Materials from the event are available from the ALT repository.

This event will take place in Central Birmingham between 10.30 and 16.00 on Monday 21 May. It is organised by the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) and the Association of Colleges (AoC). The hastag for the event will be #LSCRD.

The aim of the event is to provide participants with practical ideas and strategies for technology-supported curriculum redesign which will have an impact on large numbers of learners.

Programme

The event will consist of a series of 35 minute plenary sessions run by a mixture of presenters. All have valuable insights to share. Please see below for session details and information about the presenters.

10.30 Registration and refreshments

11.00 Welcome from Maren Deepwell (Chief Executive of ALT) and Matt Dean (Technology Manager of AoC)

11.15 Peter Kilcoyne - "PAL Packs - Worcester College of Technology's model to deliver 15% of the full time FE curriculum online"

Worcester College of Technology has implemented a new model of curriculum delivery based around the use of PAL (Personally Accountable Learning) Packs. A PAL Pack is a Moodle course that is specifically designed for independent study, which incorporates the following elements: instructions; learning objectives; learning content; learning activities; and assessment activities. Contact hours on all FT L2 and L3 courses have been reduced by 15% with the PAL packs being used to deliver 15% of the curriculum. This session will look at how the model has been embedded in the college, the support required and examples of PAL Packs from a number of different curriculum areas.

11.50 Ciara Duffy - "Virtualisation of South West College Curriculum Offer"

South West College is a large multi-campus merged college that is intent on using Learning Technology to increase the college's reach and effectiveness in a systematic way and on a large scale. The virtualisation curriculum project for South West College involved the provision of an on-line learning experience for 5,655 students for one week in November 2011. During this week students were able to interact with tutors and access a rich variety of resources relating to their course.  Ciara Duffy was seconded in to deliver this project against a very tight timescale of 9 months and in this session you will hear about the strategies used and the lessons learnt.

12.25 Mark Stubbs - "Transforming the undergraduate curriculum at Manchester Metropolitan University"

MMU has recently begun an ambitious change programme, led by the Deputy Vice Chancellor for Student Experience, to transform its undergraduate curriculum. Coordinated activity across four interlinked strands enabled over 850 first year module specifications to be entered, reviewed, approved, set up in the student records system, timetabled and populated in a new VLE in 12 months. All second and third year modules will also be refreshed.  Professor Mark Stubbs will outline the approach adopted and share lessons learned.

12.55 Buffet lunch and exhibition

13.55 Donald Clark - "Scalability"

There’s nothing new about the backlash against Khan and Thrun. It happened with the OU and Wikipedia. Education holds itself back by refusing to recognise that scalability matters. The web offers us truly scalable solutions, not just replication. Donald will argue that scalability should be a necessary condition for funding in education and that truly scalable solutions can now dramatically decrease the cost of education. It will, of course, be resisted by those who want to keep education to themselves as an expensive and elitist endeavour.

14.30 David Newman - "Let's design a learning-centred course - a brainstorming session"

David Newman has just started work as the learning technologist for a new
M.Sc. at Oxford University. 30 students will arrive in September. The aim
is to grow graduates with the skills to become leaders in public policy.
But the traditional curriculum lays out the content to be taught, not how
students will learn. You will help him turn this into a learning-centred
degree, in a collaborative brainstorming session.

15.00 Refreshment break

15.15 Howard Browes and Bob Harrison - "How a large distributed FE college is using learning technology to bring about large scale organisational change"

Leeds City College is the third largest general FE College in the UK, formed in 2009 on the merger of three Leeds colleges. The college's technology strategy supports 1700 staff and 90,000 student enrolments. The Principal and the Senior Management team have turned to technology to transform learning, kick-starting change in a coherent, consistent and cost effective way.Howard and Bob will share  progress and lessons learned so far.

15.50 Closing remarks from Maren Deepwell and Matt Dean

16.00 Conference close

About the speakers:

Howard Browes – Howard has worked in Further Education for 20 years in a number of curriculum, student support and senior leadership roles. His is currently responsible for teaching, learning and student progress at Leeds City College. Part of this role is to encourage new approaches to teaching and learning which includes supporting staff and students to make better use of technology. Howard's approach to TEL is very much from a curriculum and student perspective.

Donald Clark – Donald was CEO and one of the original founders of Epic Group plc, and is a board member of Ufi, Cogbooks, LearningPool and the Brighton Arts Festival. Donald has been involved in major film, games, simulations, social media and mobile projects. He is an evangelist for the use of technology in learning and has won many awards, including the ‘Outstanding Achievement in e-learning Award’ at the World Open Learning Conference. He has advised on e-learning for many global, public and private organisations, and is a regular speaker at national and international conferences. Donald is also a frequent (and controversial!) blogger on e-learning. He is currently writing a short biography of fifty key learning theorists in fifty days.

Matt Dean – Technology Manager, Association of Colleges (AoC).

Maren Deepwell – Chief Executive, Association for Learning Technology (ALT).

Ciara Duffy – Ciara is South West College's Virtualisation Project Manager. More bio to come.

Bob Harrison – Bob has worked in Further, Higher and Adult Education since 1976. He is currently Vice Chair of Governors at Northern College, a beacon college for Adults. After leaving as Principal of South Nottingham College Bob worked for the DfES Standards Unit on the FE improvement strategy  including the development of the PQP. He was a member of Becta's National Advisory Board, a member of the MoleNet Advisory Board, and a judge for the Next Generation Learning Awards. He is a member of the ALT-C programme committee and has presented at ALT-C, MLearn and many other events. Bob also works for the National College (for School Leadership) where he has worked on the NPQH programme since 2000 and spent 4 years working on the Building Schools for the Future Leadership programme until its closure last year. He is Education Adviser for Toshiba Information Systems (UK) Ltd and has been supporting Leeds City College, in his personal SET capacity.

Peter Kilkoyne – Peter has been a lecturer, teacher, advisor and manager in FE and HE since the late 1980s and has extensive experience in using learning technologies. Peter was JISC RSC Curriculum advisor for the West Midlands from 2000 – 2006 and then moved to Worcester College of Technology as Director of ILT. His main focuses at the moment are supporting a blended learning solution to deliver 15% of the FT FE Curriculum online and developing digital literacies for students and staff as part of a large JISC project. Peter is also working in partnership with Computer Aid International to support e-learning developments at a number of Universities across Africa.

David Newman – David is based at the newly established Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford. David started work as the School's learning technologist in November 2011. He is finding ways to help the school's Masters of Public Policy students turn into excellent public policy practitioners, through innovative use of technology in learning and teaching. He will be advising both students and academic staff on ways to make learning effective, deep and fun, as they solve public policy problems.

Mark Stubbs - Professor Mark Stubbs, Head of Manchester Metropolitan University's Department of Learning and Research Technologies, will share lessons learned by MMU in developing and deploying on a large scale a spectrum of applications to support teaching and learning across the University.

Event planning group

• James Clay, Gloucestershire College
• Matthew Dean, Association of Colleges
• Rob Englebright, JISC
• Geoff Rebbeck
• Sarah Williams, Yale College Wrexham
• Maren Deepwell, ALT
• Caroline Greves, ALT

The event committee will be meeting regularly in the run-up to the event; if you have any questions about the programme please contact Caroline Greves (caroline.greves@alt.ac.uk).

The hastag for the event will be #LSCRD.