 Well, we are expecting, we had 10 people so registered so we'll be expecting a couple more people in the session. I'll just wait a minute, it's just gone 12.30 so we'll just wait a minute longer. People might be rushing to get here and then we'll make a start. Yeah, the session is going to be recorded so I will make a start in a minute. Martin's doing something on YouTube as well and streaming it so that'll be going out. So I think that we should make a start. So thank you everybody for coming today and this session is going to be recorded and so you can listen to it later and other people that aren't here will be able to listen to it. So you've all tested your audio and I know that we can all hear each other which is absolutely great. Please feel free to post any questions at all in the chat pane as we go along and we can pick those up as we go along. And so thank you very much for coming. So this session is about becoming an Alps trustee and I shall hand you over to Doug who shall take the session forward. Okay, thanks Shirley. Right, I'm Doug Gowan, I'm currently Vice-Chair of Alps. Shirley's been talking to you already. She's a trustee and Chair of the Membership Development Committee. We've also got another trustee with us, Sarah, Sarah Sherman. Welcome Sarah. We've got a number of Alps staff, Martin, Carolyn and Alison. So we're well staffed here. The session is going to be to follow this schedule. First of all a few words about Alps and about the new strategy that we launched this year. Something about the role of Alps trustee is what they do, what the responsibility is. Some discussion about among the trustees about what they do and what they get out of it. And very importantly questions from participants, things they would like to get answered. And finally how to contact us. So first of all about Alps. First of all we are an educational charity, an independent charity. All charities have what's called an object. And that is on the screen you can see the object that Alps has as a registered with the Charity Commission. To advance education through increasing, exploring and disseminating knowledge in the field of learning technology for the benefit of the general public. That's something that all charities have. You have to be able to show that they're benefiting the general public. We are, we cling to the case of leading independent professional and scholarly association in the very technology field. I think that's increasingly recognized too. And we pursue that charitable object by what we say by improving practice, by promoting research and by enforcing policy. So that's what we do. We are growing, we have over 1300 members. We're international. Covering 27 countries across all five continents. We have a large number of organizations linked to us. Schools, colleges, universities, life-long learning bodies, skills bodies, research bodies, industry and government. And people like me who are freelancers and independents. These six points you see on this page are directly taken from the new strategy that we launched in February. And I think the important thing to note is that strategy was done after quite a big consultation exercise with members. So members were involved in saying what should all be doing. And these are the six points. The intensive learning technology, strengthening research and practice, developing strategy and policy, representing members, improving leadership and professional development. For example, through the CMOD scheme and finally communicating, giving clear information about who we are, what we do and what our views are. And there's a visual about all the different sorts of activities that all gets involved in journal, conference, CMOD, special interest rates, policy responses, events, open access, networking, et cetera. In fact, that graphically is out of date because you'll see it actually mentions 650 individuals whereas in fact we're over double that in October. Yeah, the second October just started and it's got over 1,000 participants already. I think this is going to pass this over to you Shirley for the role of a trustee. Can you just take us through this one? Yes, absolutely great. Thanks very much Doug. Now, you will have seen obviously, that's why you're here, the call for trustees, it's on the way. Shirley, I think we've lost sound. Can you hear us still? Oh, it sort of went off. Yes, hello. Yes, it was on and then it was off. That's strange. So, yeah, the general role of a trustee is about ensuring that the organization complies with its governing documents, charity and company law, and other relevant legislation or regulations. And about ensuring that the organization defuses its objects as defined in its governing document. And obviously Doug's already talked about our key object, the key object of ALT, and ensuring that the organization applies its resources exclusively in pursuance of its objects, and gives firm strategic direction to the organization, setting overall policy, defining goals, setting targets, and evaluating performance against agreed targets. The role isn't just on your own. It's part of the team, part of them working with the other trustees to put that in place. It's about safeguarding the good name and ethos of the organization and ensuring the effective and efficient administration of the organization and appointing the chief executive officer and monitoring his or her performance. So those sort of general aspects of a role. And more specifically in terms of for an ALT trustee, and attending meetings of the Central Executive Committee, and that's three times a year, participating in policy discussions and the production of consultation responses, and contributing to the drafting and monitoring of the three-year ALT strategy. We've just gone through that process. It was very, very productive and very exciting and interesting and to work sort of on that consultation. Charing subcommittees of ALT, and currently there's the membership development publications and further education and cross-sector engagement committees, or any task groups which set up from time to time. And helping to promote the association, which I've done a few times recently, which has been very exciting, very interesting and sort of developmental as well. So