 Thank you very much. I shall just share my screen. Hopefully everyone will be able to see this. Let's wait for that to appear, there we go. Excellent, right, I shall make a start then. Hi everyone, my name's Dan and I'm the Head of Technology Hands Learning at the University of Kent. Thanks so much for joining me in this session today. It's hosted by Ault. As you may have guessed, we're gonna be talking about career progression and CPD in the field of learning technology. This session is designed for colleagues that are working in or around learning technology who are perhaps exploring CPD opportunities and different pathways and perhaps wanted to see what's right for them and what's available and maybe thinking about the next step in their careers and perhaps trying to align their CPD with their particular career aspirations. This is an area that I'm really interested in, not least because I feel that I've gained a lot over the years from undertaking CPD through quite a supportive institution that's allowed me to undertake these opportunities but also managers previously that have allowed me to engage with CPD. So it's an area I'm really interested in. And I also recognize that learning technology as a field can be quite difficult to navigate. There's a myriad of things that we can do in terms of CPD and it can be quite difficult to navigate both in terms of our professional development but also in terms of our career development. So I will be talking from personal experience and so there will be a general focus on UK higher education. But that said, there's hopefully a lot of things that I discussed will be transferable to other areas as well. So further education, secondary education it's not specifically about higher education although that is my background and my main focus. As you may have seen from the chat message that I just popped in, we will be using a piece of software called VVox which is new at the University of Kent. So I hope it performs okay. VVox is our polling software which I'll use periodically throughout this presentation. I've shared the link to it in the chat but I've also got a link to it on the screen in my slides as well. So without further ado, I shall make a start. Make a note of that image on screen by the way that this metaphor of mountain climbing will return to that near in the end of the session. Okay, so in this session, we will be looking at first some of the challenges the general challenges that we face within this field both in terms of career progression and continuing professional development, CPD. I'll then introduce the notion of learning technology as a third space, which can help us to alleviate some of these binary notions of being on either the academic side or the non-academic side or on the pedagogical side or on the technological side. Try to get people thinking of learning technology being a unique field into itself. We'll then look more specifically at continuing professional development within learning technology. So I'll talk more specifically about some of the qualifications, accreditations and certifications that are available to colleagues irrespective of their backgrounds and cherry pick a few of those to talk about them in more detail. Excuse me. And then I'll briefly talk about what I consider to be hidden CPD, those activities that we undertake on a day-to-day basis but we don't necessarily consider to be counting towards our professional development but are still hugely important. So we'll talk about that in more detail. Again, practically, we'll look at how to make time for CPD. My feeling is that time is very much difficult to find at the moment, particularly for us working in this area. And so I'll talk about some strategies how you can make time for CPD. Then, near in the second half of the session, I will talk about strategies for career development, how to perhaps look at the next stage in your career and steps to move towards. I'll then do a reflection, a bit of a personal reflection on where I am today and how I've got through and navigated my career and try and base the discussion around that area. And hopefully there'll be opportunity for discussion at the end of the session as well. Okay, so it's probably at this stage worth just noting the path that I've taken into learning technology. I'd say it's a fairly traditional route. It's not uncommon for many of my colleagues but this is just to identify how I've got to where I am. So I graduated in 2005, degree in media and cultural studies, moved down to Canterbury, got a job as a technician in their media department. I then moved to the University of Kent in 2007, where I've been ever since. I started off as a technician and software trainer in the music technology department. And because I was doing a bit of software training, it was suggested to me that I may want to undertake the university's postgraduate certificate in higher education. And it was in doing that qualification that I was introduced to the notion of learning technology. I'd never heard of it before then. So this is around 2008, 2009, never heard of it. And I was introduced to the learning technology team here at Kent. And I remember thinking, this sounds like a really interesting job. What an amazing job to have. And so what I started doing around then was aligning a lot of my CPD and my thoughts, my career aspirations around, maybe I could get into learning technology. And I was lucky, a position became available in 2010. I joined the e-learning team here at Kent and worked as a learning technologist. Undertook my C-MUL Certified Membership with the Association for Learning Technology. Undertook a master's degree in higher education, which is run by the same department as the PGCHE. And then decided, okay, I don't know what to do now. I need to get a bit of management experience. So I changed roles, completely changed areas, moved to position of student experience manager in one of our academic schools and was immediately faced with the prospects of line managing 11 people, which was something of a challenge. After a year there, I then moved back to my current team, back into the e-learning team, back to being