 I welcome to Warwick. My name is Marrin Dippo. I'm the Chief Executive of ALT and I had to have the privilege of being the first to welcome you to ALT's annual conference this year. As you have all gone very quiet at 10.30 on the dot we will definitely start on time. Before I introduce you to our co-chairs this year I've got a few very brief but important announcements. So if you could stop emailing and tweeting just for one moment I will just read those out. First up there is no fire alarm test scheduled anywhere in the venue today. If there is a fire alarm it is an actual fire alarm so please make your way to the nearest exit and follow the instructions of the conference team. Secondly the help desk where we are here to help you with any enquiry you might have is located in the exhibition area next to registration. So if you have any problems at all please do come and see us. We're here to help. Also the hashtag for the conference which is also on the screen behind me is S at ALT C. We hope that you find that hashtag helpful and if you're participating please also use our online conference platform. Now today is the first day of our annual conference and as you know and as the co-chairs will tell you many individuals and organisations contribute a lot of their time and energy to make this event happen every year and this the first day is sponsored by one organisation that has supported us for a long time, desired to learn. Importantly they are also sponsoring the drinks reception this evening. Finally we are trying something new today. For the next three days there will be hands-on exhibitor presentations in the exhibition area. So if you find any time between your parallel sessions and the keynotes socialising and networking please do come to the exhibition area and find some of the hand-on demonstrations. There is a timetable online and also in the exhibition area. And with that announcements are finished. Thank you for listening. I will now hand over for the formal opening of the conference to this year's conference co-chairs. Please welcome them. Good morning everyone. It's lovely to be here and to see so many of you here and I'm sure more people are going to join us as the day goes on. We'll just start by introducing ourselves very briefly. I'm Linda Crainer from Glasgow Caledonian University. I'm Sarah Coneevious from University of Aberdeen. I'm Joe Wilson from the Scottish Qualifications Authority. We'll just get going. We'd just like to say that you'll have noticed we're all from Scotland but we'd like to reassure you this is not a political statement in any way in advance of the forthcoming referendum. We're going back. First of all, actually, it's welcome to our 21st. This is the 21st all conference. And of course, 21st is a coming of age. And I think if you've been involved in learning technology as most of you have for quite a while, it's come of age. We're here. We're no longer something that's bolted on to the side of an institution. The principal and the vice chancellor are now actually really, really interested in all the things that we've been doing for a very long time. And actually, the rest of the faculty are now interested too. And that bit about riding the wave is really finding ways to get them engaged and to get them to come on board too. And what we thought we would do while we have you all is kind of set you, and I'll say this, set you an ice bucket challenge. Now, the reason I'm saying an ice bucket challenge is in terms of education and learning. I've been watching eight-year-old boys standing up and doing presentations and thanking people and nominating people and doing all these kind of things and recording it live. And if you know eight-year-old boys, eight-year-old boys aren't very confident speakers. They don't really stand up and do. And you can see in something like the ice bucket challenge how technology and learning is actually changing. And what we need to do is not, you don't have to do any ice bucket stuff, but over the course of the conference we're setting you a challenge. And you'll see who's on the slides. Can we change the slide? It's probably me, give me a second. So I click it the wrong way. Okay. Appropriately if somebody works for the Scottish Qualifications Authority I'm going to look at the educate strand. And what I want you to do is as you go through the hundred more sessions that we've got and the exhibition area and things if you see something that particularly will make a wave we'll send a ripple, we'll do something then tag it Alt C and tag it Educate and we'll have a look at it at the end and there'll be prizes for each of my colleagues we'll do the same but we've got you all here we need to keep sending ripples and waves around the system to get people switched on and involved and the other bit is just the importance of you guys as a community so can I give you two minutes just now just to turn round and say hello to somebody you don't know and find out their Twitter tag as well can you just do that for two seconds? Once we've got you started it's hard to get you to stop isn't it? Can we call you back to order now? So over the course of the conference if you see something you think that fits that Educate strand then take a picture of that slide even take a bit video or do what you want, tweet it out though and without further ado I'll introduce to my next colleague Sarah The next word that we pulled out of the conference title is Innovate because I think and we all think that one of the really inspiring things about the Alt Conference is the fact that everybody here is an innovator whether it be our keynote speakers or the invited speakers or the presenters or all the delegates everybody's involved in innovation in some way or another so we thought we'd pull this word out and again the challenge your tweet challenge here is to see what you can find in the conference that really just says innovation to you and tweak that for us and I think this is important because we're all kind of riding that wave together some of us further on than others and we're all involved in pulling other people on board so we need to share and communicate so we've got presentations here in the next few days from people who are really getting innovation going stimulating ideas for people who are supporting it people who are managing it people who are evaluating innovation we've got people presenting on new products new services, new tools, new ideas that they've come up with we've got some inspiring teachers and lecturers presenting on new approaches to teaching and learning and we've got some presentations by some of those who deal with that really difficult challenge of promoting organisational change and getting everybody on board but as I say everybody here is involved in some kind of innovation so I do hope as well as introducing yourself to each other that during the conversations you have informally you'll find out what innovations other people are involved in as you go through the conference one of the other ideas that's really linked with innovation is creativity and we've been really impressed as co-chairs by the creativity that's been shown by the presenters in terms of using the theme of the conference to inform the titles of presentations and the content as well so I'll just give you a few little highlights that I find as I look through the titles I think you're going to be able to not just to learn to swim and learn to surf and learn to ride these waves while you're at the conference you can go on journeys, you can go on voyages you can even go on a safari if you find the right presentation there's all sorts of things to look out for on the way we've got coral reefs, avalanches not quite sure how they fit with the surfing but there's some avalanches