 Welcome to the 2021 Learning Technologists of the Year Awards Showcase. We are delighted to welcome so many of you to what we hope is going to be half an hour's inspiring showcase of some of the most excellent learning technology happening across our community this year. The Out Learning Technologists of the Awards celebrate and reward excellent research, practice and outstanding achievement in learning technology and I am really looking forward to the awards ceremony which is going to kick off at 5pm here on the same channel. Before we start showcasing our nominees first for the individual and then the team awards I just wanted to let all the viewers in the room know that you can watch all the videos from the showcase and learn more about all the finalists on our website. I've put the link in the chat so do please watch along. Now we're going to kick off with the nominees in the individual award category and just a moment we'll show you our first nominee in that category this year. So lean back, enjoy and be inspired. Hi my name is Elizabeth McGlone and I'm a learning technologist in the Glasgow School for Business and Society at Glasgow Galdon University in Scotland. Prior to becoming a learning technologist I worked in IT for over 10 years then went on to retrain as a primary teacher. These career paths naturally led me to the role I'm in today. The experience I gained from both these roles continues to shape the way I work with academic staff. One of the key elements in my role as a learning technologist is to lead staff to explore and adopt existing and emerging technologies to enhance their teaching and learning. There are various external and internal drivers at play not least the ongoing global pandemic that are placing demands on academic staff to engage more fully with learning technology. In my institution academic staff vary greatly in their digital capabilities and in their confidence to move away from traditional teaching methods. Although there is a willingness to try new things many lack the time to be able to develop their digital skills and some don't see the value in this investment of time. I believed that a non intimidating approach where staff could explore concepts and technologies challenging to them but where they could feel relaxed in their learning was key to motivating and leading all staff not just the usual enthusiasts. Often people fear but they don't understand so I needed to show that it was not just about the technology but also about learning from others in a safe environment. To facilitate this I established a community of practice centered around an event called brown bag sessions. A brown bag session is generally a training or information session during a lunch break. The term brown bag refers to the packed lunch meals that are brought along by the attendees. In GSVS the aim of these sessions was to introduce an informal forum whereby colleagues could get together to share learning and teaching experiences of using technologies. These sessions developed into breakfast sessions and I found that the promise of a free coffee, Danish pastry or bacon roll really was a crowd puller. The community of practice approach I drew from my experience working in the classroom delivering teaching within the framework of a curriculum for excellence where there was a considerable emphasis on clubs of learning. I knew that this would be the ideal environment to cultivate a confidence and enthusiasm and technology for learning and provide a safe space to learn about technologies otherwise daunting for many people. To help staff move online during the pandemic I continued brown bag breakfast sessions as an online community of practice. The pandemic was challenging for academic staff especially in relation to the pivot online because a number of our staff had little experience of providing fully online learning and so they tended to lack confidence and needed considerable support to help them learn to cope with delivering teaching in this way. I moved to Microsoft teams to deliver these sessions so staff are still getting full support in learning new technologies and to ensure the student experience was not compromised. Because staff are working from home getting them to share the successes and challenges and online learning together was a way of reducing their feelings of isolation and also encouraging them to share tips and tricks they'd learned along the way. Feedback for these sessions online was really positive. Although I tried to provide a comfortable environment for staff to learn new technologies it can still be daunting especially if it has to be done such a short period of time. With this in mind I introduced tech tip of the week. This started as a result of issues I saw arising since lockdown which I knew impacted many staff. I wanted to provide a regular, right-sized, accessible piece of advice to alert people to something, jog their memory or actually give them some practical knowledge in using a technology. I created simple impactful infographics that I could tweet and share widely as well as a useful content. It also serves as a reminder to staff that there is someone out there who can help them with their struggling with technology. Thank you for watching this video. I was delighted to be able to take part in this year's LT Awards. Well I hope that's been an inspiring example. I certainly enjoyed hearing about particularly the breakfast meetings which went from face-to-face breakfast meetings. Those pastries look great to having a virtual community of practice and virtual, I think virtual biscuits are one of those things that we all miss a little bit but this has been only the first of our nominees and in a moment we're going to show you the next one