a learning technologist. Where I undertook my senior C-MULT, and then in 2019, my manager left and I moved into the position of e-learning manager and more likely head of tell. And so finally, on this continuum, I did my senior fellowship at the Higher Education Academy and I'm now two years into a PhD. You don't need to remember this stuff, but we will return to it at the end because some of the discussions I have will be based on my personal reflections and personal experience of how I've navigated this landscape. All I would say at this point is that that looks quite neat, but appearances can be deceptive. So without further ado, I'm going to move to our first question in our poll. So we're going to be using Vvox. I'll give people time to either take a photo of that QR code there or people in their browsers or on their mobile devices. Go to Vvox.app and put in the code, which is 106-036-571. I feel like I'm doing comic relief or something. And so the first question I've posed for everyone, which I shall open in a minute, which is what are the main challenges that you have faced in relation to CPD? So that could be both in your current roles or in previous roles. What are the main challenges that you've experienced? Hopefully you'll want to see this on screen if I open the polling. It's a text response. So please do just type in words that spring to mind. That may be, for example, time. It might be money, cost, et cetera. And I'll let these results appear on screen as they come in. Lots of things come in. Excellent. I'll give people a second there. Cost seems to be rating quite highly there, which is interesting to see. Okay, so I'll give people a couple more seconds. Apologies if I'm rushing ahead with this, just keeping an eye on the time. So what I've seen from the list is time is an issue. Cost is definitely an issue. I've seen comments about not necessarily knowing where to start with CPD, not necessarily knowing what opportunities are available. Too much choice, workload and time, motivation, funding, workload, procrastination. So lots of great responses there. Thank you very much for that. We may come back to this near the end of the session. If I just jump back to my presentation, I think my feeling is that a lot of the challenges that I have faced in my CPD development are echo pretty much what people have said here, that I often find that CPD opportunities are quite limited. You don't necessarily know where to start. You don't know what's best for you. You don't know what the best fit is. These are certainly things that I've experienced. And one of my main concerns is this academic versus non-academic dichotomy. I think we're often forced to make a choice when we enter into CPD. Do we align ourselves more down the academic CPD route or do we align ourselves more down the non-academic CPD route? So for example, do we focus on pedagogy or do we focus on technology or can we somehow bridge the two? The other things I've noticed are internal CPD opportunities. My institution at least can be quite generic. For example, time management training, crucial conversations. They're useful programs and courses, but they don't necessarily help me specifically within my role. Time, time's a massive factor and I know there's a couple of members of my team here who would probably also argue exactly the same thing. Time is a real issue. It's really hard to find time for CPD and cost. Some of these accreditations are not necessarily cheap. And I'm gonna try to address a few of these as we progress through this presentation. The first thing I will highlight is this continuum, this academic non-academic continuum. I wanna draw particular attention to this. I put this animation and it's gonna make people feel sick. I do apologize. This dichotomy between either sitting on the academic side or sitting on the non-academic side. In our roles, we often have to position ourselves at either side of this continuum. And I think this dichotomy actually forces us to think in binary terms between either being academic focused or non-academic focused, technical or non-technical. And this unhelpfully means that we often have to pick our side. And this can actually limit the types of CPD that we think we can access and that we should be accessing. And I think this is problematic. So again, I'm gonna run another poll here. So we're gonna jump back to Vvox. This one is to think of just a yes, no or two choices. If you had to choose, which end of the academic non-academic dichotomy would you place yourself on? So just move to the next slide. I should've done that before. Here we go. Let's see results on screen. It's nice to see that Vvox is working. It's always a good sign. That's interesting that it's, there's no main four on there, is there? I think it looks like it's looking like a 60-40 split in terms of academic. Okay, so I'm gonna jump back over to my presentation. Thank you for everyone who's voted there. I deliberately select that question because I think it's a very difficult question to answer. Where do you sit on that continuum? Because of course, I think the argument for me is we sit between the two. And I think it's important to think ourselves sitting between the two. So it's important to consider this notion of the third space profession, that learning technology is a third space. It's a unique area. Thinking of yourself as a third space professional can help to frame and recognize learning technologies a unique discipline, which I believe opens up opportunities for CPD rather than closing them off. It gives you broader scope of what CPD opportunities are out there. But the starting point is to recognize that we're actually in a unique field here. ALT have actually done a lot of work in this area. So let's look at this in more detail. So third space professionals, they are professional roles, but they span that dichotomy, the academic non-academic dichotomy. And I should have had a secondary question to that whether people agree that they span that. But I think there's broad agreement that that's where we sit. Crucially, they require both academic and non-academic credentials. I guess this sounds familiar to