out there and you're going to meet giants and monsters and even cats and we know all about cats from the last OLC conference so do look out for all these things and the creativity of people as we go through and as I say, your challenge then is to find something that's really creative really innovative to treat us some images and then we'll see if we can pull some of these together in the final presentation at the end of the conference Thank you, hand over to Linda Thanks Sarah so thirdly and most importantly the next theme we'd like to pick out is that of community and as you know OLC prides itself on its sense of community and we want that to extend throughout the conference now to get the most out of a community you need to engage with it you need to participate and you have to interact so what we'd like you to do over the course of the next three days is to introduce yourself to someone new just as you did this morning at every session that you go to make a point of talking to someone you haven't met before and in particular look out for any new delegates who maybe haven't attended the OLC conference previously we'd also like you to tweet some pictures of what community might mean to you and that doesn't mean pictures of people at the bar drinking too many G&Ts but what does community mean in an alt context so we'd like to see some pictures of that and again we'll collate those towards the end of the conference so there's lots to get out of the conference over the next few days and together I think going back to the theme of the conference we'll help each other to get our balance and enable ourselves to ride these giant waves so it's with great pleasure that we now look forward to the rest of OLC thank you now to start things off I'm delighted to welcome Professor Christina Hughes who is going to welcome us to the University of Warwick Christina is PVC Learning and Teaching at the University of Warwick thank you can I just start by saying scrutinising your conference programme very carefully actually by saying that it's a real smorgasbord of creative engagement and as someone who's not that technologically literate I have to say what I can see is a lot of technologies in evidence and such a range of challenges that you're addressing and it's actually truly marvellous I actually can't wait to learn more and with this in mind it really is a great pleasure to be welcoming you here to Warwick today particularly so because your conference theme is something close to my heart you won't be surprised to hear innovation in education is the lifeblood of university education and here at Warwick we constantly strive to improve our practice and understanding of the processes through which we can develop our students to the highest levels and of course we're always keeping an eye on developments nationally and internationally now from an institutional perspective which is the sort of hat I have to wear a key issue to draw on your conference metaphor is which wave to ride now one we have chosen is the MOOC and you may know that Warwick was one of the first of UK universities to launch a MOOC on the FutureLearn platform with The Mind is Flat by Nick Chater of the Warwick Business School now of course any venture of this kind causes lots of institutional anxieties bit of knuckle biting all the rest of it as we launch into something we've not done before and I have to say we were both astounded and pleased that within two days of the launch that MOOC had recruited to capacity those who registered demonstrate the global power of MOOCs and how they engage people at all stages of life so we had registrations from countries as diverse as Indonesia Peru, Mexico and Iran with an age range from 17 to 70 and from all walks of life pensioners, journalists, businessmen full-time carers and so on now we've gone on to develop more MOOCs and indeed SPOCs, a new acronym I learned a couple of months ago and I think our experience is beginning to mature here now the MOOC experience builds on other areas where we've engaged in open education models through for example iTunes U, Warwick blogs and our knowledge centre just this month actually it was last week we launched a new app for students to support academic citation practices and we have a highly developed global online service aimed at gifted school age young children that provides social networking and access to educational resources developed by academics here at Warwick it is however perhaps our alliance with Monash University in Melbourne that's creating some of the most interesting opportunities for us in terms of student engagement as we bring different levels of specialism and investment together to explore how we can build strong inter-institutional connectivity across the globe we are for example about to run the international conference for undergraduate research that has become an annual event and which we believe is unique in concept and design using the latest in high definition video conferencing technology the conference will connect students in real time from universities in eight cities across five continents to a single 24 hour forum and they will hand the baton on as the time changes in their own country in developing the alliance relationship we are specifically concerned to ensure that all our students not just the few benefit from the broader resources and knowledge that an alliance between two universities can bring and for this reason we are exploring a whole gamete of issues that range from the kinds of platforms that are required to support shared resources to licensing and legal issues saying this I would add that access for all is a core area that is shaping Warwick's strategy and this is the case in terms of widening participation and entry into Warwick as well as the experience and capacity of our students once they've arrived I do wonder actually though if we're doing enough here so yes we're mindful of the digital divide and its implications for access and uses of technology both prior to entry and indeed whilst as a student it's easy to forget that some students either can't afford access to different sorts of technologies or don't have the access in their homes but I do think awareness of differential access and capability continues to be the concern of the few rather mainstreamed as a full part of institutional thinking and it's here actually I hope your conference will help us to consider how we can move things along because this is a serious agenda for the 21st century of inclusion for all wherever they might be so this said I wish you a very productive and enjoyable conference it looks like you're going to have a fabulous time it's been a wonderful opening so far and it's a privilege to begin to engage with the work about I'm looking forward to hearing more so thank you and have fun Thank you Christina for that warm welcome It's now my pleasure to introduce our first keynote speaker for the conference Now you may have noticed that each day of the conference this year has a specific theme The theme for day one is international collaboration and strategic leadership and I'm delighted to welcome Professor Jeff Haywood from the University of Edinburgh to lead us on this theme today Now Jeff has been a great friend of all for many years and a highly enthusiastic and inspirational leader when it comes to things learning technology related he's certainly inspired me and I know many of my colleagues in the innovative activities and projects and developments that he's managed to take forward over the years Now Jeff is Vice Principal Knowledge Management Chief Information Officer and Librarian at the University of Edinburgh He leads the University's Integrated Information Service which offers a wide range of services in library, IT, technology