Here’s a quick resume of my work, education and interests.
I’m always on the look-out for new and interesting work opportunities so please get in touch.
Bridging the gap between pedagogy and technology, I’m ideally suited to implement e-learning for education and training in an institute or the workplace.
Employment
University of Manchester
2011 – Present
eLearning Support Officer
Manage elearning projects in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences.
SearchQuest Europe
2010 – 2011
Duties included meeting clients to write briefs to design and built websites that meet their needs whatever they may be.
The building of websites also includes writing content that appropriately represents the client and what they want to achieve with their website, and that is appropriate to the online environment and registers with search engines.
University of Cumbria (formerly Cumbria Institute of the Arts)
2007 – 2010
Learning Technology Manager
Manage a team of learning technologists and e-learning developers to develop and promote e-learning in the University, and manage externally funded e-learning and technology related projects.
The Adult College, Lancaster Education
2003 – 2006
ILT Development Officer
Develop the use of technology for use in teaching and learning, including the development of the college website as a means of marketing and to support learning.
Freelance graphic and web design
2001 – 2003
Thus
2000 – 2001
Graphic Designer
Designing promotional material for this telecoms and new media company.
Welsh Joint Education Committee Education
1990 – 2000
Graphic Artist
Producing diagrams and illustrations for exam papers, designing teaching materials and promotional material.
Education
Lancaster University
2016 – Present
PhD in eResarch and Technology Enhanced Learning
Open University
2007 – 2010
MA in Online and Distance Education
University of Central Lancashire
2000 – 2001
BA (Hons) History
Studied part-time to update my Humanities degree to an honours degree in History.
University of Glamorgan
1993 – 1998
BA Humanities (English, History and Philosophy)
Studied part-time over a number of years to gain my degree.
Falmouth School of Art
1988 – 1990
BTEC HND Graphic Design
Personal Statement
Since completing my Graphic Design training I had more that a decade and a half of continuous employment in the industry building a skill set based on traditional design sensibility and embracing new technology with software such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Quark Xpress on the Apple Macintosh, PC and Linux. I am an enthusiast of and advocate for Free and Open Source Software running the Ubuntu distribution of the GNU/Linux system at home where I have set up an Apache, MySQL and PHP environment for web development.
I have cultivated an expertise in accessibility and usability, and standards compliant web design with XHTML, CSS and DOM scripting, including the development of IMS and SCORM compliant learning objects, so that the resources produced comply with regulations making them accessible to the widest possible audience.
As my various qualifications imply, I take my interests very seriously and pursue them to the point where they become high levels of qualifications.
My interest in art and design lead to me pursuing a career as a graphic designer.
While working as a graphic designer in the education sector the internet came to prominence and I realised the potential for education, which encouraged me to learn to design and build websites and learn the necessary technologies. This interest eventually lead to me achieving an MA in Online and Distance Education from the Open University.
As my various qualifications imply, I take my interests very seriously and pursue them to the point where they become high levels of qualifications.
My interest in art and design lead to me pursuing a career as a graphic designer.
While working as a graphic designer in the education sector the internet came to prominence and I realised the potential for education, which encouraged me to learn to design and build websites and learn the necessary technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript. This interest eventually lead to me achieving an MA in Online and Distance Education from the Open University.
Running concurrently with this I also pursued my interest in literature, history and philosophy by studying part-time for a degree, first in general humanities, then in straight history.
These are interests I still maintain and I believe contribute to the quality of my work.