 Welcome and good evening to this year's learning technologist of the year awards I am very delighted to welcome you all here in particular all those nervous finalists who are sitting amongst you Waiting to find out what their fate is this evening Our conference is very much about our community and yesterday for those of you who joined us in the evening in the gala dinner We really try to celebrate all of us together as a group But tonight are about those who really deserve and have earned the recognition of their peers From amongst the judges and kennel this year, but also for the first time in history of the award Voted for by the community as we award our special community choice award. So I hope you've all voted in that This evening is really about celebrating Outstanding excellence in the field of learning technology and this association has played a pioneering role in Establishing that recognition on a national scale So without further ado, I'd like to invite Richard from ULCC who've been supporting this award and this community for the past Three years to just say a few words about what supporting this award means to them. Thank you Thank you, Maaren. Hello, and good evening to everybody and thank you Maaren Thank you for inviting us again this year to sponsor this and You asked me to say a few words about what this means to us Well, this is a very important conference to us as Maaren says we've sponsored it for the last three years We see this conference and this community is crucial to us Fits very well with where we see ourselves I'm director of ULCC and what we aim to do in terms of the Moodle services that we provide is to Do I suspect what many of you find yourselves doing which is is provide that interface between IT and technical functions with academics and the practice of Learning and teaching on a day-to-day basis So we very much value this community And the important work that you and other colleagues do It's clear. I think that many of these significant changes in Higher and further education are being driven by you in terms of the adoption of new methods in learning technology and We're very proud to be a part of that As ULCC and proud to be a part of alt and to support this conference and to support these awards so I was told to be brief and that's that that's all I will say by way of introduction So, I think I hand over to sorry. This isn't very well I think I hand over now to Diana to present the first award in respect of the team awards, which is one of the highly commended Entrance I should say that as far as your colleague of mine who was involved in the judging and He was saying what a very strong field of I think nearly 40 Submissions there were so we have for tonight who will be Commended, but I know that it was a very strong submission. So I'll hand over to Diana to give the first of the highly commended awards All I really want to say in advance of doing that is that the day that I am the panel spent Judging these awards was probably one of the most life-enhancing of the entire year actually because what you're hearing about is the real excellence that of practice which is going on in this sector and it's how It's so valuable to be able to hear that despite all the cuts despite the difficulties of Struggling to make these things work in the context of higher and further education these days Even now there are some really truly excellent practice going on. So it was it was just a great day We had a very hard time discussing and deciding But it was it was great fun. We just saw a lot of really good stuff So I just want to thank everybody who entered it was A truly excellent field and now we have a difficult task of saying Nonetheless, there are winners So for the first award the highly commended team award is given to tell med Peninsula schools of medicine and dentistry at Plymouth University With the team So I get to give the next highly commended award Which is right near neighbors to where I work the London School of hygiene tropical medicines team Working on the MOOC called Ebola in context Leo's very worried that he's accepting on behalf of his colleagues But you have to have your photo taken on behalf of your colleagues Yeah, I mean, you know you have you have told it's yours now Now I'd like to announce the runner-up award for the learning technologist in the learning technologist of the year award for academic support technology and innovation to the University of Plymouth You know the Oscars goes on for about five hours, actually Two hours, but there's a lot of filing in and out So my great pleasure At this point is to announce the winner of the team award and it's the digital learning team from the University of Leeds And let me just say how incredibly proud I am of my team. There's a small selection of them here They were absolutely tirelessly at the University of Leeds to deliver what I think is Fantastic learning content for our students and for students around the world And I'm really blown away by how professional they are and how dedicated they are to educational technology. So well done. Thank you Individual award runner-up is John Kerr from the College of Social Sciences University of Glasgow. Is that working? Okay, just wanted to say thank you very much to the University of Hull for giving me the opportunity to bring game-based learning to the University and to experiment explore and play with Minecraft which has engaged over 3,000 people through the MOOC and has engaged school children secondary school children and academics alike so long-made game-based learning live and I hope to do a lot more with it in the future So thank you very much indeed So we tossed a coin for this and the way it's fallen. I get to award the The final award and it this is new this year very exciting as Marin said the community favorite award is the it's the title of this and Even more exciting We had joint first so we have to award it to two Submissions So immediately you think well, how are they going to share the trophy or the certificate or the champagne? I'm not sure which but That's not such a problem because both teams are from the University of Plymouth We've seen them before it's not a fix so I fix there were a lot of a lot of votes from the Southwest, but it's not a fit and So they are the Talmed team from the Peninsula School of Medicine and Dentistry and The academic support technology and innovation team in Plymouth University. So like you all to come up here, please Well done Oh Before you all leave do stay on the stage because for the first time this year We do want to grab one photo of all of our award winners together So while I appreciate you are hungry and the bar downstairs is still open Thanks to you LCC if all of the award finalists who have been rewarded this evening could come back on stage We'll do one last final picture Great, so ladies and gentlemen if I could ask you for one more big round of applause for all of our winners this evening Thank you very much Downstairs and the bar is still open have a wonderful evening and thank you for joining us