To this end, we are always receptive to new ideas and constantly on the lookout for new content, and at the moment we are particularly keen for members input in the following areas:

A Week in the life….:

This series of articles provide a great insight into the working lives of our colleagues. It’s fascinating to read the fantastic diversity of what we all do, and I’m sure it helps to build up a spirit of community in sharing this diversity. So why not join in and let us know what’s been happening in a week of your life….?

ALT Roving Reporter:

We are currently looking at the idea of having a new regular feature, which would entail an interview with learning technologists (individuals or teams) from our community, similar to that which featured the University of Manchester’s Faculty e-learning team in October 2009. However rather than decide who to interview ourselves, we though it would be interesting to crowdsource our interviewees, responding directly to requests from you. So if you have someone in mind to be interviewed, or even are feeling brave and fancy being interviewed yourself, please email us telling us who you are, who you want to see being interviewed, and why you think such an interview would be of interest and benefit to the community.

Ideas for articles and event reviews:

In addition to the above, we are always looking for ideas for articles, reviews of recent events, new tools or products that you find interesting or promising, or things you’ve done recently in projects that you would like to share, do please get in touch.

If you would like to contribute to any of the above, then please email Graham McElearney for more information.

The Self Organised Learning Environment (SOLE) School Support Pack by Sugata Mitra, David Leat, Paul Dolan and Emma Crawley

Getting the Mix Right Once Again: A Peek into the Interaction Equivalency Theorem and Interaction Design, by Terumi Miyazoe

Mobile Publishing with Jutoh by Scott Hennessy

A Story of (O)pen, by Amber Thomas

Chief Executive’s report by Seb Schmoller

Chair’s report by Martin Oliver

Members will be interested to learn that the selection panel convened by ALT’s Trustees has appointed Dr Maren Deepwell to be ALT’s new Chief Executive. From 1 April Maren will be Chief Executive Designate, working in tandem with Seb Schmoller. She will be Chief Executive from 8 May, when Seb will stand down. Together with the rest of ALT’s Trustees, I am looking forward to working closely with Maren in her new role, and we have published a brief profile of Maren so that members can find out more about the person who will be at the head of ALT from May onwards.

I’d like to take this opportunity to offer my personal thanks to Seb for the incredible work he has done on behalf of the Association. However, as we don’t think we’ve quite seen the back of Seb, I’ll refrain from wishing him a long and happy retirement just yet!

On 1 January Research in Learning Technology finally made the switch to Open Access. 19 Volumes going back to 1993 were made freely available on the journal’s new web site at http://researchinlearningtechnology.net/. The first Issue (20.1) was published at the end of January. The switch has been widely welcomed in and outside the ALT community, although the long term effects of the switch will not be clear for at least two years. Thanks are due to ALT staff, to the editors, and to the staff of Co-Action Publishing for making the transition reasonably smooth. For a clear overview of our plans to develop and expand Research in Learning Technology, which include increasing the number of Issues from three to four, and issuing two Supplements each year, please read this letter to members from ALT and Co-Action Publishing: http://repository.alt.ac.uk/2204.

Students on each ALT Operational Committee

Last year ALT’s Trustees decided to work with the National Union of Students (NUS) to secure the involvement of an NUS nominee on each of our Operational Committees. By September or sooner we expect to conclude this process.

Evidence-based policy development in Learning Technology

On 9th Jan 2012, with the ESRC/EPSRC funded Technology Enhanced Learning programme (TEL) and Intellect (the UK trade association of the technology sector) we ran an invited symposium about Evidence-based policy development in Learning Technology, addressed by Jonathan Shepherd, Professor of Oral and Maxillofacial surgery at the University of Cardiff; and Director of the Violence Research Group. The report, which contains a checklist for Learning Technology Researchers, will shortly be published on the ALT web site at http://www.alt.ac.uk/publications-and-resources/publications/occasional-publications.