so our second individual nominee for the Learning Technologist of the Year award is coming right up. My name is Phil Antony and I'm a learning technologist at the University of Kent. I created the digitally enhanced education webinar series and an online community associated with the webinar series. Together the webinars and the online community allow people from around the world to share advice, experiences and ideas about teaching online. When I created the series I was keen to make it as inclusive as possible and so decided to remove the barrier of cost making it free and open to anyone who has an interest in teaching online. I created the webinar series and community in November 2020 and over the past 12 months over 3,200 people have joined from around the world. People have joined our community from a range of different organizations including higher education, further education, secondary and primary schools, the NHS, the Met Police and many more organizations. We have run 11 webinars to date with between 200 and 750 attendees. Each webinar has a theme for example accessibility, assessment and feedback, what can we learn from distance learning or the broader theme pedagogy and practice when teaching online. The webinars use lightning presentations of 10 minutes and this length has worked well as it allows a wide range of ideas in a relatively short time. It also allows us to have time for questions after each talk to provide opportunities for discussion. Every webinar has been recorded and broken up into individual talk links for ease of access and these are being used well with just over 80,000 minutes of recordings watched so far. To increase the reach of the webinar series I recently moved the recordings to a dedicated YouTube channel the digitally enhanced education webinars. If you'd like to join the digitally enhanced education webinars community or catch up on any previous talks or speak at a future event please visit our YouTube channel digitally enhanced education webinars for further details. Honourable and thank you again to Phil Anthony our nominee for the individual award for sharing with us his inspiring practice on the digitally enhanced education webinars. I'm sure many of the people in the room have been to one or more of these sessions particularly during the dark days of the pandemic which seems to be not entirely behind us yet. But tonight hopefully we'll be celebrating all things that have been achieved within this community and our next individual nominee for the learning technologies of the year award is awaiting in the wings to showcase their work to us so hopefully you put your hands together wherever you're watching us from and enjoy this next nominee's story. Oh this is Monika and I'm here to explain my project the Champions Programme. I did this project for over two years and it was about communities of practice at its core so I'll take you through the main highlights of this two-year or so project. So I will aim to explore what the impact has been and I will share a resource if you want to go deeper into the theoretical underpinnings of the model. The benefits that my work has brought to the institution and the wider community and I will briefly cover how I aim to make my work more inclusive and accessible. So the Champions Programme is based on the Champions Model that I developed. Champions programs are nothing new in higher education but I felt that when I looked through the literature I felt like there wasn't any clear indication of the elements behind or the principles so I combined three principles to create and deploy this Champions Programme community of practice champions roles in peer coaching. At its core community of practice has been the strongest element because the other two elements champions roles and peer coaching are dependent on the community. So to contextualize this a little bit this was a national rollout of Microsoft Teams so this Champions Programme was to support the rollout and upscaling digital capabilities using Microsoft Teams for teaching and learning. Impact it has had is that so far we have had three rounds of the Champions Programme and the community the Champions community has suffered a natural death in the in banger triners model of communities of practice. Communities are treated like a living entity and they come to an end and at this point we are at the collection of artifacts and memorabilia and the community has still 328 members from across faculties of the university. It has had an institutional impact of several communities of practice inspired by this pioneering champions community. One national virtual community of practice on anti-racism and learning technology and I did some consultancy work for the British Council Peru and five virtual communities of practice using my expertise and my experience of deploying this Champions Programme and the Champions model and the result was the creation of five communities of practice in Peru in Peruvian universities. I also want a learning and teaching fellowship award and a senior fellowship. When I think about this project I can't really show you the faces or the people involved but I can tell you that the most rewarding thing has been to elevate those colleagues who are doing great things across the university with technology teaching and learning assessments, supporting students. So this was very clear to me. This was the big vision I had when I rolled out this program and when I created this model. What I think this program has brought is that it has brought clarity as to what are the steps that you need to take. Obviously if you decide to replicate the success of this Champions Programme you're going to have to think in your own context what works and what are