people. And Celia Wichurch has done a lot of work in this area around the third space professional. And she's argued that these roles that we occupy are actually quite ambiguous, they're uncertain and don't necessarily sit well within organizational structures. We get caught in this no man's land in this space between the two. And it can actually hamper development opportunities because it's almost as if our organizations haven't caught up with where we sit in the structure. And they're fraught with paradoxes and dilemmas. And so it's really important for us to look at this in the round. Why is it important? Because CPD must be holistic. We need to think less in binary terms and more of ourselves as these third space professionals. So we need to emphatically position learning technology in its own site between these two. Field in its own right. And seeing yourself in this third space can actually help you to access certain CPD opportunities. So whilst we are entitled to non-academic CPD opportunities we should be equally entitled to academic orientated CPD opportunities. The challenge of course is getting our organizations to recognize this space too. But if we do as professionals I think that's always a good starting point. So let's now think more specifically about what qualifications and opportunities and accreditations are available to us in this field. So this list I'm about to present is by no means exhaustive. It's designed to give people a bit of an overview, a bit of a taster as to what might be out there to perhaps frame people's thinking. And I've broadly broken this down by qualifications, accreditations and certifications but there's actually crossover between many of these things. So we have our qualifications, so things like postgraduate certificate in higher education, postgraduate certificate in academic practice, postgraduate certificate in teaching in higher education, master's degrees and PhDs. Then we have accreditations so people may be familiar with Seamult and the Higher Education Academy, so Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy, Fellowship of CEDA. And then the certifications which tend to be more specific, so Adobe, Google and Blackboard certification, project management certifications. And there's no right or wrong way to engage with any of these. I know colleagues that will orientate themselves towards more certification based CPD. I know colleagues that will prefer to do the qualification based. What you find is that there's no correct sequence by any means. What's important is that the choices you make are designed to help you in your own careers. This is largely just a menu of options that are available to you and your own career progression. So let's have a look at some specific examples. So let's start with the qualifications. So the postgraduate certificates in their various flavors in higher education, academic practice and learning and teaching. These tend to be modular and they tend to be 60 credits in length. So they're not huge. They're not massively onerous in terms of time demands. And they're aligned with the UK professional standards framework. But they normally require some kind of teaching observation. This has always been a sticking point of mind that as learning technologists, we're often required to plan and deliver and impart knowledge onto academic colleagues. And we're responsible for making sure that learning objectives are met and that this is measured appropriately through appropriate assessments. So I would actually argue that this fulfills the need for most teaching observations. I would definitely recommend if you've got access to postgraduate certificates through your own organizations that this is a worthwhile endeavor. Why? Because they are aligned to the theory and practice of teaching and learning in higher education. So they provide the theory, pedagogical theory, but they also provide the context. And so you will find that not only you're covering theory of learning, theory of teaching, you're covering things like assessment, inclusivity and aspects of technology and house learning as well. They're often delivered in-house, not always, but often delivered in-house, which means that they can be quite convenient in terms of fitting around your workload. They're normally designed with academic staff in mind. So they will be placed at times of the week where teaching load is less. So they're normally quite flexible in terms of how you can engage with them. And I argue that they provide academic credibility as well because you are learning the tools of the trade. They are academic programs and you will be gaining an academic qualification. And they're often cohort-based as well. So there's networking opportunities with these as well. You'll actually be as part of a cohort with many early career academic staff that perhaps have just finished their doctoral studies. Let's now have a quick look at some of the accreditations that are available. The one that I've highlighted here are the fellowship and senior fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. Professional accreditation is really important. And I argue that this is really where this notion of third space comes into its own. So fellowship of the Higher Education Academy, it's peer reviewed. It's aligned with the UK professional standards framework. And it's both descriptive and reflective. And I think that's really important because it gives you an opportunity to take stock of the impact of your work and to look back and reflect upon what you've accomplished over the course of your career. Usefully, they offer different levels dependent upon your experience. So you can come in as an associate, a fellow, a senior, or a principal. And the exact flavors differ depending on your experience. So this is a useful program and it doesn't alienate people whether they're quite junior in their roles or whether they're more senior. I think there's always a place here for people to look at. So why undertake fellowship with the Higher Education Academy? Well, it consolidates your professional experiences and demonstrates your commitment as a professional in higher education. What