A new Honorary Treasurer for ALT

Fred Pickering will in September come to the end of a six year term as a Trustee, most recently as Honorary Treasurer. In preparation for Fred’s departure the Trustees have appointed Haydn Blackey (who is currently a co-opted Trustee and Chair of the Membership Services Committee) to take over the role in September and to work in tandem with Fred between now and then. Fred has been a skilled and stalwart contributor to ALT in the Treasurer role, and I thank him for his work for ALT over the last six years.

Making ALT’s decision-making more open

In November ALT’s Trustees decided that the minutes of ALT’s main committee meetings will from now on be published on the ALT website. We have begun the process at http://www.alt.ac.uk/committee-minutes.

Staffing

Emma Carr-Jones (Finance Manager) has returned from maternity leave. Louise Ryan who has been on maternity leave since March 2011 has resigned. We wish her the very best for the future.

Consultation responses

Since the last issue of ALT News we have published the following consultation responses, all of which are on the ALT web site at http://www.alt.ac.uk/policy-consultationresponses

• An ALT contribution to the current discussion about the place of Computer Science in the National Curriculum for England – December 2011;
• An ALT response to Scottish White Paper Putting Learners at the Centre: Delivering our ambitions for Post-16 Education – December 2011;
• An ALT response to Ofsted’s consultation on the Common Inspection Framework for the Learning and Skills Sector – November 2011;
• An ALT comment on the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) Opportunity, choice and excellence in higher education strategy statement – October 2011;
• An ALT response to the Research Excellence Framework 2014 draft panel criteria and working methods – October 2011.

Appendix 1

Self Organised Learning Environments

The Hole in the Wall (referred to as HiW in the rest of this article) experiments were first implemented in 1999, when a computer with an internet connection was embedded into a wall, for children to discover and use unsupervised. The wall adjoined a slum; and only a month later, it was evident that the children had taught themselves to use the computer and also picked up some skills in English and Mathematics. This kind of design was then set up in more remote areas across India with almost identical results. These were computers embedded in walls or kiosks in easily accessible and highly visible public spaces, facilitating peer interaction, discovery and learning in groups of children.

We concluded that groups of children from disadvantaged and remote settings can learn to use computers and access internet resources, on their own, if given appropriate free, public and unsupervised access.

These earliest experiences also showed that children could develop some skills in English and Mathematics. What came through unequivocally in this and further work on self organising systems in education was that groups of children irrespective of who or what they are, or what language they speak in; given free and public access to the internet can:

1. Become computer literate on their own, that is, they can learn to use computers and the Internet for most of the tasks done by lay users.
2. Teach themselves enough English to use email, chat and search engines.
3. Learn to search the Internet for answers to questions in a few months time.
4. Improve their English pronunciation on their own.
5. Improve their mathematics and science scores in school.
6. Answer examination questions several years ahead of time.
7. Change their social interaction skills and value systems.
8. Form independent opinions and detect indoctrination.

We then went on to show that the quality of traditional schooling reduces with a clear decline in performance, running concurrent with the geographical remoteness of schools from the urban centre of New Delhi. A similar decline is also visible in the UK as one goes to more economically disadvantaged areas. The reasons for this have been attributed to the lack of and unwillingness of teachers to work in these areas.

Finally, we found that the presence of a ‘friendly, but not knowledgeable mediator’ can enable children to reach similar levels of learning as in formal advantaged schools with trained teachers. We went on to set up a ‘cloud’ of ‘eMediators’, mostly retired school teachers with broadband access from their homes. Schools can access this ‘cloud’ over Skype and children can interact with the mediators over free video conferencing.

Interestingly, in the hands of good teachers, these methods can be powerful motivators for children, resulting in better performance. What started out as a solution for remote areas turned out to have universal applicability.

Both HiW and the work done later are based on the concept of ‘Minimally Invasive Education’ (MIE), a pedagogic method that motivates groups of children to learn in an environment with little or no intervention from teachers or other adults and formed the basis of the design of the ‘HiW’ computers.