the resources that you have. I have created a roadmap which I'm sharing in the resource and in the main text. Another benefit has been that I created a model that is evidence-based and you can consult the literature and tweak it and adapt according to what you need in your context. A third benefit has been that learning technologies are often on the ground working and supporting across faculties and departments and we often don't have a voice at the policy making level. There might be exceptions and there are different levels of course but I perceive the learning technologies as the post hero hero and this is what I was trying to achieve as well with the Champions Programme. No matter what your role is you can always try and elevate people who are doing great things in educational technology and teaching practice across your institution. Community and belonging was key. We know that the universities work on a silos. There is a culture of individualism and I really wanted to create a sense of community and bring people together. The experience of upscaling colleagues via communities of practice is naturally inclusive because you're not excluding people who have different needs or different schedules. It's not a one size fits all approach. Academics normally like to take ownership of their own learning and having a community space to which they can tap and go in their own time for their own development was key and this is what makes this project inclusive and of course like I mentioned at the beginning is the empowerment and recognition of colleagues. So this is the roadmap. You can see that I had a series of activities around the Champions Programme. These are not the elements these are the activities the actual tasks and day to day things that needed to be done in order to reach that goal. They included training and support dissemination that was key and teaching and learning events and promotion. I would go out there as the leader of this Champions Programme. I would go out there and promote the work that the six Champions Cross faculties were doing across the university. So if you are interested in finding out more about this Champions Programme you can consult the resource that I have added in the text link and you will find an explanation of the theoretical underpinnings, the impact it has had and other very useful tips especially I encourage you to read the recommendations, final recommendations section and you have to go out there and try things and take that risk. So I think for me that has been the main takeaway of doing this Champions Programme. And this is the final of our individual nominees. So I hope for all of you who are watching and already starting to comment in their chat, please put your hands together to give a big round of applause for all of our individual nominees. At the award ceremony which starts at five o'clock we will shortly be announcing all the winners. But now we're moving on to this year's nominees for the team award for the Outlearning Technologist of the Year 2021. And I know this is always a hotly contested category so I'm sure like me you are all looking forward to learning more about this year's finalists. In a moment I'm going to bring up the first one but I wanted to extend a very warm welcome for everyone who is just coming into the room and joining us. I can see you popping up on the chat so do feel free to wave along and let us know where you're joining us from. But now without further ado get ready to welcome our first team nominee. The University College of Estate Management is a provider of fully online supported education specializing in the built environment with over 4,000 students across the globe. The Digital Education Team are a group of learning designers, learning technology researchers and quality control specialists who are responsible for the design and development of all our academic modules and storyboarding through to activity planning through to development on the VLE. We identified a need to improve student outcomes and student satisfaction which we gaged by internal data analysis and assess their results and on the street back. One of our nearly 100 modules used an old design approach which prioritized textbooks and reading over active learning. Our internal working processes revolved around in-person meetings and development updates rather than utilising learning design approaches. The challenge we faced was to redesign our suite of modules at the pace and meet the need of our students. The majority of which are part-time professional learners and have a little time to spare. We also had to think about accessibility and language. About a percent of our students have identified as having some disability and we have students in over 100 countries and many of them are studying in their second language. The pandemic meant we needed to accelerate our online assessment strategy to quickly replace in-person examples with rigorous tried and tested online assessment methods appropriate for the academic level. We wanted to redesign all our modules according to the new active learning approach based on constructivist principles. This would ensure that resources are embedded within activities that have a clear learning journey rather than being standalone pieces of reading. We needed to work more closely with the academic team to bring together the different areas of expertise making use of the best learning approaches made possible by the learning priorities. We have developed a new educational framework that puts the student experience at the centre of everything we do. It responds to the challenges our students face while working and learning. By promoting flexible, asynchronous and outcome-led design, we have created new ways of