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John Winkley, Director, AlphaPlus Consultancy.
Stephen Fahey, Learning Technologies Director, Pearson Learning .
Patrick Craven, Principal Analyst, Cambridge Assessment.
Denis Saunders, CEO and Founder, Calibrand.
Jeremy Carter. Head of Sales & Marketing
Ray Tolley, Independent Consultant
Grahame Smart, Maths AST and E-Learning Consultant
Cliff Beevers PhD, OBE, Chair of eAA, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, Heriot-Watt University.
Keith Kilpatrick, Assistant Director, LSN/LSDA.
Donald Clark, Independent Consultant.
Bill Foster PhD, Teaching Fellow and CBA Coordinator, School of Maths & Stats, Newcastle University
Dr. Vikki Smith, Director, Research and Design, City & Guilds of London Institute
Colin Deal, Examware.
Chris Jones, Director-General, City and Guilds
Julie Swan, Head of Regulatory Policy, OFQUAL.
Gavin Cooney, MD, Learnosity
Matt Wingfield, MD, Tag Developments
Fiona Hudson-Kelly, Director, SMARTASSESSOR
Graham Hudson, Director, DRS.
Prof. Phillip John PhD DSc, Heriot-Watt University
Helen Ashton, Heriot-Watt University
Bob Gomersall, Chair, Virtual College and BTL Group.
Stuart Jones, Able Consulting
Day One, 30th March 2011 – am session
Chair: John Winkley, Director, AlphaPlus Consultancy. John is an experienced e-learning and e-Assessment business manager with a track record of business growth in learning technologies. He has specialised in developing innovative systems for education and assessment, working with a range of public and private sector clients through the four companies he has helped to build over the last 12 years: BTL Group Ltd, The Virtual College plc., 3Square Solutions Ltd, and AlphaPlus. His consultancy work includes e-strategy projects for SQA (e-strategy, item banking, on-screen Higher Exams, the SOLAR project) Becta (Digital Content Strategy, The E-assessment Readiness Review, e-Portfolio Strategy, The Schools Open Source Programme), JISC (Expert Consultant to the e-Learning Programme, the e-assessment glossary, ePortfolio developments), QCA (various e-assessment development, delivery and regulation projects), Edexcel (accessibility), and the Driving Standards Agency (Driving Theory Test). He is a member of the Chartered institute of Educational Assessors and a board member of the e-Assessment Association.
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Stephen Fahey, Learning Technologies Director, Pearson Learning . Stephen is the Learning Technologies Director for Pearson’s UK Schools and Colleges business. His role is to oversee the teams that develop digital products and services for the Schools, Colleges and Work-based Learning businesses. Products range from simple CD-ROM based content packages, through to online planning, and assessment for learning services. Stephen has worked in the business for 16 years, with a range of roles in publishing and product development. Stephen graduated from St Andrews University with a degree in Astronomy and Astrophysics, and prior to Pearson he worked in the test development team at QCA
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Patrick Craven, Principal Analyst, Cambridge Assessment. Initially qualified as a Designer, he has over 20 years experience in the field of educational technology. From the design of educational resources with the Microelectronics Support Unit (MESU), National Council for Educational Technology (NCET) and BECTa (British Education and Communications Technology Agency) to running of post-sales technology support departments for KRCS (Apple Computer reseller), his career has always addressed the fusion of education and new technologies. For the last 15 years this work has focussed on the specific field of assessment technology research and development for the RSA Examinations Board, OCR Examinations and now their parent organisation Cambridge Assessment. This role considers the growing impact of new technologies on the assessment industry and identifies projects to enable Cambridge Assessment to develop and extend the range and quality of assessment products and services they offer. In this time he has overseen early forays into automated assessment of skills/competence exams (CLAiT), large scale roll out of computer based and assisted assessment (Key Skills) and research into the challenges and opportunities presented by adoption in the ‘high stakes’ National testing arena. Throughout this period he has remained committed to the notion of ‘fit for purpose’ assessment based on evidence-based research. Patrick is Chief Editor of the International Journal of e-Assessment, sits on the Board of the e-Assessment Association and is a member of the planning committee for the Computer-Assisted Assessment Conference.