Appendix 2

Samples of student work – mixed ability Year 4 class

Samples of Student Work: Example 1

Samples of Student Work: Example 2

Samples of Student Work: Example 3

Please contribute work from your class.

A PDF version of this document is stored in the ALT Open Access Repository at http://repository.alt.ac.uk/2208/.

About the author

Sugata Mitra is Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, UK, and a Visiting Professor at MIT Media Lab. He is best known for his Hole in the Wall experiment. Below is Sugata’s keynote speech at the 2010 ALT Conference:

Part of the success of an elearning technology is whether it can be adopted and maintained by learning and teaching staff – rather than technologists – and in order to promote ebooks within our department I was looking for an easy to use publishing tool that ran on institutional Windows PCs, rather than Apple hardware.  I tried a range of solutions available for ebook publishing from conversion software, such as Calibre, desktop publishing applications, such as Adobe’s InDesign, to developer tools like the open source Sigil.  Eventually I came across Jutoh, developed by an Edinburgh based software and publishing house Anthemion.

Jutoh is a cross platform application that runs on Windows, Linux and Mac and can also be carried on a USB stick, which allows it to be shared between workstations. It isn’t open source, but at £24, the licence cost is trivial in comparison to high end desktop publishing applications, such as Adobe InDesign. Unlike Apple’s iBooks Author that exports to the proprietary ibooks format, Jutoh saves EPUB files, compatible with a wide range of ebook readers, and mobipocket files readable on Kindles.  Jutoh has an easy to use interface and like Apple’s Pages supports the embedding of audio and video content into an ebook page.  Currently only the iBooks app renders embedded media files, but this may be more widely supported as more ebook readers begin to adopt the EPUB 3 standard, such as Readium which was launched by the IDPF on the 13th February. Those who prefer the familiarity of a word processor can author content in an external editor and bring the content into Jutoh and I was able to test this by converting a Word file to a ‘filtered’ web page and importing it successfully.

Figure 1: Jutoh screenshot

Further formatting can be made using a set of predefined styles in the the Jutoh editor; the most useful of which I found was the html style which allowed me to embed a scripted quiz question from a web page that worked correctly when tested in iBooks on an iPhone.  As the application matures it would be good to see some of the quiz features of iBooks Author that allows authors to create simple review questions using a graphical interface.

Overall I found Jutoh a low cost, easy to use solution for Windows users and a good starting application for those wanting to dip their toe into the water of mobile content development.  To see what is possible with interactive ebooks, I recommend Elizabeth Castro’s commentary on using location aware technology in her photo book and a demonstration of game based interaction by the French Publishing House Studio Walrus.

Links and Resources

Anthemion Jutoh hompage, http://www.jutoh.com/

International Digital Publishing Forum, http://idpf.org/

EPUB 3 overview, http://idpf.org/epub/30/spec/epub30-overview.html

Readium project, http://readium.org/

Barcelona Beyond Gaudí Demo: Interactive Fixed Layout ebook, http://vimeo.com/24579915

Studio Walrus Epub Demo #3:  http://www.walrus-books.com/2011/06/epubdemo3/

I first became interested in interaction design in 2003. At that time, I was a distance learning student enrolled in another master’s program in TESOL offered by the Institute of Education in London. The program was managed using the FirstClass VLE, which supported a high level of online interaction among the course tutor and students. The class largely consisted of adult professionals based in various countries. Our primary means of communication were mostly text-based (in English), i.e., online postings and e-mails. At that point, very few institutions were offering completely online programs at graduate level , and this triggered my lifelong interest in designing the most effective and efficient balance of interaction in the online learning environment. Interaction has long been a key but contentious component of all distance education programs―often regarded as critical to quality, but both hard to define, and hard to afford.