I find really important is it elucidates the impact of your work. Now, I'm speaking from personal experience, but I think many of you will share the sentiment that the impact of our work is often unseen or there's a long game to the impact of our work. We enable academic staff to make best use of technology in their teaching. We don't often see the end result. We may see it in metrics and we may see it in feedback. We don't have that tangible impact on a day-to-day basis. And I think being able to reflect upon how we do this can actually elucidate the impact that we make within our professional lives. And that's actually quite affirming for us in our reflections. I argue that they undertake in these programs provides academic currency as well. You are suddenly speaking the language of academia. These are academic accreditations. They're quite a bit of work. My senior fellowship was around 6,000 words. So it's quite an undertaking. When you come out of it, you really feel like you've accomplished something with this. And highly transferable within HE. It's very widely recognized from institution to institution. Okay. I'll talk very briefly about Seamult. Alts offer a whole series of webinars on their certified membership scheme. So I don't want to tread on their toes too much here, but I will just note the Seamult scheme. It's similar to the Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy in that it is peer reviewed. This time it's portfolio based. It's both descriptive and reflective, and it's descriptive and reflective in different areas. You tend to find that you have to reflect upon your operational and technical knowledge, but you also have to talk about pedagogy and the wider context of your work as well. So things like copyright, inclusivity, GDPR, data protection. Again, these Seamult is offered at different levels, both associate, regular and senior. So it provides different entry points for people depending where they are in their career. And it's based on the core, four core principles of alt, which is a commitment to exploring the interplay between technology and learning. The commitment to stay up to date with new technologies and empathy, willingness to learn from other colleagues from different backgrounds, and a commitment to communicate and disseminate best practice really consolidates the work that we do. Crucially, it's updated in three year cycles as well. And so you have to keep your portfolio to date, which I think is really important. Why undertake it? It demonstrates up to date knowledge and expertise. Your people in this field are quite sought after at the moment. And so I would argue that Seamult provides a really good firm foundation to demonstrate that yes, I'm up to date in this field with expertise and knowledge. It helps to contextualize your work and the impact to your work. So things you don't necessarily realize that you're working with or working in, things like digital accessibility or GDPR, you have to draw those things out in your portfolio and it can really help to focus your attention on some of the unseen aspects of your role as well. It's widely recognized within the field. And again, coming back to this notion of third-space profession, it really consolidates learning technology as this third space. I think it's doing wonderful work to establish this third area that sits on that dichotomy that I discussed. Very briefly, because I can't possibly go through every certification that's out there, but there's a myriad of certifications that are available for people. These tend to be platform or task-specific. These have got their own benefits too. They demonstrate expertise in specific tools, systems, processes, or techniques. Now, whilst they're less transferable, they can actually often be more sought after. So if you are an expert in a particular platform, a particular piece of software, a particular project management discipline, you are suddenly highly sought after in that that's a very unique skill set. And I would argue that they have a more immediate return on their investment as well. It's more immediately obvious, the capital to think of a better term, the capital that you bring to a certain role if you have a specific certification in a certain area. So there's a quicker and more immediate return there. But we mustn't forget that CPD isn't just bits of paper. There is hidden CPD too. This is what I refer to as hidden CPD. Think about all those day-to-day activities that you undertake within your roles. These are crucial facets of CPD that mustn't be forgotten. We attend conferences and webinars. We present at conferences and webinars. We're members of professional networks, both international, national and regional networks and within our own institutions. We engage with leadership initiatives, which is just digital leaders, the Aurora initiative. There's, we engage in scholarship. Now, whether that is just writing internally focused blogs or contributing to the alt-blog, it's all scholarship. And there's also relational CPD as well. So things like mentoring staff and job shouting. So staff development, it refers to all the practices and procedures that we use to develop knowledge and skills and competences of staff, which improves their efficiency, both on an individual level, but also for the organization. So it's really crucial to remember the unseen and the hidden work that we do within CPD as well. Okay, I hope I've given you a bit of a flavor. That's a whistle-stop tour. I was never gonna cover all of the different facets of CPD. What I wanna move on to now is the more practical aspects of CPD. Most specifically, time. How do we make time for CPD? So there is a poll that I'll open a second. On average, because I know it differs, how do you make time for CPD in your professional lives? So I jump to my poll and wait for this to load. So on average, how do you make time for CPD? You can only select one of these choices and I know that it's not necessarily all-encompassing. But do you do it evenings and weekends? A lot of time during your working day? Do you take annual leave? Or do you do it on an ad hoc basis? Give you a couple of minutes to