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Denis Saunders, CEO and Founder, Calibrand. Calibrand’s Founder and Managing Director, Denis has developed Calibrand the currency for talent® into a leading e-Assessment solutions organisation that operates internationally. Calibrand’s ‘e-Assessment anytime, anywhere and on any device’ ethos has been successful in diverse global markets such as financial services regulation, government compliance, medical revalidation, awarding bodies, corporate talent management and international IT certification
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Jeremy Carter, Head of Sales & Marketing, BTL Group. Jeremy holds a BSc (Hons) in European Business & Technology and joined the BTL team in March 2006, bringing over 10 years Sales & Account Management experience in the learning and assessment field. Passionate about e-Assessment, but with a consultative approach, Jeremy has been key to BTL’s sales growth over the past few years. Now leading BTL’s Sales & Marketing team, Jeremy is responsible for developing BTL’s market presence in the UK and implementing strategic expansion into the International arena.
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Ray Tolley, Independent Consultant. Ray Tolley has taught in many schools in the UK since 1963 and has held many significant management posts initially in Design & Technology and particularly in installing and managing computer networks over the last 30 years. His present mission is to clarify the place of e-Portfolios both in mainstream education and Lifelong Learning. He has presented at conferences both in the UK and abroad and is a well known contributor to debates within ICT circles. Since the initial announcements by Becta in 2006 that all UK schools should have a fully operational VLE by 2008 and with the potential of an e-Portfolio by 2010, Ray has made it his full-time occupation to explore how anywhere, anytime virtual access might influence both teaching and learning and how ePortfolios can support a variety of assessment processes
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Grahame Smart, Maths AST and E-Learning Consultant, and students from Forest Hill School – ‘Using the technology in the classroom’ . “For the last five years I have been working as a Maths teacher at Forest Hill School in South East London. I started off as an NQT (Newly Qualified Teacher) and then became KS3 co-ordinator two years later. It was as KS3 co-ordinator that I began to use the MLE (Managed learning Environment) with some of my maths classes. A year later I completed my AST assessment and as part of that role my responsibility was to implement the MLE across the whole school. As an AST my focus is on learning and it is in this area that huge advances have been made in recent years and our school now has every KS3 and KS4 student using Fronter in the school. Our school is in Lewisham which is seen as a flagship ICT borough and our maths results are consistently among the strongest in the borough particularly when you consider we are an all boy's school. Our results have risen from 38% to 64% A* to C and this year we believe we will be near to the 70% mark. The results of my classes have been consistently excellent and I believe that the MLE has definitely aided me in achieving this. It has improved pupil engagement and enjoyment. The resources that I have been able to develop for use within our MLE have included project based lessons, as well as fun and interactive content for use both inside and outside of the classroom. I have been the subject of numerous inspections from Ofsted and other National bodies and some of the feedback can be viewed in the letter of commendation section. Last year I was also nominated for the prestigious "National Teacher of the Year award" by one of my students. Since September I have been working with schools all across London to help them increase the use and effectiveness of their MLE. This has included working across different subject areas as well as Maths. I have also tailored training and consultancy packages to suit schools needs. This has presented a new challenge and one which I am really enjoying as every school has different needs.
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Day One, 30th March 2011 – pm session
Chair: Cliff Beevers PhD, OBE, Chair of eAA, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, Heriot-Watt University. Professor Cliff Beevers Professor Cliff Beevers OBE taught Mathematics for over thirty years at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and was granted the title Professor Emeritus in 2005. Cliff worked for over two decades in the area of Computer Aided Assessment mainly in the field of Mathematics. Through projects like CALM, MathWise, Interactive PastPapers, SCHOLAR and PASS-IT he sought to enhance the student experience in both secondary and tertiary education. Cliff is currently the Chairman of the burgeoning e-Assessment Association.
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Keith Kilpatrick, Assistant Director, LSN/LSDA. Keith Kilpatrick is currently an Assistant Director with LSN leading the organisation’s Technology Enabled Learning offer. This offer includes the MoLeNET project, the UK’s largest and most diverse implementation of mobile learning. Keith has worked in the FHE sector for several years, working on projects including the Northern Ireland FHE sector’s network infrastructure and learning delivery platform development. Keith has also worked with Cisco Systems and Microsoft setting up academic partnerships in order to promote industry standard training in colleges. Keith maintains a keen interest in progressing blended learning delivery models from both a technical and pedagogical perspective.