Although I liked the content of the Institute of Education’s master’s program and completed the degree, I regret the fact that I was unable to achieve higher course grades because I felt trapped by the heavy requirement to participate in the online discussions. Instead of digesting the course content and devoting my time to learning at my own pace and writing course papers, I had to invest considerable amounts of time in the required online participation. In fact, near the end of term, so much of my energy had been devoted to the online interactions that I had little time left to draft the final paper! Therefore, while attending the Athabasca program, I planned to minimize my online participation by spending my time only on attending online events of interest to me  and on writing good course papers. I also aimed to maintain close relations with a small number of friends on the course who shared similar interests and goals, and just one member of faculty, whose wisdom and supervision I needed, Terry Anderson. Learning to focus only on things that interested me, I completed the program with flying colors and left it feeling that I had obtained much deeper learning with a much higher satisfaction than the Institute of London program. What made the two experiences so different? Anderson’s Equivalency Theorem helped me find the answer.

Getting the Mix Right Again provides a concise summary of Anderson’s two major works on interaction in educational contexts, namely the Modes of Interaction (1998) developed with Randy Garrison and the Equivalency Theorem (2003) defined by Anderson. Interaction and Independence: Getting the Mixture Right by Daniel and Marquis appeared in Teaching at a Distance in 1977, an organizational journal hosted by the Open University UK. In this article, the authors discuss “why we regard the balance which is maintained between them [interaction and independence] as the crucial issue facing distance education systems” (p.340). At that time, distance education usually employed independent study formats, and post and telephone allowed very limited use of interactive components in the learning process. As stated, the aim of Daniel and Marquis article was to clarify the problem issues involved in the “blend of interaction and independence,” which Garrison and Anderson needed to re-define again in light of the ever expanding potential of what would be known as online learning in the following years. At present, Terry Anderson and I are working on re-defining this due to a new wave of interaction brought about by the “blend” of face-to-face and online learning. It is worth noting that issues of interaction and independence are two sides of one coin and, as illustrated by my experiences at the Institute of London and Athabasca, even if a program provides different kinds of interaction with specific intentions, learners also adjust to it in a way which fits their personal needs and interests, leading to a more personalized and hopefully more effective and efficient learning process.

Moore’s (1989) “Three Types of Interaction” was the first model to systematically define interaction in distance education. It has three essential components, each viewed from a student perspective: student–content, student–teacher, and student–student interactions. Anderson’s Modes of Interaction (2003) extends Moore’s model to include the three dyads of teacher–teacher, teacher–content, and content–content interactions; these are viewed as indispensable components that combine to support deep and meaningful learning in online and distance education. The extension these three dyads is critical in understanding online learning: online learning can never be realized only by the teacher and student; instead, the adjusted model highlights a much wider learning context that realizes human and non-human interaction mechanisms that work “behind the scenes” in support of the learning process and its objects. A large part of the online learning process is supported by the efforts of the teachers (and in some well-documented cases, the combination of instructional designer, learning technologist, and subject matter expert) working together to produce and plan all the supporting systems for the online learning experience, that is, teacher–content interaction, before any kind of online learning can occur (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Modes of Interaction (Anderson, 2003)

Anderson’s Equivalency Theorem (2003) is said to be the application of the Modes of Interaction. It aims to provide “a theoretical basis for judging the appropriate amounts of each of the various forms of possible interaction.” The main features are condensed into the following two theses:

Thesis 1. Deep and meaningful formal learning is supported as long as one of the three forms of interactions (i.e., student–teacher, student–student, and student–content) is at a high level. The other two may be offered at minimal levels, or even eliminated, without degrading the educational experience.

Thesis 2. High levels of more than one of these three modes likely provide a more satisfying educational experience, although these experiences may not be as cost- nor time-effective as those using less interactive learning sequences.