that's been absolutely great, great opportunity. Has anybody got any questions so far? Can I come to the mic or put them in the chat pane? No? Okay. Doug, over to you. First of all, I think we should welcome Diana. Diana Laurelard, who's the current chair of ALT. Welcome, Diana. If we get some questions perhaps you might like to respond to them. Hi. Okay. So this is a session where we just actually share some experience as trustees. I'd just like to ask you, Shirley, can you say a few words about how and why you got involved in ALT and how did it go? Yeah, absolutely. I first became involved with ALT about 15 years ago, back in 1999, back in the turn of the century. And I was working in the college and was tasked with looking and researching into virtual learning environments and whether they could be used by blind and visually impaired students and really didn't know much about VLEs at all at the time. And so I looked at these sort of technology arena and ALT came up as a vital, if not the key organization to get involved with. And I found it just absolutely brilliant and valuable source of information, support, networking with experts in the field. And they also welcomed the opportunity to look at the sort of aspects that I was interested in, accessibility was much, was new at the time. And so that's sort of how I came into it. And I was involved for a few years in presenting at the annual conference and attending events. And then I had a change of job role that still kept up my subscription and was spent several years sort of dipping in and out. But it really helped me to keep up to speed on the sort of big stuff happening in technology and learning and teaching. And so that's how I first sort of got involved with ALT. What about you, Doug? Well, mostly I've been involved in building technology for 16, 17 years or so. I've also been, I've done quite a lot of work with charities, actually set up a charity called Overland Partnership. And so I like working with charities. I like working with third sector organizations generally. It is an opportunity to actually be creative and do things that you perhaps can't do in different sectors. And the third area that I've been engaged in quite a lot is membership organizations. Membership organizations can be quite exciting drawing on the kind of experience and wisdom of the members. I've done quite a lot of work in trade unions, for example, where they depend very heavily on the kind of voluntary effort of members and representatives and that sort of thing. So I was very attracted to getting engaged for those three reasons. First of all, the living technology angle and secondly, charity work. And thirdly, membership and membership organization. So I tried to get involved, stood to be a trustee. He didn't at first succeed but came back at it. And then that took it from there. Well, I sort of went off into this sort of different role and was dipping in and out. And then sort of re-emerged a few years later in this sort of technology focused role and attended the old conference that was about 2009 where I was really sort of quickly brought back in really into the community. And I was applied to a call and was appointed to the membership development group. And about that time, I completed my CMort portfolio and became an assessor and then subsequently a member of the CMort development group. And then proposed and so to be in the size chair of the membership development committee when Hayden Blackie moved on to become treasurer. And therefore then I became a trustee of all. And this was a very proud moment in my life and it sat quite a pivotal point in my own sort of self-belief and professional awareness and development. So that's what happened to me and that's why I'm the trustee, I would say. Great. I wonder if the good ask Sarah to comment about what sort of things would you have wanted to know when you were getting involved and what were the questions that you had? So, hello everyone. I'm Sarah and I'm probably the newest of the trustees so this has been my first academic year on the board. And what was it I would have wanted to know about being a trustee, probably still do in a way. I think it's just the activities involves what kind of things you can do. And from my experience of being a trustee, I was really lucky because I came in just at the point where we were developing the new strategy. So that was a perfect opportunity to me to help reflect what all has done and the past has done in 10, 15, 20 years. And look forward to what it should be doing as an organisation. And being part of that development group was really an exciting and quite a privileged position to be in. Other things that I've been supporting all time as a trustee and Shirley's already mentioned it is getting involved in projects with other organisations. So for example, working with JISC on developing their co-design strategy but representing Ault as a partnership organisation. And it's nice in some ways to be representing Ault, a membership of you rather than representing the institutions I work for. So it's quite refreshing sometimes to come from an organisation. Does that help, Doug? Does that answer your question? Yeah, I think that's spot on. Yes. I think what a lot of people say to me is that one of the nice things about being active in Ault is that precisely that you're not in your institution, if you like. You're remembered like everybody else and you can actually take a fresh perspective on things. It's also a very flat organisation, Ault. There's no real hierarchy unlike many of the organisations that we might work for or have worked for in the past. And I agree and I think that's part of the reason I actually wanted to get involved in Ault from a trustee point of view. My relationship with Ault has been over 10 years. I think I went to my first Ault C in 2004 which I believe is Exeter and I've been an active member of the community and the M25 Learning Technique which has a relatively new regional association with Ault. And I was co-chair of Ault C in 2012. So I really, you know, I have a lot of compassion for the organisation so for me becoming a trustee has meant that I've kind of been able to put something back into an organisation that I really believe in and