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Donald Clark, Independent Consultant. Donald Clark was CEO and one of the original founders of Epic Group plc, which established itself as the leading company in the UK e-learning market, floated on the Stock Market in 1996 and sold in 2005. Describing himself as ‘free from the tyranny of employment’, he is now a board member of Ufi LearnDirect (Government agency delivered e-learning to 2.6 million learners), Caspian Learning (learning games tool provider), LearningPool (content provider), Brighton Arts Festival, and a school governor. Donald has won many awards for the design and implementation of e-learning, notably the ‘Outstanding Achievement in e-learning Award’. He has advised on e-learning for Tthe World Bank, United Nations and many other public and private sector organisations and is a regular speaker at national and international conferences such as ITEC and IITSEC…… also a regular (and controversial) blogger on e-learning!
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Bill Foster PhD, Teaching Fellow and CBA Coordinator, School of Maths & Stats, Newcastle University Bill has been involved as a developer, implementer, collaborator and manager of successful e-assessment systems in Higher Education since the early 1990s and has written extensively on these systems with the emphasis on formative e-assessment. The system introduced in 2006 at Newcastle University has won the award for formative e-assessment at the 2010 e-assessment Scotland conference. He is at present leading an HE STEM project with 20 other universities reporting on the use of e-assessment in HE. His team at Newcastle has completed in early 2011 the first stages of an open-source e-assessment system Numbas for maths & stats and this will be trialled this year.
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Patrick Craven, Principal Analyst, Cambridge Assessment (see above)
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Dr. Vikki Smith, Director, Research and Design, City & Guilds of London Institute. Vikki has held various senior positions in the vocational education sector, with over 10 years experience in the design and delivery of training programmes. As Director of Research & Design, Vikki is responsible for the leadership of the Assessment Strategy, Assessment Research, Teaching & Learning and Learning Technology teams. Her remit encompasses the business ownership and development of the e-assessment platform and the broader use of learning technologies; research into pedagogy and assessment; the definition of the central design of City & Guilds qualifications and learning materials; and the enhancement of assessment, instructional design and learning skills and practice. Vikki gained her PhD in post-compulsory education and training in 1997. She then went on to teach in both further and higher education in England, Australia and Ethiopia as well as developing courses for Jordan and China.
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Followed by AGM of the e-Assessment Association
1730 Conference closes – evening reception of wine and cheese sponsored by Cambridge Assessment
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Day Two 31st March 2011 – am session
Chair: Colin Deal, Examware. After systems and business development roles with a number of the largest computer manufacturers, was in on the early stages of the computer based assessment industry, and remains involved on an independent consultancy basis. The initial take-up of these global PC based systems, through invigilated Test Centres, was by the computer systems, communications and software suppliers who needed to establish professional certification programmes. These programmes allowed them to measure the knowledge and skills of their support staff on a global basis in the context of their own fast-changing products. Later adopters were organisations needing to move away from traditional exam processes; where feasible, moving to an on-demand approach. Thus he has been involved in a wide variety of applications within the last twenty years, ranging from the novel, e.g the UK’s Driving Theory Test, to the high stakes exams aimed at lawyers, nurses, doctors, bankers and other professionals where the need has been to preserve the rigour of the existing exams yet take advantage of features which only IT systems can provide.
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Chris Jones, Director-General, City and Guilds (key note address). Chris Jones joined City & Guilds as Director-General in March 2008. His remit is to ensure that City & Guilds continues:
•to be a leading force in the vocational education arena
•achieves its ambitious five year strategic plan and
•realises its international aspirations.
He arrived with an excellent understanding of the vocational market as well as the needs of City & Guilds, having worked closely with us to develop our successful online learning materials for catering tutors and learners. In his former post, Chris transformed Harcourt Education International , implementing a customer centred vision to increase revenue. Previous to Harcourt, Chris served as Senior Vice President at LexisNexis Risk Management Group and Group Director at Financial Times Electronic Publishing. On appointment Chris said 'I'm delighted to be joining City & Guilds. It is a great enterprise with great people and a brand that has more strength and potential than any of the competitors. The fast changing environment presents a fabulous opportunity for all areas of the Group and I'm looking forward to understanding more about how we can seize these opportunities and maximise our market share in the global market for skills.'
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Julie Swan, Head of Regulatory Policy, OFQUAL. Julie Swan, Head of Regulatory Policy, Ofqual. Julie Swan joined Ofqual as Head of Regulatory Policy in 2008. Her previous roles have included Director of Development with the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education. and Head of Education and Training for the Law Society of England and Wales. The regulation policy team which Julie heads leads on a wide range of policy developments within Ofqual including qualifications frameworks and the accessibility of qualifications, examinations and assessments. Julie has been closely involved with development, consultation and implementation of Ofqual's strategic approach to regulation.