respond to that. Okay, that's interesting. Some of the results that are coming in there. So largely people, it's ad hoc. I get the sense that people combine the first three elements there. Most people perhaps have a lot of time during their working day. But some people, like me, have to book annual leave for certain things like, I booked leave for my CMOL, I booked leave for my PhD work. It's interesting that there's a bit of a mix there that we're seeing coming through. So I have a follow-on question to this, which I will keep on screen. And that is, do you feel you have enough time to undertake CPD? And I think I probably know the answer to this question, but we shall ask it anyway. Oops, I just lost my screen there. I'll come back to that one. It's interesting, there's not so many people saying that they have plenty of time. I'd be surprised if people did have plenty of time. About a third of people are saying that they've got just about enough time. And two thirds largely saying they don't have time. Okay, so I shall move back to my presentation. Thank you for everyone that voted there. I would say that those sentiments there about how you make time for CPD and where you find the time or whether you have enough time, largely echo my experiences of CPD, both for me personally and also within my team. So let's think about some strategies for making time for CPD. The first thing I would say is recognize its importance. And I'm not just saying this to you, I'm saying this to organizations. Recognize that it is an important thing to do. It brings benefits both to you and your organization. I think once we recognize that it's important, that focuses our attention to perhaps be a little bit more disciplined. So it's very easy to say block out time in your calendar. We all block out time in our calendar, but you've got to follow up on it. You have to be disciplined with it. So if you set aside an hour and a half on a Friday morning to look at your CMOL portfolio, you've got to stick to it because otherwise it will slip. And I've noticed some comments in the chat about CPD being bumped by other activities. And it really angers me when that happens to people because I don't think it's fair that people should have their CPD bumped by other things. I know there are emergent issues all the time. I think we need to be disciplined. I think that institutions need to recognize that this is important and we shouldn't be shifting things around like this. Some other strategies though, other than just putting things in the calendar. Think about working with your manager and your colleagues to create CPD windows. So the idea that you create distraction free focus time. So again, for example, Friday afternoon at 3.30, the final hour and a half of the day is CPD time for everyone. You're not distracting each other within the team because everyone is collectively working on their own CPD activities. And your manager knows about it as well and you can plan your workloads and you can plan your activities around that. Doesn't stop those urgent queries coming in but it's a step in the right direction. The other thing I've noted here is creating reciprocal arrangements as well. Where for example, you will cover the queries or the meetings or the work of another colleague for an hour or so and they reciprocate that at some point. So you get that time out of the game a little bit to be looking at CPD and then you return the favor at some point. It can be done informally but I recommend including your manager in those discussions. Finding those windows, finding those opportunities to do it. The thing that I've always found useful is to engage in regular appraisals. Appraisals are mutually beneficial because your manager may not know which direction you want to move in. Sometimes as a manager, if you're thinking, okay, what things might I suggest to one of my colleagues about where they want to move? It can be quite difficult. It's much easier if you go to your manager and say, I'm thinking of doing this. Engage in that dialogue because you never know whether there's funding available, whether there's time available. I know sometimes this can be difficult. Not everyone has a really firm relationship with their manager like this but I would say that the appraisal process is really useful for highlighting these concerns and highlighting the direction you want to go in. And the other thing is, and this is more broad than just making time but keep a diary of activities. Keeping a diary can be just something as rough as a piece of paper that you keep in your filing cabinet or it can be a one-note document. But how many of us have got to, for example, started writing our CMOL portfolio, started writing for a senior fellowship or apply for a job and you're struggling to think of all the different things that you've done, all the hidden CPD that I referred to, which conference did I present that, which conference did I attend, who was it I spoke to, which network was a part of. Keep a diary of these. It can be as rough as you like because it will save time in the long run. It's there on tap at your disposal to draw out when you need to. Okay, we are now gonna move on to career progression. So CPD forms a lot of the basis of these discussions but we're gonna move the discussions on now to the challenges of career progression. So again, I think this is the final part I have. Second to last, I'll be posting this question on screen. What would you say are the main challenges that you have faced in relation to your career progression? And hopefully people can vote on that. I haven't seen any votes coming in yet. Which is strange. Oh, there we go, okay. It's a nervous moment there. Of course it's a text response. That's why, sorry, I was waiting for the sliders to appear on screen. So probably the biggest challenge is that you faced. I should say this is entirely anonymous by the way. I'm not storing this data. So just as those are coming in, apologies to those that are still typing with me waffling over the top. I'm seeing things about there not being enough opportunities available. There being no clear path workload, workload getting in the