not when I feel that I've been a trustee. I can actually put my money where my mouth is and help them out. Great. Really we're looking for any points from Malcolm or Julian that we can respond to. Anything you think we should spend a bit more time on? I suppose there's two things actually that interest me. First one is a very practical one about time commitment. I mean I see that it makes specific reference to three meetings per year and I imagine that if one's involved in a task group then that would be additional time. So that's the first question. What is the normal time commitment? And the second one which is perhaps a little bit more open I'd like to know what excites you about being a trustee? Okay, time commitments. Would you like to say something about time commitments? I mean that varies. We've mentioned the meetings three times a year and some months it could be somewhere along the lines of something like one day a month you could say putting to this but to ALT. But for example I've recently represented alterly just co-design a consultation and an event to promote ALT Wales Special Interest Group and another meeting. So in that particular month it was three days or so but it doesn't have to be, it can be flexible to what your other working commitments are and it's very variable. I don't know how Sarah would you say that's your sort of understanding and your experience. Yeah, I mean so far as I said I haven't gone through a full academic year of being a trustee but the minimum are the three meetings per year but I mean it's actually I would say it should be a lot more than that because those three meetings once a term I think should be compulsory and they tend to be face to face and sort of we've been in Birmingham but coming to London as well and the other thing is try to be kept to a minimal but as Shirley says it sort of up to the individual how much they get involved and I think from my point of view I think it's not really that cost someone put a dog in that one. I feel that I'm in a privileged position because I've been elected on to the trustee and I really want to make sure that I'm doing what I can to make a difference and so a lot of it is all voluntary of course but I want to put myself forward to 10 events on behalf of Alton. There are the additional meetings as well as the three face to face meetings a year there are also I think a bit once a month once every two months we have a web conference meeting with chairs at the committees as well so there's sort of as much or as little as you can do but there's probably a minimum of what you should do as well I think that helps. Diane has got her hand up. Simon what did you want to say? Yes I agree with what everybody has been saying about time commitments it's flexible and it's really up to you but one of the reasons you become a trustee is because you're excited by the organisation so you inevitably find yourself doing things because you're a trustee which are over and above the things that bear minimum so I think that's a personal issue but you also asked interestingly Mark and what excites you and certainly what I was looking forward to and have found as being a trustee for the Association is the enormous value of the membership because the membership is an extraordinary group of people very experienced, long experience, great enthusiasm wide knowledge and just watching the email that comes through on a daily basis of the exchange of ideas and experiences, questions, answers a very supportive group and I think what Doug said about it being a very flat organisation it's absolutely right and it really does feel like it's a meeting of minds and it's a meeting of equals when people are keen to contribute infuse the artistic supporters collaborative all those things that make it a real joy to be involved in so I think it has become a more partial organisation in recent years certainly that process began under Seb and certainly when I was in the department developing the e-learning strategy for a while enormously valued the role that sports played in that and now Marin's continuing that and developing it even further and the role that sport is able to play at a policy level is extremely important because we've all got to battle to make sure that learning technology overuse as well as they possibly can be in all sectors and really do drive innovation so we have an extremely important job to do and the means to do it with that huge community out there so I'm hoping that that will in the e-tag the education technology action group for ministers unfolds further throughout the year that will become even more prominent a part of our role so that's the reason for the excitement Malcolm I thought that was a very good question okay I think that was a really good discussion there I think the opportunity that Alt presents is to actually contribute to making a difference and I think that's what we're all about actually we want to make a difference to learning to widen access to learning and Alt gives us that opportunity Martin wanted to say something okay, Martin please come in it's truly optional but I think I'm perhaps going to encourage myself as an Alt member for many years who's recently become an Alt member of staff and I think everyone who is a member of Alt really values the community that you become part of but you perhaps don't really understand how it's governed how it's looked after how it's prospects for the future seem to and it's only as becoming an Alt member that I've actually began to see some of that and one of the things I would say for anyone considering becoming a trustee is your opportunity to to shape the association we have a very small staff team and that staff team is there to respond to the trustees and the committees we help them administer the association so if you're looking for a reason to become a trustee if you love Alt like a lot of people do and you want to shape its future then becoming a trustee is the perfect way to do that Excellent, I can see that Julian is I think you're typing a question Julian it's a compliment really just that I'd like to see the mixture that the trustees have said about how important the organisation is and that's holding its role and its initiative but also that it's actually