Figure 2 is a visual representation of Thesis 1 (CC NS SA by Miyazoe & Anderson 2012), It explains the “Equivalency Theorem,” as it refers to the “equal value” nature of the three different types of interaction.. The concept of “elimination” may give an impression that only a single kind of interaction is necessary; however, what the Theorem says is that all three interactions are equally important in ensuring “deep and meaningful” learning, as long as one of them is at high level and of very good quality. Therefore, in some situations, student–content interaction may be the most important, whereas student–student interaction may be the most effective. This visualization is slightly changed from our previous version (Miyazoe & Anderson, 2010a; Miyazoe & Anderson, 2010b) to hopefully emphasize the “high level” requirement of interaction more clearly. We should keep in mind that Thesis 1 sends out a warning: that we should not think that only one kind of interaction is always the best although, as a teacher myself, I would want to think that I am the most important component in facilitating learning among my students.

Figure 2: A visual representation of Thesis 1: Quality dimension

Figure 3 is a visual representation of Thesis 2 (CC NS SA by Miyazoe & Anderson 2012). It directs our attention to the fact that more variation and greater amounts of interaction types likely leads to higher satisfaction. However, such an approach is likely to be more resource and time-intensive, for both teachers and students.

Figure 3: A visual representation of the Thesis 2: Quantity dimension

While Thesis 1 refers to the quality dimension of interaction, whereas Thesis 2 refers to the quantity dimension of interaction involved to allow deep and meaningful learning to occur. The meta-analysis on interaction research from the Theorem perspective proposed by Bernard et al. (2009) helps us understand the impact of the theorem on our teaching and learning. For my learning in 2005, in a completely online learning environment, the interaction design of very high level student–content interaction, followed by the minimal level of student–teacher and student–student happened to be the best fit for me at that time.

It is important to remember that some of the Humanities fields, such as Education and Psychology, have the tradition of calling a working “hypothesis” a “theory” upon which good practice is developed. The Theory of Multiple Intelligences by Howard Gardner, for example, posits that we have several different ways of learning distinct from the traditional notion of ability as measured by IQ tests. While we cannot prove the validity of Gardner’s theory, it does help us to consider alternative ways to approach teaching and learning. In contrast Einstein’s Theory of Relativity explains natural phenomena thus, its truthfulness can be verified or refuted through experiments. In light of our discussion, Anderson’s Equivalency Theorem is, of course, in the first category because it is about teaching and learning.

The Equivalency Theorem is about utilizing the concepts of interaction design to raise learning effectiveness and efficiency. For this reason, we may also call it the Interaction Equivalency Theorem. The Theorem has now been included in the Distance Education textbook by Moore and Kearsley (2012), pp. 214–215, so has become part of the historical development of interaction research in the field.

In order to share Anderson’s work in interaction and what has been achieved thus far in the area of online and distance education, Anderson and I established a website, Equivalency Theorem or EQuiv website. It is newly opened and has more room for improvement. Nevertheless, we would like to invite you to take a sneak peek and see if it can help you in any way. Feel free to navigate through the site and let us know what you think! We look forward to receiving any comments and relevant information you would like to share on the website.

References

Anderson, T. (2003).Getting the mix right again: An updated and theoretical rationale for interaction. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 4(2), from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/149/230.

Anderson, T., & Garrison, R. (1998). Learning in a networked world: New roles and responsibilities. In C. Gibson (Ed.), Distance learners in higher education (pp. 97–112). Madison, WI: Atwood Publishing.

Bernard, M. R., Abrami, P. C., Borokhovski, E., Wade, C. A., Tamim, R. M., Surkes, M. A., & Bethel, E. C. (2009). A meta-analysis of three types of interaction treatments in distance education. Review of Educational Research, 79(3), 1243-1289.

Daniel, J., & Marquis, C. (1977). Interaction and independence: Getting the mixture right. Teaching at a Distance, 14, 29–44.

Garrison, R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical thinking in text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2), 87–105.

Miyazoe, T., & Anderson, T. (2010a).The interaction equivalency theorem. Journal of Interactive Online Learning, 9(2), 94–104, http://www.ncolr.org/

Miyazoe, T., & Anderson, T. (2010b). Empirical research on learners’ perceptions: Interaction Equivalency Theorem in blended learning. European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning, http://www.eurodl.org/

Moore, M. (1989). Editorial: Three types of interaction. The American Journal of Distance Education, 3(2), 1–7.