way, which is interesting. Not having time to formize their qualifications, et cetera. Not knowing what's relevant to within their institutions. Lack of confidence, progression path. If I just scroll down through this list, you'll probably see a lot of these that are probably familiar to you. Certainly familiar to discussions that I've had over the years. We may come back to these as discussion points at the end. So apologies if anyone's still typing these in, but I'm gonna jump over to my presentation. My feeling is the challenges that I've faced in terms of career development have always been within learning technology specifically is just progression opportunities that are limited. You could probably make that argument in a number of fields, but I think specifically within the field of learning technology, we don't have an abundance of opportunities. There's also the lack of a defined career progression path as well. I've worked with so many colleagues that have moved on to leave the field of learning technology to move into the private sector or moved into startup companies. I think this is symptomatic of it being such a niche and a narrow field, even though we are perhaps more in demand than we've ever been before collectively as a sector. Then there's the management paradox, which is always a constant headache. You look at jobs and you see management experience required and you think, well, I haven't got management experience. How on earth do managers get management experience? And also this is a personal reflection. I've never necessarily known where I wanted to go and I still don't. I never did when I finished my degree. I've sort of just moved from one thing to another doing things that I enjoy. I don't have a fixed plan and I never have had a fixed plan. Some people do, I definitely don't. The bullet that I've missed off here and I feel awful missing it off is the confidence factor. And that's such a huge one. Not having the confidence to apply for jobs, apply for progression points. So apologies that I didn't add that one on there. I should have noted that one. But let's think of some strategies for how we might start to think about getting to where we want to be. This list is not exhaustive, but hopefully it will provide some tips. First of all, patience There's never been a better time to be working in or around learning technology, I would argue. And our skills and expertise are in high demand. But it requires patience. I think people need to be prepared that there may be a long wait for the right opportunity to appear because it's a limited field. I have known colleagues to be frustrated in their roles. After doing a role for two years, they expect to be moving up. And I've always said, it doesn't happen that quickly sometimes. You have to wait. Opportunities will come up, but they don't come up that quickly. I'd say, again to where you want to be, use your networks. Look at how other people in your professional networks have progressed. So, Alt is a good example. People you engage with both internally and externally. What strategies did they adopt? Could you do something similar at your own institutions? Talk to your manager. Again, I know this is sometimes difficult depending on the relationship you have with your manager. But I think this is your career. And I certainly see it as part of the manager's job to assist in this. Sometimes I'm surprised. I've got a very open relationship with my manager and where I talk about where I want to be or what I want to do. And I think that she feels that there's a trust there and appreciates that openness. And I think there is sometimes a misconception that by saying that you want to progress in your career, it immediately suggests that you want to have your manager's job. It doesn't. I think it just shows that you are proactive and actively looking in certain areas. And undertake CPD for the future, not just for now. My belief is that sometimes it's better to look beyond the realms of your current role. So be honest with your manager as to why you are looking at certain CPD opportunities and that you may be aligning yourself to positions that come up in the future that may not yet exist. I know of examples of people I've worked with that have, for example, undertaken introduction to management CPD, even though they have no Align Management Responsibilities. But I feel that that's useful. They're aligning themselves for future positions in their career. And I believe it benefits their well-being and their position in their role. I want to talk in the time that I've got left about the management paradox as the management paradox. So the experience paradox, I've broadened it here. I encounter this a lot. You see this dream job and then your heart sinks when you see that you need experience in X or Y, whether that's a particular management experience or experience of a particular system. How are you supposed to get that experience? It's chicken and egg. I think the best way to think of this is to take a very broad view of what's meant by, for example, management. So let's say you want to apply for a job and it's asking for management experience. I think management doesn't just refer to line management of people. It can be interpreted quite broadly in different ways, such as mentoring, shadowing, management of systems, coordination of work. So examples might be if you get a new starter within your team, offer to be their mentor. It's a great way to get that supervisory, informal supervisory experience. If you work closely with other teams, why not set up reciprocal arrangements where you have shadowing between teams? We try to do this with our information services department where we try and learn what they do on their side and they try and learn what we do on our side. It can be completely informal. But I think when it comes to writing job applications, you can point to this and you can be honest and say, I don't have management experience, but I have made these steps in this direction. I think the other thing is to keep an eye out for fixed term posts and secondments. If it's an area you're interested in or if it's an area where you feel you