personally and professionally satisfied with that Right, excellent, okay and yeah, so thanks a lot for that and I think the links with the staff are absolutely central to all of this and things are going from strength to strength Right, I think possibly we can we can move on There are some things that you do need to be aware of as a trustee trustees are legally financially responsible for the charity they have to act with diligence and prudence in a way to run that's because there is a body of English law about charities which are governed by the charity commission who sets out guidelines However, there are a couple of points to add to that, first of all at the present time, ALT does not actually employ its staff the staff are actually hosted by Oxford Brooks University now that's not necessarily something that will last forever but it does mean that trustees are not actually at the present time employers which is an important point and the last point is that like all charities trustees do have what's called indemnity insurance in case something does go wrong in case anybody is serious which is unlikely and it's never happened and generally never that does happen but there are those points to be aware of and that might be concerning you Okay Anything further? Is there anything to add? Okay If not, if we can just remind you of if you're still interested in taking this forward you can actually all of the stuff about the procedure for trusteeship is on the ALT website you can contact the chief executive if you wish to clarify any of those points but otherwise it's all there on the website you can see hands up by Diner and Malcolm Malcolm do you want to come in? Yes I'm not sure if it's appropriate for you to answer this question but I'll ask it anyway as some of you may know I took early retirement recently so I'm not currently in an institution where I'm actually seeking re-employment but I'm a long-standing member of ALT having joined in its first year of operation and been a member ever since and very involved in the organisation and co-chair of the conference last year as you probably know so I'm interested in becoming a trustee in part because I have more time on my hands I still have a brain that works 21 years experience of working across a large number of education sectors but when I look at the blurbs on the website for everyone else who's on the committee it appears that everyone who's a trustee they're all currently employed and deeply engaged in things within different sectors so I'm just wondering whether being a retired learning technologist makes me not suited to be a trustee well I personally I'm not employed I don't work for an institution I'm self-employed if you like so being employed or your employment status isn't accrued flat to me anyway I think what a trustee is what is a balance of experience across a trustee but then again anybody who's a member can stand so that will be my view I'll get from Diana which is the comment on that or anything else I'm going to speak in because Diana gets there my opinion now comes from the trustee you're representing yourself not an organisation that you work for so you're bringing your experience and your interest and your passion to help develop an organisation and working with its members so I don't think personally I don't think it's relevant whether you're currently employed or not and I wouldn't imagine there are any regulations about it that might be something you would need to prefer to mine okay Diana I just agree with that yeah I'm just agreeing with what Sarah said but I think you want people with a lot of experience of the way things work in the sector in all the sectors actually we have some people quite a few people I guess from HEE but also we've got increasingly representation among the trustee from FE and we need more of that we also want to have more international connections we want to be able to reach more into schools so we're really all the time trying to broaden the range of experience and expertise among the trustee and that means you cast the net wide and people who are towards the end of their career have a lot of information ideas, experience experience of what works and what doesn't experience of how to make things happen in the different sectors engagement with people at all stages of their career so I think why would we be so silly to exclude people because they happen to be retired that's a lot of expertise and experience that we can make yourself there so currency is always an issue this is a fast changing field if you're retired you've got more time to keep up with it than any of us fresh with it I've had an enormously difficult problem to keep up with all the trends in this incredibly diverse field so you know I don't think that's really I would not see it personally as an issue at all okay I did see a few people typing there if we've caught up with all the comments it seemed weird to me to have in which case to welcome the fact for the session I think it's the first thing we can actually do do you have any closing words for us Diana to discuss the very issue of what it means to be a trustee and to try and make clear that this is not a closed circle it's very open we welcome enthusiasm and people with a range of knowledge to contribute to what we're trying to do here so very grateful for everyone who's turned up for the session what I think we must do now is try and tweet it as widely as we can and this will be available we should tweet the link so let's see if we can get that round to those who have been part of it and make sure that other people come in and check out the recording and get a sense of what we're all about so thank you very much to both Doug and Sherry for organizing this it's really helpful, thank you okay, thanks very much Diana so the recording will be available and Martin it's being it's on YouTube as we speak is it? Martin's just through the line I think okay, right, well that's it we've got the session up and thanks to everybody for taking part it's been really useful, it's the first time we've done it but I'm sure it won't be the last time and it's created a resource that we can just build on and improve thanks very much everybody thanks very much Doug and Sherry for putting that together