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Andrew Morse, E-Assessment Development Officer, WJEC. Andrew Morse joined WJEC as e-Assessment Development Officer to lead on WJEC’s e-assessment programme with its inception in 2007. The e-assessment team which Andrew now heads is involved in a wide range of e-assessment developments within WJEC including e-testing, e-portfolios and technology enabled controlled assessment. The focus to date for e-assessment developments has been in e-testing within General Qualifications at both GCE and GCSE levels resulting in the successful delivery of AS, A2 and GCSE unit on-screen examinations in both English and Welsh starting with the June 2009 examination series. His previous senior roles in the post-16 education sector have included Head of Learning Technology and Resources and Head of Faculty (Mathematics and Computing) following on from a broad and successful experience in a teaching capacity.
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Stuart Jones, Able Consulting Stuart is a self employed consultant, coach and trainer. Until recently Stuart’s main role has been to work with UK Government and key national agencies to create policy frameworks which support and sustain change in teaching and learning. He has provided support and influence for the embedding of technology and e-learning within existing and future policy. This includes supporting the effective use of technology in schools; sixth form, further education colleges, work based and adult community based learning programmes. He led Becta’s developments on e-assessments, e-portfolios and effective use of data in learning and teaching. Stuart has a varied career background in both the private and public sectors. He has taught physics, information technology and computer science in Sixth Form Schools and Further Education; Human Resource, Strategic and Quality Management in the context of organisational development and has also owns and runs a very successful business, specialising in edutainment and his company (ABEL Learning Limited) produced one of the top 5 education apps on the iPhone in 2009 - The AAs Theory Driving Test. He is a qualified teacher and an NLP Master practitioner and has a futuristic ambition to make the world a better place for learners of all ages.
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Gavin Cooney, MD, Learnosity. Gavin Cooney is founder and CEO of Learnosity, a specialist mobile learning and e-Assessment solutions provider working with major public and private sector clients in Europe, Asia and Australasia. Working closely with New South Wales government client the NSW Board of Studies, Gavin leads a development team, which for the past four years has delivered Australia's first state wide mandatory online exam to almost 60,000 fifteen year olds over three days each November. Gavin also works closely with the Irish and Australian federal governments, delivering innovative phone based e-Assessments to examine spoken language abilities in students. Gavin is passionate about technology, and strives to continue to develop systems using the very latest technologies and assessment approaches. Since early 2007, he has spoken at various learning and assessment conferences in Ireland, the UK, Malaysia, India, Australia and the United States.. Prior to founding Learnosity, Gavin lectured Information Systems in University College Dublin
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Matt Wingfield, MD, Tag Developments Matt Wingfield. With over twenty-two years experience within the UK education market including seven years as a primary school teacher and ICT Coordinator and more recently over thirteen years experience working in a variety of roles for TAG Developments, a leading provider of e-Portfolio/evidence based e-assessment solutions for schools, F.E., H.E. and work-place training, and as the membership secretary for the eAssessment Association, Matt has built-up significant understanding of the issues relating to assessment within education. Matt is dedicated to building close and highly productive partnerships with key stakeholders within the wider education market, so that through promoting greater awareness of the innovative e-assessment and e-verification/moderation systems available, he can continue helping educators and learners to gain the most out of using effective e-assessment as an integral part of teaching and learning.
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Fiona Hudson-Kelly, Director, SMARTASSESSOR – ‘e-enabling providers, assessors and learners’. Fiona Hudson-Kelly is an award winning entrepreneur who has successfully developed training technologies and taken them to market. Visionary, focussed and highly energetic she inspires people to achieve the unthinkable. Her latest project, Smart Assessor, is launching at this conference on the 30th March. Fiona will show case how Smart Assessor reduces the cost of your QCF delivery by 25% whilst still improving the quality of your interactions with learners. Fiona will show case the Smart Assessment rooms where assessors can interact with learners, record activity such as observations, professional discussions, employers witness evidence capturing the evidence and map it across into the Smart Assessor e-portfolio. Using technology to reduce travel costs and time as well as unnecessary administration will free assessors up to interact more closely with their learners whilst reducing the cost of your QCF delivery by 25%. Come along and have a look, to take a sneak preview before the conference go to www.smartassessor.com
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Day Two 31st March 2011 – pm session
Chair: Graham Hudson, Director, DRS. Graham Hudson is Global Business Leader for Electronic Marking at DRS. Graham has over twenty-five years’ experience of implementing and managing large-scale assessments within the UK, including the key stage national curriculum tests for QCA. At DRS, he currently manages the delivery of electronic marking services for over 8 million exam scripts for awarding bodies in the UK and internationally. The importance of improving marking accuracy and reliability are at the forefront of DRS’ work in this sector through the use of new technologies.