could develop new skills, why not inquire about secondment opportunities? I think sometimes it's easier to look at secondments because the pool of applicants may be lower because it's a fixed term post. I know some people worry that secondment requests will be turned down, but my general feeling is this person is already looking elsewhere and actually if it means that they do a six month secondment, learn some new skills, but come back happier with a broadened skill set and appreciative of those opportunities, then actually that's better for everyone. So I would recommend that secondments are something to be looked at and discussed with your managers if you're able to. Again, use your networks, take on community responsibilities, such as running sessions like these, altar always crying out for people to run these sort of sessions. They're a bit nerve wracking, but I really enjoy doing these and I think it's great experience for people who want to tell their story and talk about certain things. So I would certainly recommend looking into your networks for opportunities to gain this experience. And also projects. Think of the experience of managing or working on projects. Start small, but think big. Managing projects is like spinning plates, but you very quickly develop a unique set of skills in doing so. Equally, why not offer to be a stakeholder for projects? Be the external person. So for example, if the example Kent may be, when we introduce a new student data system, it's not an area that really impacts our role too much, but I know of colleagues that remain on those project groups because it broadens their horizons. I think it provides a wider appreciation of the challenges that other colleagues face as well. So be a stakeholder. Right, so if you remember at the start of the presentation, I had an image of someone climbing over sharp edge in the Lake District. Well, I'm returning to this metaphor at the mountain now. When I started my career, I really naively thought that your career progression was linear, that you picked your line and you just went for it and you just got promoted and promoted and promoted and you just kept climbing the ladder. I've realized that that for the majority of people isn't the case. And so I recognize now that does not apply to all and for some career progression is completely non-linear and it's more representative of actually how big mountains are climbed. It's iterative, it's a lot of trial and error. So routes that you thought were feasible turn out to be problematic and but you see new routes appearing, new routes emerge and you go that way instead. Sometimes it's better to actually come back down and to recline. But I think what I'm trying to point out here is that it's staged, it's staggered. You spend time in one location before progressing to the next. It's not this fixed linear path. You assess, you take stock and you climb again. Career progression is very much messy, certainly in my opinion. So if we return to this very neat tubular diagram that I had before, it might look very neat but actually it wasn't. So when I first decided I wanted to be a learner in technologies back in 2010, I saw a post become available at Kent. I applied for it and was rejected. Didn't even get an interview. And I use that as an opportunity to learn about, okay, what am I missing? What am I not doing? So I got a knockback there. I had another knockback, which was once, well, not so much a knockback. I got itchy feet after I finished my master's degree. It wasn't just a case of me looking to get management experience. I was disillusioned with technology enhanced learning. I didn't know where I was going. I felt that I needed to move in a different direction. So I got this job as a student experience manager in an academic school. And it genuinely was the hardest year of my life, the learning curve was just so steep. But in some ways it was also hugely beneficial for me because the amount that I learned about processes outside of technology enhanced learning really greatly enhanced my role now and it gave me that management experience that I wanted. So when I came back, I left that team that role quite stressed out. So it was like putting on a very familiar pair of shoes when I came back to being a learning technologist. So I thought everything was great, but then I submitted my senior CMOL. I got knockback on that as well. It needed to be refined. So I was disappointed. I thought I'd put months and months of working. And actually I was told you need to go back and work on this, not enough reflection. So my career has not been straightforward by any means. And amongst all of this that you see on screen, there are unseen probably around 20 half-written job applications. Always not as it seems and career progression is indeed something that's pretty messy. I hope that reassures people that it's not always plain sailing. So I have five tips that I'm gonna end with now. First of all, it's your CPD. Do something that you enjoy. I think being happy in your role makes you a better colleague, a better employee, better for your organization. CPD benefits both you and your organization. And you need to balance your sort of the long game, your strategic interests, your career progression with your own well-being. So do something that you enjoy. The second point here is that remember that you do emphatically occupy a third space. You are quite unique as a profession. Frame your thinking around this. If you think in these terms, it opens up possibilities for CPD. It stops this sense of imposter syndrome when you are surrounded by academic staff. It opens up possibilities of doing things like the PGCHE and doing things like the Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. Things that I know that colleagues have been put off doing because they didn't feel that they were academic enough. Think of yourself in the third space. Keep a record of those CPD activities, particularly those hidden ones, because you will thank your future self. I'll see the other way around. Your future self will thank you when it comes to writing job applications and undertaking a CPD portfolio work. Think creatively