working together with our academic colleagues by introducing virtual design jams, resource workshops and co-design partnerships throughout our module development and enhancement approaches. We implemented new coursework assignments and computer marked assessment to replace our in-person exams so we could provide more authentic assessment and provide efficiencies in marking. We rolled out a templated approach to our modules so that we could implement active learning principles but also provide a level of flexibility within a framework so that we could maintain each module's unique identity and focus. We ensure a constructive alignment approach. All modules have clearly defined purpose and aligned to the assessment and the module learning outcomes. This focuses on making our learning materials authentic and relevant to the real world. Opportunities for formative feedback were added to the modules so that students can gauge how they are progressing in their learning journey. We used analytics platform to understand how students are using each module in order to strengthen weaker areas. We set up a CMOT group within the team as a community of practice to encourage and mentor each other. Two team members are already CMOT holders and all are registered to apply and now some of the academic team also joined us. We rolled out drop-in surgery sessions and dedicated online courses in module tutoring. This enabled academic staff to experience being an online learner and to learn teaching and technology skills. The impact of this work on UCM students has been exceptional. Our recent scores in the National Student Survey showed us that 91.4% of UCM students were content with the delivery of learning and teaching during the pandemic and we're seeing increased and sustained student engagement on the modules. This is coupled with really positive student feedback in their weekly anonymous module evaluations. Students are positively responding to the modules that we've built for them. The work undertaken here at the University over the last couple of years has created a culture where the digital education team and the academic team have equal standing and are equally responsible for this success of the student. This has resulted in a much more collaborative approach to teaching, learning and assessment. Our achievements have been recognised by the higher education sector and by the professional bodies. We have worked closely with Advanced HE and Guild HE to support other universities as they had to move rapidly online during the pandemic. We have been a host partner with NUS Responsible Futures providing workshops on curriculum design and sustainability. We have developed free short online courses using our educational framework with the Princes Foundation and the Climate Framework. This is all part of our institutional mission to provide a better built environment for all. I'm delighted to say that some of our finalists and nominees in the room have posted in the chat and said hello so if you want to show your appreciation and send any comments please do that now. In a moment we are going to showcase the next finalist and nominee and there's two more to go before we get into the award ceremony. So without further ado I'm going to bring out the next one. Hello, this presentation demonstrates the work of the digital education team in strategic partnership with other areas of the university. Like many we believe accessible design benefits everyone. It is easy to understand, it's more organised and allows you to reach a much wider audience. And with the changes and updates to legislation around web content we felt therefore that it was a moral, legal and a pedagogical drive of a change. And so these are the four pillars that we built our strategy for change upon. An institution-wide strategy with buying from senior leadership, training and support to provide the awareness and the knowledge. Partnerships that brought people together from different parts of the university with different strengths and a shared purpose. And finally the tools and templates within our own VLE to enable us to deliver an inclusive curriculum. Strategic oversight was enabled through the formation of a cross-institutional web accessibility working group. This enabled us to discuss issues on senior committees and secure the support of the Vice Chancellor personally. This enabled our activities to have the impact they did nearly doubling the accessibility scores on the VLE. This data demonstrates the on-the-ground impact evidenced in the learning resources that staff upload to Blackboard as measured by Ally. The key column here is the average file score which you can see are well above 80% and jumped up by a huge 42.5% compared to last year. This is against the backdrop of the global pandemic where we saw a dramatic increase in the total number of files uploaded increasing by 47%. We were publishing more and doing so more excessively. Like others our journey began with workshops and training resources but this quickly evolved to a more practical online resources that forms the accessibility toolkit. These resources have been well received internally and internationally. We targeted everyone and sought to build understanding and empathy within our audience to help inspire and instigate a changing culture across the university. Supported by the Vice Chancellor we developed our mandatory all staff training course to build that understanding and empathy and to demonstrate the commitment to inclusive practice. We received amazing feedback on the training and instantly started to see the change. Embedded into all of our work is a drive to build connections across the university and to surface the student voice. We partnered with students