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Prof. Phillip John PhD DSc, Heriot-Watt University Phillip was born in the Rhondda Valley, South Wales into a mining family. He is currently Professor of Chemistry and Dean of Science and Engineering at Heriot-Watt University. In the thirty-five years that he has been with Heriot-Watt he has published over 150 papers and eight patents and supervised 28 PhDs and had extensive learning and teaching experience. Ten years ago he led the Chemistry team in the creation of e-learning materials inside the SCHOLAR courseware (http://scholar.hw.ac.uk). Since 2002 he has managed the SCHOLAR programme, and is Chair of the legal consultative body (the SCHOLAR Forum), which delivers complete Higher and Advanced Higher e-learning courses to students in virtually every state secondary school in Scotland, the independent sector and FE Colleges. The SCHOLAR team has successfully integrated the research findings of the PASS-IT assessment programme into the SCHOLAR courseware in over 20 subjects in mathematics, science, business and modern languages and represents a major deployment of formative e-assessment. He has been a member of the interim Management Board of the e-Assessment Association since its inception in 2006 and is currently Deputy Chairman of eAA.
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Helen Ashton, Heriot-Watt University Dr Helen Ashton is Head of e-Assessment for the SCHOLAR programme where she is involved in the development of e-assessment technologies and supporting those writing assessments. Prior to this Helen was a Lecturer in Computer Science at Heriot-Watt University. Helen has a strong interest in supporting feedback and reflection in learning (both online and otherwise), and in the use of technology in education. She has worked on a number of projects in this area including PASS-IT (http://www.pass-it.org.uk) and to deliver e-NABs in Mathematics and Computing in conjunction with SQA (Scottish Qualifications Authority, http://www.sqa.org.uk). Current work in the area of online assessment includes research into the usage of such systems, the development of questions and specifications, and the development of delivery and reporting systems.
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Bob Gomersall, Chair, Virtual College and BTL Group. Dr I R Gomersall B.Sc., Ph.D., C.Phys., M.Inst.P., FRSA. Bob Gomersall is Chairman and founder of BTL Group Ltd. (set up in 1985) and Virtual College Group plc (set up in 1995). The focus of BTL’s work is on Learning and Assessment Systems and Content. Virtual College specialises in work based and online training. Bob is also Chairman of the Advanced Digital Institute, which he started developing in 2002, Chairman of the Yorkshire Forward Digital Cluster Board, and a member of the Airedale Partnership Board. He was educated at Leeds Grammar School and the universities of Durham and Bristol. He has worked as a Theoretical Physicist (at the Max Planck Institut, Stuttgart) and as a teacher of physics (at Manchester and Bradford Grammar Schools). He was Head of Physics at Bradford Grammar School before going full-time into business. He and his wife (who is a Medical General Practitioner in Bradford) have four children, 3 boys and a girl, ranging in age from 15 to 27 years old.
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Stuart Jones, Able Consulting Stuart is a self employed consultant, coach and trainer. Until recently Stuart’s main role has been to work with UK Government and key national agencies to create policy frameworks which support and sustain change in teaching and learning. He has provided support and influence for the embedding of technology and e-learning within existing and future policy. This includes supporting the effective use of technology in schools; sixth form, further education colleges, work based and adult community based learning programmes. He led Becta’s developments on e-assessments, e-portfolios and effective use of data in learning and teaching. Stuart has a varied career background in both the private and public sectors. He has taught physics, information technology and computer science in Sixth Form Schools and Further Education; Human Resource, Strategic and Quality Management in the context of organisational development and has also owns and runs a very successful business, specialising in edutainment and his company (ABEL Learning Limited) produced one of the top 5 education apps on the iPhone in 2009 - The AAs Theory Driving Test. He is a qualified teacher and an NLP Master practitioner and has a futuristic ambition to make the world a better place for learners of all ages
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