about your career progression and how to gain experience. So try and find ways of defeating that experience paradox. So when you're applying for jobs, I always find that it's better to demonstrate your willingness to gain experience than to have no experience at all. So be creative and frame your discussions around things that you have done rather than things that you haven't done. And the fifth point really references that tubular diagram I've showed you a second ago. Remember that career progression, it's iterative, it's non-linear and it's perfectly fine to climb down as well as up. I think that is me done. Thank you very much for listening. I think we can probably open up for questions. So if anyone wants to raise their hand, we have six minutes left. So either post a question in the chat or I do believe that you can unmute your mic. At least I hope you can unmute your mic. The main thing is I hope you found that useful. Question in the chats from Lane Parkinson. Oh, we're Lane Parkinson. I think I may have lost that one. Lane, that says, what would a career advisor say to a 15-year-old who comes to them saying I want to be at LT? Oh, that's a very good question. What will learning technology look like by the time that that person enters the world of work? I think my feeling is that it's such a fast-paced area. And so it's to keep an eye on the direction that the sector and this area of work is moving in. So always be looking ahead to how is technology being used in education and what might the future of technology in education be? Because there's always gonna be a need for people to support the use of that technology. So look at technological development. Look at the way that learning and teaching is moving and use that to frame the activities that you do that will get you there. I think Tom has his hand raised. Tom, do you want to unmute yourself? Yeah, thank you, Danny. Can you hear me? I can. I think my question is really about widening participation in the profession. I often think that sometimes postgraduate degree is almost like an entry point just so you understand different types of learning and teaching and have a little bit of an axe to grind about what you want to see and how you want to change things. But it does preclude lots of kind of different people being involved. How do you think that we get more people involved in the profession from the less traditional backgrounds? That's a very good question. I think it's demonstrating that when you create jobs within the field that you're not too prescriptive with the qualifications and the experience that you specify in those essential criteria, you look at the job descriptions for learning technologies, for example, and it will almost certainly list a first degree and it will almost certainly list as a desirable some kind of teaching experience or experience of working in higher education, for example. And I think that is quite exclusionary. I think we as a sector need to rethink how we pitch these roles. I think we need to think more creatively about the experience that people are coming in with. Why is it we expect people to have a degree rather than equivalent experience in the private sector, for example? Why do we expect people to have taught or presented or been engaged in learning and teaching in higher education when actually we could be drawing people in from secondary education or further education as well? I think so, I'm waffling here, but I think we would collectively as a sector need to change the criteria of those job descriptions to make it broader, to allow people from backgrounds that are non-traditional routes into this. So it provides broader scope for those people to access it. I don't know whether answers your question at all there, Tom. I don't know if there was a simple answer, Dan, but thank you very much for your answer. No problem. Shannon. Yeah, hi, can you hear me? I can. Yeah, hi, I really enjoyed your talk. My question was perhaps coming from the opposite direction. So I have a qualification in blended and online learning and I'm currently doing my PhD in TEL, but I don't have that professional experience, that direct professional experience, even though I work in education. So I guess I wondered what your advice would be for someone who wants to work directly in a learning technologist role and doesn't have that direct experience and most of those positions ask for that. So how do you address that perhaps in an application? That's interesting, Shannon. I think I would say that not knowing your institution or your work environment, but if you have TEL teams or digital learning teams or teams that support technology within your institution, it's best to reach out to them to see whether there's opportunities for you to undertake informal shadowing opportunities. Even if it's once every two months, you spend a bit of time with them, you meet with them, you find out what they do. It can be, as I say, as informal as you want it to be. Often it's a foot in the door because when you are writing your job applications, you acknowledge, okay, I don't have the professional experience, however, I've done these things. This is where I want to be. I think the other thing to look at is engagement with professional networks such as ALT because ALT is very much the guiding body in this area. So I think attending these sort of webinars, perhaps looking at things like the Associate Seamalt Scheme which has less stringent criteria for the work that you do, I think it's that granular approach of cherry picking bits of experience, bits of CPD that when a hiring manager sees that application, they go, okay, well, this person isn't a learning technologist currently, but I'm willing to give them a go. So it's very much iterative. I don't know if that answers your question. Yeah, no, that was great. Thank you, that's really helpful. Thank you. I think we are bang on 1.30 now. So thanks very much for everyone that attended. I do believe that the recording will be shared on the YouTube channel. Yes, Dan. I was just gonna say if you're happy for me to end the recording now and then that will be shared shortly. Yep, that's perfect.