to design and build the training course content and we then took this partnership further to help elevate the use of ally and alternative formats. In order to ensure the benefits for all we worked to normalize the use of alternative formats as pedagogical tools for everyone and so we created a series of blackboard hacks promoting their learning benefits and in this we saw a dramatic uptake of alternative format use. These partnerships extend beyond our institution we've shared our work widely with the sector as OERs. We've engaged with external organizations to share our experiences and resources and we've learned from the sector. The training was proving effective but we wanted to embed these new practices so we went further. In order to enable effective practice within the VLE promoting the principles of consistency clarity coherence and culture we worked with academics to create reusable accessible components called blackboard recipes. Grounded in a pedagogical framework these components were designed to enable inspire and facilitate accessible practice. So as a summary this is our entire journey so far however this journey is not over far from it and we continue to work towards an institutional culture of inclusivity and accessibility. And good luck to all the team nominees today and thank you for sharing your inspiring stories with our community watching here ahead of this evening's ceremony which will get underway in about 15 minutes. I know that some of the finalists have already made their way backstage and I'm sure Dave Helen will be here shortly as well but for now I'm going to invite you to watch our last nominee of this evening and the final video we're going to share with you in our showcase. First of all I'd like to say that I believe our program designer learning technology team are a fabulous group of staff. I'm really proud of the contribution that they have made in terms of providing a truly inclusive learning and teaching environment for all of our university community not just students but staff as well. My experience with the PDLT team have been absolute champions of digital accessibility and I've had contact with numerous members of the team who really have pushed the agenda in this area to make sure that it's at the forefront of everything that we do and they've done an amazing job. What I love about the work of the York team is the breadth of its vision the wisdom of its implementation and the generosity of its sharing. The University of York has the privilege to benefit from a unique team of leading educational technologists from pedagogy to accessibility including the challenges of the hybrid classroom they're always willing to share their insights and their practice across the sector. And I want to thank York University on our behalf and on behalf of the sector for being such excellent practitioners and community leaders. You share your innovative practice, your fantastic resources, your knowledge and expertise across the globe through our user groups, your blog, all benefiting thousands of users. It's a lot of very good training that University currently offers particularly I want to promote the PDLT team who do a lot of workshops etc and you can really get to groups very easily. There are also really good guides on the skill guides that's more student-orientated but it's important for students to learn this as well. For me it's just made it just less stressful and easier to get into things I can get into things straight away I can do what I need to do and we just made people just so much more aware and got rid of like people making silly mistakes on top of accessibility mistakes. Now you've seen all the finalists for this year learning technologists of the year awards and I hope you are excited to find out who is going to win in each category. We are going to invite our finalists back onto the stage now and also await our hosts for the award ceremony David and Helen and we invite you all to go maybe get yourself something to toast our finalists with cups of tea cups of coffee or maybe something different and keep your fingers crossed. Assemble to watch the ceremony which will start at 5 p.m. The stream here will stay live but there won't be anything broadcast now until five o'clock when we will give you a celebratory countdown but for now thank you so much to all of you watching for joining us to watch the showcase see you back here for the award ceremony in 10 minutes. Hello again and good evening welcome to everybody who is joining us for the learning technologists of the year award ceremony for this year. It's absolutely wonderful to see so many people joining us on this live stream to celebrate a very special awards evening and to lead our award ceremony please put your hands together to welcome first Professor Helen O'Sullivan the chair of ALT and David White our president who's also chaired our judging panel so I'm going to invite Helen and David onto the stage now a very warm welcome to you both good evening and over to you I just we're all we're both excited to see what each other's come up with because we were we wouldn't come out and do each other with us so oh my goodness look at this now oh that's unfortunately I've now discovered that I can't see because it's repeatedly blaming me so I gotta switch it off but there you go that was bested for a while that was very impressive amazing so welcome to the awards it's been another challenging year I think that's fair to say for all of us but I think what we saw across all of the awards was this sort of shift away from an emergency response to something that was a bit more sustainable with a big focus on a kind of human element and inclusion as well so this evening we've got individual award and the