone wants to wants to stay and have a bit of a chat about anything that we've been talking about today please do um i can see jem has put the date in for the next alt west midlands informal copper and a catch up so that's a um march 20th at 10 am um where we'll be able to have a bit of a chat maybe about digi fest it'll be the week after digi fest that one oh yeah that'd be nice yeah i like i'm not going so i would like to um yeah like to hear all of the news please okay well that sounds good well thank you everyone who's who's been here today it's been a really nice session um i'm really looking forward to looking back over these comments because i feel like i've missed some of some of those things been a very vibrant in the chat very vibrant indeed uh a question from bethen is it aurora running universities aurora is um a women's leadership program that is run by advanced he most universities um sponsor people to go on that so i would ask your um hr organizational development department um whether or not they sponsor people to go on that and it will all depend on your university but definitely um definitely a great program it's something that i've done for myself and really thoroughly um got a lot out of um so yeah certainly recommend just a lovely supportive space in an ongoing community as well yes thanks all really lovely comments in uh in chat thank you for your thanks hopefully we've talked some of you into doing uh an out podcast or a blog or a webinar who knows i'll stop that recording now