Moore, M. G., & Kearsley, G. (2012). Distance Education: A Systems View of Online Learning, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning

But what do all these open approaches have in common? What is the central Story of (O)pen?

Open makes things visible.

The everyday sense of “open” is open rather than closed – letting people see what is there, what is happening.

The web enables you to:

• do some of your processes/practices online, visible to others
• share some of your products/outputs online, visible to others

Open makes access easy.

This is where open–as-in-open-access comes in: open without needing to log in, and open without payment.

SO

Open is social.

The “many eyes” principle of sharing open data and the open innovation model encourage others not only to view but to comment, to feed back, to engage. This speeds up the process in hand and improves the quality of the resulting work.

AND

Open makes things usable by others.

Open standards exist to encourage as many developers as possible to adopt them.

This is where open licensing comes in: granting others explicit and generous permissions to use your content.

FURTHERMORE

Open can be a way of working.

Doing open working and openly releasing outputs can make a person feel differently about what they do. Researchers might call this collection of activities open scholarship, technologists might call their activities open development, project teams might call it open innovation. Each of these types of open practice has elements in common and elements specific to the sorts of activities the practice involves.

HOWEVER

Open is not exclusive

Open source can mean both the open development process and the open source software. They are not always found together: open development processes can produce non-open software, and closed development processes can produce open source software.

BUT

Opens are mutually beneficial

There is a virtuous cycle when open process and open products combine. In open scholarship, both creating and using open content and using open ways of working, the content feeds the practice and the practice feeds the content.

A Diagram of Opens

Figure 1: A Diagram of Opens

It’s important to note that Figure 1 is an abstracted diagram: open is not always a replacement for the  way things currently work. There is not ever going to be a total transformation to open. The reality is a mixed economy. Business models matter. Practice models matter.

Open can be good for business, open can be good for practice but it exists in a bigger ecosystem of technologies and behaviours. Good is not enough, it needs to be useful. That’s what JISC and other advocates of openness are working hard to surface. Ultimately perhaps open is good because it is a good way of working.

My Story of O(pen) by Amber Thomas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on infteam.jiscinvolve.org.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/contactus

In July 2011, Stanford University announced that three introductory one-term undergraduate courses would be available free as online distance learning courses. Seb Schmoller reflects on his experience thus far as a participant on one of these courses and on the implications for FE and HE.

Tom Franklin discusses how student activity data from various sources can be used to help us to understand students’ behaviour and to help students to improve their performance.

OCR’s Sophie White identifies the different ways that technology is being applied by UK exam board OCR to benefit the whole process of assessment, from administration to exam results.

Sirin Soyöz covers the ELT Blogathon, organised by the British Council English Language Teaching (ELT) team, which  encouraged teachers to move into the technological age with confidence, through blogging and networking.

Clayton R. Wright presents a comprehensive set of  Criteria for Evaluating the Quality of Online Courses.

Frank Steiner provides an overview of the 4th annual Future of Technology in Education (FOTE) conference that took place on 7th October.

Members will be pleased to note that at the ALT AGM on 7 September, ALT President Carol Higgison presented Malcolm Read, who is Executive Secretary to JISC, with ALT Honorary Life Membership, in recognition of Malcolm’s outstanding and sustained contribution to the advancement of ALT’s aims for the development of learning technology in a national and international context.

Malcolm Read receiving honorary life membership from Carol Higgison

ALT’s comments on HEFCE July Strategy Statement

The HE White Paper and HEFCE’s “Opportunity, choice and excellence in higher education”  [PDF] were published over the summer. The White Paper is silent on technology in learning (its focus is on the long term shape of the HE system in England). In contrast, the HEFCE Strategy Statement has a couple of helpful references to learning technology, with one of six HEFCE objectives for learning and teaching being: “To support the continuous improvement of teaching, learning and assessment, diverse forms and modes of provision, the effective utilisation of learning technologies and the increased accessibility and use of open educational resources.” Last week, by prior agreement with HEFCE, ALT submitted some comments on the Strategy Statement, which we have published on the ALT Open Access Repository.