team award there's a really high quality of entries as you'd expect but also it's it's been interesting to see how everyone has so I don't know if calm is the right word but there's a there's sort of this sort of measured shift as digital education is moving to be a mainstream part of all of our institutions and you know clearly that's the case over the pandemic for obvious reasons but I you know you can really see how digital education and people in learning technologists roles and all of the kind of roles that we see across the art community are now really in the flow of their institutions in perhaps ways that we weren't you know three years ago five years ago ten years ago but we I think we're adapting really well to that and I'm not going to say taking advantage of it but but responding to it really really constructively next slide please that makes it seem very formal doesn't it um I just want to just take a moment say thank you to the judging panel um they were fantastic fabulous I'm prepared to say no I will say fabulous um there's their names up on screen there uh you know everybody involved whether they were putting an entry into the into the awards or whether they were part of their panel were taking you know that's additional thing to do on top of your day job isn't it so we really appreciate people's time and what I'd say about that everybody on the judging panel was actually quite a lot of fun it was it was really encouraging to see the quality of projects and people I don't want to say quality people that sounds strange but you know what I mean it was uplifting and it felt like a really felt like a celebration from that point of view and across the board in terms of judging I think there was a real diligence there was a kind of attention to detail but there was also I don't know it was just a very friendly time considering that it is quite you know a formal process at judging an award so it was taken very seriously but it was all extremely good nature so I just really want to say just shout out to to these people for for helping out and contributing to the to the community in that way so I'm going to move on I think I'm going to hand over to Helen for the first individual award yeah thanks Dave so yes and it's my great pleasure to start with the individual awards and the first one up tonight is highly commended and this is for Dr Monica shadows so congratulations really really grateful and I didn't do this on my own as well but um so all the people who were involved a big thanks thank you oh our great congratulations go with you and these things although they're individual awards we all do appreciate that there is always something you know more behind it but this is definitely to recognize your individual achievements and and and efforts there Monica so well done thank you Dave over to you lovely thank you okay so in second place I can hand the award in a sort of metaphorical manner to Elizabeth McGlone congratulations thank you now with the the panel was really impressed with your work and I've just got one little quote from from your entry that you sent in and it said it says I believe my work is exemplary not because it senses around anything huge hugely flashy or complex but quite the opposite and I just thought that was really really important you just to have this there's such a focus on meeting people where they were at in a super super friendly way and just sort of getting on with that on a day-to-day basis but also being very very effective through that approach and I think it involves a lot of graft and a lot of building trust and it was clear that you've done that brilliantly so well deserved thank you I'd just like to say it was a real privilege to take part in the process and I'm absolutely delighted to be second place so thank you to the judges for considering my contribution I really want and I'd also like to thank my colleagues who who've supported me online today and in particular Susie Huston who encouraged me to go forward for the award and despite my reluctance to put myself forward but with her encouragement and support I did and I'm so glad I did with the result here today and finally I'd just like to thank my colleagues at the Glasgow School for Business and Society without whom I wouldn't have a reason or inclination to develop many initiatives and in particular to my learning technologist colleagues as well who've continued to support and embrace in my years so thanks to everybody brilliant well done Elizabeth yeah well done congratulations so then I think somehow Dave we're about going to announce this well I don't know how we do it I'll tell you what you do it and I'll just join him with a wing okay so uh the winner of the alt 2021 individual award is Phil Anthony congratulations Bill well thank you thank you so much yeah wow god I can't believe it you know I think I think it was it was obvious to to the judging panel that um you'd had this really really big impact with your webinar series but and I think there was a real recognition of how open you'd been with it and how successful that approach had been and we realised that um you must be you must have been attracting um quite large numbers of people to the webinar series because you also managed to attract some very very high profile speakers and uh you know those two things tend to go together so it's I think it was a really impressive example of the power that an open approach can have um and how useful that how valuable that is when things are as as difficult and as emergency as they have been so really fantastic work really consistent I can't imagine how much work it takes behind the things and pull that thing together and and just to keep the momentum going because there was real momentum