Academic leadership of interdisciplinary research lab for education and computer science, at leading international centre for educational and social research. Responsible for initiating and developing cross-Research Council funding for Technology Enhanced Learning (£12m over 4 years).Leading on the strategic development of online learning at the Institute.Current R&D projects: (a) the Learning Designer - an interactive pedagogic design tool for teachers, to assist them in browsing others' learning designs and adapting them to implement in Moodle, and in designing their own learning designs, with feedback on the nature of the learning experience they are creating. Open to all and free. Please register at http://learningdesigner.org/ (b) Development of tool to assist the modelling of teaching costs and learning benefits, for all types of learning, in all sectors, campus-based, online, and blended. The tool is downloadable, and stores on your own machine the data you enter on details of the course numbers, fees, teacher costs, cohort size, types of teaching-learning activity etc. It delivers a report (which can be exported to Word), on the nature of the learning experience, and on the financial viability of the course over 3 successive runs.It is open to all and free. Please see: http://web.lkldev.ioe.ac.uk/cram/index.html (c) Adaptive digital games for children and adults with dyscalculia and low numeracy, which create the game as a small microworld which gives the learner intrinsic feedback to enable them to improve their actions to achieve the goal of the game, thereby building their conceptual understanding of numbers and arithmetic in a natural and enjoyable way. Please see http://low-numeracy.ning.com/ Founder member of the Planning Board for cross-site Centre for Educational Neuroscience (IOE, Birkbeck, UCL).Former President of the Association for Learning Technology.Board of the Learning Foundation, and the Climate KIC Education Board.

Secondment to Government Department, reporting to Secretary of State. Responsible for national consultation, building to the first cross-sector national strategy for e-learning, negotiated with all principal education agencies; at the end of the secondment the strategy was passed to Becta to implement; in 2010 the Coalition Government abolished Becta, and diverted funding for e-learning to the Free Schools programme..

Responsible for the first institutional strategy for learning technologies in the largest UK university (150,000 students), building the infrastructure and academic support to make it possible to give a wider range of students a collaborative learning experience.Designed and led a three-year restructuring programme to enable the central media and software departments fully to exploit learning technologies; re-negotiated the BBC/OU working relationship in the light of new technology requirements; by the end we had built up online provision to all 160,000 students, and over half of all courses integrating e-learning with traditional methods.

Began with a role in 'audio-visual media', but was lucky that 'interactive video' came along to unite this with my previous work on CAL. So from them on was able to focus on bringing digital technologies into teaching and learning, at every opportunity:Founder and Head of Centre for Information Technology in Education (CITE), IET: to direct support to University for R&D in use of IT for teaching and learning, and preparation of the annual report and five year plan.Chair of BBC/OU Strategy Group on Research.Founder and Head of Programme in Learner Use of Media, to direct research and development on the balance and effectiveness of media use within courses.As Chair of ‘Computers in Learning’ (1990-94), designed the first non-science course to require use of computers.

Responsible for development and evaluation of interactive graphical simulations and tutorials in science subjects, writing up research reports and papers. This was part of the National Development Programme in Computer Assisted Learning.Extended from HE to working with schools, especially a local special school for excluded learners, to introduce them to aspects of computing.Realised that the value of new technology had to be done on a much wider scale, so set my sights on the Open University as the best place to do this.

Taught maths to students studying maths, physics, engineering and biology. Quickly discovered that even with A-Level maths, they did not understand the mathematics they were using, so invented and developed new ways of teaching large classes (e.g. using the Keller Plan method) to allow the individual teaching needed. Used Open University TV programme computer simulations of mathematical concepts, which is why I then turned to 'Computer Assisted Learning' as the best hope for improving teaching and learning.