Clive Young (ELE) and Stefanie Anyadi (UCL Division of Psychology and Language Sciences) led an ALT webinar today on work UCL has been doing with our community of teaching administrators (TAs).

We described the now-completed JISC Digital Department project that supported these staff in developing their digital literacies and in working more systematically and strategically with them as change agents. This had led directly to the establishment of our supported programme leading to the Certified Membership of the Association for Learning Technology (CMALT). We also introduced the E-Learning Champions initiative and explained why we had included TAs to work in partnership with academics and ELE staff. Although very much a work in progress this has proved effective and has already helped benchmark e-learning activity, develop local plans across two of our schools and has led to the emergence of active faculty-level e-learning groups.

The slides and recording are available on the ALT Repository at http://repository.alt.ac.uk/2351/

Portfolio-Based Professional Accreditation

• Do you use Moodle, Turnitin, Lecturecast, Opinio, My Portfolio, the UCL Wiki? Do you use Email, text, Facebook to contact students, do you read or contribute to blogs or Twitter etc. or use other technologies to support the student learning experience?
• CMALT is a chance to learn about, share and implement good practice in the wide range of technologies that support our students’ teaching and learning. As one of our first group of candidates found: “Working together with colleagues from across UCL was helpful in terms of discovering and developing good practice”.
• CMALT is a national peer-based professional accreditation scheme developed by the Association for Learning Technology and an opportunity to certify your growing skills and experience in learning technology.
• Why not join us to work towards a CMALT certificate?

UCL’s The Digital Department project offers a pilot programme to support teaching administrators and other colleagues for working towards CMALT. This is the second year we are running it and last year’s cohort had an excellent success rate.

1.      What does it involve?

Completion of a descriptive and reflective portfolio of about 3,000 words, demonstrating your knowledge in four core areas: operational issues (constraints/benefits of different technologies, technical knowledge and deployment); teaching, learning and/or assessment processes; the wider context of legislation, policies and standards and communication/working with others, plus one specialist option subject.  We will run monthly workshops to discuss and work on the core areas of your portfolio, and provide you with a mentor from our team to work alongside you and to ensure you successfully complete your certification portfolio.

2.      How long does it take?

It takes about six months from start to submission.  Our first cohort estimated it took around 20 hours in all to complete. The new 2013 cohort will start in February 2013.

3.      How much does it costs?

It costs £76 to register as a CMALT candidate under the UCL scheme.  In many cases last year the candidate’s department was able to cover the fee.

This is an excellent opportunity to support your professional development with lots of support available.

For further information on CMALT, please visit the ALT website at http://www.alt.ac.uk/get-involved/certified-membership

Please register your interest with Alison Gilry a.gilry@ucl.ac.uk as soon as possible.

We will hold a meeting to provide further information for prospective participants at 3.00 pm on January 15^th 2013 pm (location to be confirmed).

As many of you know some 20 TA colleagues started at the beginning of the year on our ambitious and experimental programme to support our colleagues through the Association for Learning Technology’s Certificate Membership of ALT (CMALT). Over half have now successfully completed the e-learning portfolio and such is the interest in the programme at UCL we are now planning another run, starting early in the new year. We are also encouraged by ALT who describe it as their most successful group CMALT programme ever! Perhaps even more importantly the participants report they found it both interesting and useful in the development of this growing component of their work.

We will be sending out more publicity and information soon, but in the meantime if you are interested in the programme, please contact Alison Gilry (a.gilry@ucl.ac.uk).

Our blog has had a rather long summer break although there has been quite a lot of activity. One of the outcomes we have achieved is the successful accreditation of a cohort of teaching administrators as Certified Members of the Association for Learning Technology.

We developed a programme of workshops and arranged mentors to guide teaching administrators through the accreditation process with an excellent success rate. Feedback and the completed portfolios show how this has encouraged reflective practice as well as an exchange of ideas between colleagues from across UCL.

CMALT is a chance to learn about, share and implement good practice in the wide range of technologies that support our students’ teaching and learning. For further information we have circulated a short leaflet.

Image source : http://www.flickr.com/photos/lcfshortcourses/6424419439/