there too so congratulations oh thank you thank you so much um there there are so many people that I'd like to thank because it takes such a big effort to kind of put that many webinars together but if it's okay I would really like to thank my colleagues the new learning team at the University of Kent um it's such a nice team there I know you know we're lucky that we're all in good teams but I really do like my job and I count myself so lucky that I get to work with everyone in the team every day I really do I love it it's it's such a good job um and I'd also like to thank all the 90 speakers we've had at the webinar series so far who have been kind enough to give up their time their valuable time to share their thoughts and experiences with everyone at the webinars um yeah because without them we wouldn't be able to put them on and finally if that's okay I would just like to thank everyone that's attended the webinars um because you've made it so fun and so engaging and I think that's for me that's the kind of the thing I love to do that's why I get out of it um well apart from my kids dragging me out of it but um I do love my job and it's thanks to everyone that is you know it's kind enough to to attend the webinars as well so thank you very much that's great thanks Phil congratulations yeah congratulations brilliant stuff so the team awards we now move on to the team awards um there was that there was a huge amount of entries in the team in the team category and obviously we I guess we all work in a team of some sort most pretty much all of us do and most of our institutions would have some kind of team in them that uh could you know hypothetically put an entry into this award so that you know it was it was um really interesting to see the breadth of work and the strength of the of the entries that were put in this year it takes a team effort to make these things work and as you can see from the individual awards everybody thanks the people around them so you know this is how this works isn't it um so let's move on in third place uh I'm very happy to say is the winner are the digital education team at UCM congratulations guys congratulations okay so hello the uh the the uh judging panel were really impressed with obviously there's lots of really great practice you can um it's you know you've got models you've got design jams you're focusing on all kinds of different dimensions of digital education I think the thing that the panel were particularly impressed with was with this co-design with academics that approach is that you're kind of sat along you're literally I think sat alongside the academics and working together and there's a kind of a sort of parity of a steam there and you're not you're I mean you know I don't want to over speak from the perspective of my institution but your numbers on student satisfaction on the nss are spectacular so this is a richly deserved award thank you thank you Dave and and thank you on behalf of the team um for this award and thank you for the opportunity to take part in a process that's really invited us to reflect on everything that we've achieved um things can be quite fast paced at such a small specialist for the online institution so it's been great to be able to take that time and I'd just like to say like whilst as a team we are finalist what this award really does showcase is what a whole institutional approach to digital education can do it puts our students and their access to education their ability to engage right at the heart so it's not just a team thing and whilst I can get I can confirm they are all absolutely fantastic and I have to say that because they're all sat next to me in a team's conversation right right here um it is credit to the university to use them and all those who have been on that journey with us they've made our work as a team so fulfilling so thank you to all of them and thank you for this award yeah well done well congratulations to you and all the team k great stuff thank you so on to the second place um team and um Dave might have something to say about what the judges uh thought was particularly impressive about this team but I've long admired what's been going on at this particular institution so the second place is the digital education team at Lincoln congratulations yeah congratulations and you know it obviously clearly it was a very strong entry because here you are winning winning award um but you know particularly impressed with the the way that you'd integrated all the work together uh you know you'd because I think what's important I think what we see in the really strong team entries is it's it's not just a kind of digital education project but it's it's it's the really challenging part is um embedding practice and changing culture in any institution and that was really really strong in what you were doing um and really evidence-based as well um so you could you could really see the impact that you uh had had with with your approach so yes congratulations thank you so much to everyone at ALT and uh I need to say this contribution is on behalf of the whole digital education team uh who are a fantastic team that have worked at a phenomenal rate to transform the digital and blended education experience um and they're a pleasure to work with and this work really does exemplify the commitment to inclusive education at Lincoln and so there's a big thank you to every member of staff and student that is constantly working towards accessible and inclusive educational experiences for our students oh that's great here Michael thank you and thank you for your entry and congratulations to you and all of your colleagues congrats right sir oh we know it's the both business again isn't it so the winner of the