The 2011 ALT Conferences

There is a full report from the 2011 ALT Conference in ALT News Online. Here I thank the whole of the Programme Committee for their efforts in making ALT-C 2011 a success, and, in particular:

• the co-chairs – John Cook (London Metropolitan University) and Sugata Mitra (MIT Media Lab and Newcastle University);
• those who volunteered for editorial and coordinating roles – James Clay (Gloucestershire College), Thom Cochrane (Unitec, Auckland, New Zealand), Juliet Culver (Open University), Laurence Habib (Oslo and Akerhus University College of Applied Sciences, Norway), Elizabeth Hartnell-Young (Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, Victoria, Australia), David Hawkridge (University of Leicester and the Open University), Amanda Jefferies (Hertfordshire University), Mark Johnson (Bolton University), Matt Lingard (London School of Economics), Kia Ng (University of Leeds), Stevan Verjans (Open University of the Netherlands), Tina Wilson (The Open University).

ALT Trustees – election results, changes, and a farewell

ALT is governed by a board of 13 unpaid Trustees, nine of whom are elected by the membership as a whole (the other four are coopted), with three vacancies filled each year. We welcome Claire Donlan (from Middlesbrough College) who was elected unopposed as Vice Chair and who will be Chair from September 2012 and President from 2013. Martin Oliver (from the Institute of Education) is now Chair. He will become President in September 2012. Gilly Salmon (from the Universityof Southern Queensland) is now President of ALT. The other newly elected Trustees (who will each serve a three year term) are Matt Lingard (from LSE), and Alastair Clark (from NIACE). I place on record ALT’s thanks to retiring Trustees Linda Creanor (from Glasgow Caledonian University) and Nicola Whitton (from Manchester Metropolitan University): and to Carol Higgison (from the University of Bradford) who was ALT President in 2010/2011.

New appointments to each of our four operational committees

Earlier this year we issued an open call for expressions of interest in membership of ALT’s four operational committees.

Further Education Committee (chaired by David Dyet)

Ellen Lessner has been appointed Vice-Chair, and the following members have joined the committee:

• Lillian Greenwood, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland
• Nick Jeans, Sero Ltd.
• Timothy Osadiya, South East Essex 6th Form College
• David Iain Scott, Dundee College, Scotland
• Joan Walker, JISC RSC Scotland
• Sarah Williams, Yale College, Wrexham, Wales

Membership Services Committee (chaired by Haydn Blackey)

Shirley Evans has been appointed Vice-Chair, and the following members have joined the committee:

• Tom Franklin, Franklin Consulting
• Kerr Gardiner, University of Glasgow, Scotland
• Maura Mbunyuza-de Heer Menlah, University of South Africa
• Neil Morgan, Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency

Publications Committee (chaired by Dick Moore)

Matt Lingard has been appointed vice-chair, and the following members have joined the committee:

• Liz Bennett, University of Huddersfield (who will be joining the ALT News Online editorial team)
• Frank Steiner, University of London Computing Centre (who will be joining the ALT News Online editorial team)
• Joe Wilson, Scottish Qualifications Authority

Research Committee (chaired by John Cook)

Norbert Pachler has been appointed vice-chair, and the following members have joined the committee:

• Brenda Bannan, George Mason University, USA
• Anne-Marie Cunningham, University of Cardiff, Wales
• Nigel Ecclesfield, LSIS
• Rachel Harris, Inspire Research Ltd, Scotland
• John Traxler, University of Wolverhampton.

For further details of the memberships of all our committees go to http://www.alt.ac.uk/about-alt/who-we-are/operational-committees.

Seb Schmoller

30/10/2011