Leading the System Administration strand within the Centre for Technology Enhanced Learning (CTEL)

Providing technical and pedagogical support for academic staff to support their teaching using technology,

As Senior TEL Support Analyst at City College Norwich I am responsible for maintaining, supporting and promoting our Virtual Learning Environment, Blackboard, and other technology enhanced learning tools. I work closely with academic staff to support their use of technology in the classroom, advising on the most effective use of in-house and cloud-based systems with consideration to their pedagogical needs. Through this collaboration I develop effective solutions for enhancing efficiency and student experience, blending my deep understanding of the Blackboard Learn system and other integrated learning tools.From a technical perspective I manage the VLE through the admin GUI, and directly on the virtual Windows servers running on VMWare VSphere. I manage all server and system upgrades and maintenance, and liaise closely with the colleagues in the infrastructure and helpdesk teams to ensure a reliable and robust service from our load balanced environment. I manage our supplier relationship, including regular dialogue with all tiers of technical support, as well as the account management team.I keep up to date with technology developments and the latest ideas within the VLE and TEL communities by subscribing and contributing to a number of world-wide Blackboard mailing lists, participating in discussions on social media and regularly attending and presenting at conferences to share ideas and network with learning technologists and system administrators from other institutions. I have presented at various Blackboard conferences including the Durham Blackboard Users Conference and events at Regent's University, London Metropolitan University, and am leader of the Further Education Blackboard Users Group.

Being a Systems Administrator at SAI Global provided a fantastic opportunity to learn a wide range of technical skills, including server administration, hardware, networking and desktop support. I would install the hardware and software on new servers and desktops on a number of sites, as well as performing maintenance and administrative tasks on systems such as Active Directory and MS Exchange Server. I would provide desktop support for internal customers from development and sales offices, and completed site visits for directors and senior managers to configure home office systems.I was heavily involved with the installation and maintenance of a number of racks in a large hosting centre in London, and would often install new servers or replace broken hardware within this high security facility. The resilience of this facility was vital to ensure 24/7 365 availability of client solutions, and therefore fault-tolerant systems with redundancy were always used.

As the world leader in compliance solutions Easy i developed a range of very successful online training courses on subjects including information security, data protection and money laundering awareness; as a Systems Developer I was at the heart of the technical development of these computer-based training packages. I would customise or develop new courseware to the requirements of our often very prestigious customers, and would also be involved with the QA process to ensure the company maintained its reputation for quality products. I liaised directly with customers to provide technical support on the installation and maintenance of the courseware.