uh team award sorry let me just walk past the door completely uh the winner of the tension there trying to figure out the tension the winner is to the program design and learning technology team at york please congratulations yeah and again I think there's real emphasis on not just the practices themselves but the way that they've been embedded and and the fact that the approach to embedding and shifting the culture was just it's just very you know person centered um which I think is incredibly important uh across the pandemic but also particularly important when we're dealing with technology um and I believe that you come from a relatively small team so that the sort of the size of the team to the impact you had at the at the University of York I think was was um you know massively noted by the panel so it was clear that you are obviously um everybody's firing on all cylinders to make that happen at York um and so again uh an extremely well-deserved uh win well thanks very much Dave and thanks Helen and thanks out for the the opportunity um for our work to be recognized in this way I mean just like to say this is very humbling because we're well aware of the fantastic work that's been going on across the sector and we've learned so much from other teams um I think as you say we um I've got an amazing set of people within program design and learning technology and we are only 10 people serving the whole of the university but I think our success is also born out of the connections we made with what I call our wider team of um champions for for technology and I'd particularly like to mention our e-accessibility working group which is a mix of professional services and academic staff and our wonderful student interns that have really helped us and making some inroads within departments in terms of the whole inclusive learning agenda but um this is this is tremendous and absolutely delighted to receive this award on behalf of my wonderful team thank you brilliant well done Richard and well done to well done to all the winners um it it it it was a really strong um year and um as I said as I mentioned at the start there's a there's a kind of a confidence I guess a kind of depth to the practices and the approaches and it was it's every every single strong um entry into the into the awards had this um focus on you know supporting the people around them staff and or students to kind of develop their own practices and their own um capabilities in and around um digital education and learning technology so you know this is this is um this is a a long way from you know selling this shiny technology this is complete the other end of that continue I don't know how to describe the other end of the continue I just know it's the other end of the continue anyway Helen over to you thank you so well that's it so it's my absolute pleasure to to close the winter conference and as as Dave said at the beginning it has been another difficult year but as this conference has really showcased there is fantastic work going on and Dave's just talking about how we've moved from that kind of emergency response to adaptability and embedding deep rooted change in culture and in practice um and this creativity and innovation I think has been really on show in in this last couple of days and what what the awards have shown and and the judging panel and and all the um entries have shown is that learning technologies have once again risen to that challenge and these challenges are just becoming part of our life now I mean the recent um just as we thought things might be getting better the recent developments with the new variant has shown that really this this having to adapt as we're going along is going to be our way of life for the foreseeable future so um I'm I'm really really proud to be part of all and I think one of the main reasons for that just remains that we are a genuine community and um you know we work together we collaborate we support each other and we have a lot of fun doing it I think Dave was saying about how much fun they've had as part of the judging panel I think that sense of community and belonging breeds that sense of of fun and purpose in what we're doing um and it makes the this job really really worthwhile so um I think um we probably like to say well no we definitely like to say thank you to all of our sponsors next slide um here are the partners and sponsors that have really made these events possible and then a massive shout out to the Alt team and they are a small team and they work really hard and they really embody those values of Alt I was just talking about by working collaboratively and supporting each other and they're led by the completely fabulous Marin Diepwell who we all know and love and speaking on behalf of all the trustees I'd really like to thank the whole team the whole Alt team for their efforts this year because I know it hasn't been easy um so I think we all get Marin's going to put everybody back on stage for a final farewell but um just for me I'd like to say happy Christmas I wish you all a safe peaceful restful and very happy Christmas and I really look forward to seeing what we can all achieve in 2022 yes is Marin going to come on and say something no yeah cheers I'm just here Helen thank you very much and I thought it would be amazing to have all of our finalists take a final bow together we're so glad to have you all with us and a big thank you to everyone involved in the conference and thank you for Helen for those great closing remarks so from all of us here at the Alt Winter Conference very happy Christmas and New Year and we will see you in 2022 so wave goodbye to us in the chat and in comments on Twitter and thank you very much everybody stay safe and take care