Seb Schmoller: online learning consultant and e-learning consultancy

Curriculum Vitae

1. Current work

I divide my time between independent consulting, and part-time employment as the Chief Executive of ALT - the Association for Learning Technology. ALT is a UK professional and scholarly association which promotes good practice in the use of learning technologies in education and industry, and facilitates collaboration between learning technology practitioners, researchers, and policy makers.

2. Strengths

Effective at:

getting online learning projects to happen;
finding innovative, pragmatic, and cost-effective solutions;
articulating educational and functional requirements to technical staff, and technical constraints to non-technical people;
facilitating complex discussions, and causing teams to gel and to make progress;
using the internet to support and enable collaborative projects.

Skilled and experienced in:

project management, using both formal and informal methodologies;
writing reports, submissions, bids, tenders, expressions of interest etc;
using the Internet, and ICT applications like Word and Excel.

Skillful and experienced negotiator.

Wide range of contacts in the online learning and web-development world, and the experience to judge the real capabilities of suppliers, especially in relation to the usability and accessibility of web-content.

3. Qualifications [back to top]

I have a degree in Economics from Cambridge University, a Post-Graduate Certificate in Education from Leeds University, a Post-Graduate Certificate in Chemical Pollution Monitoring from Sheffield City Polytechnic, and an MBA (Education) from Keele University. I am a Fellow of the Institute for Learning. To keep my eye in I became certified (!) as a Microsoft Office Specialist (Microsoft Excel 2000 Expert), and completed the JEB Certificate of Competence in the Educational Use of IT.

4. Achievements [back to top]

Projects

In my current independent consulting and ALT roles I am responsible for a wide range of projects, and most of my independent consulting consists of shorter and long term projects.

During 6 years as The Sheffield College's Learning Technology Development Manager, I worked with colleagues and partners to get a number of successful initiatives off the ground. Here are some examples.

LeTTOL - the South Yorkshire FE Consortium's award-winning course about how to be an online tutor, which won a National Training Award in October 2003.
GCSE English Online - The Sheffield College's award-winning course, which since its inception has achieved outstandingly good examination results, with, typically, a 100% A-C success-rate, and a much higher than average proportion of candidates passing at A/A* grade (the English GCSE Online course team won the 2002 NILTA Innovation Award, sponsored by learndirect, "for a major contribution to the development of innovative courseware to support, enrich and facilitate learning", and The Sheffield College won the 2002-2003 LSDA Beacon Award "for the college that demonstrates the most outstanding advance in embedding e-learning into course delivery").
my.sheffcol - The Sheffield College's website, content management, and publishing system.
Weblinks - The Sheffield College's award-winning database of post-16 related web sites.
The Sheffield College's online ICT induction, which is integrated with a network account creation application through which ~10,000 student network accounts are created each year.
Keep IT in the Family - an interactive quiz for Telewest Digital TV developed as part of the South Yorkshire eLearning Programme.
Online content development projects for Ufi Ltd.
The development of CIPD's Certificate in Online Learning for Trainers and Developers.
The Sheffield College's Digital Centre of Vocational Excellence, which will focuses on the supply of skills to employers necessary to develop digital industries in Sheffield.

Committees [up to Achievements]

Until leaving the Sheffield College in 2002 I was a member of:

the JISC Committee for Content Services;
the Standards Review Panel which drew up the Institute of IT Training's Competencies for Developers of e-Learning Materials.

During 2003 and 2004 I was a member of the Working Group set up by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education to revise QAA's Code of practice for the assurance of academic quality and standards in higher education, Section 2: Collaborative provision, flexible and distributed learning (including e-learning).

I am currently a member of:

the Editorial Board of the Journal for Further and Higher Education;
the JISC Committee for Learning and Teaching, on which I represent ALT.

Consultancy

Clients since September 2002 include the British Standards Institution, Becta, BDP Learning, CIPD, Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council, ESRC, JISC, NATFHE, National College for School Leadership, North West RDA, PA Consulting, RM plc, Sheffield City Council, the Trades Union Congress, Ufi Ltd, University of Glasgow, Yorkshire Forward.

Submissions [up to Achievements]

In my current work for ALT I write some, and coordinate the production of all, ALT responses to consultations, most of which can be found here.

In 2001 I wrote The Sheffield College's submission to the Learning and Skills Council's Distance and Electronic Learning Group (DELG), and, in 2002, provided evidence for the Education and Skill Secretary's 'Post-16 E-Learning Strategy Task Force'.

TUC Education

In a previous Sheffield College role I played a major part in the development of the TUC's courses for health and safety representatives. Stemming from this I was for several years a TUC-nominated member of the Standing Committee on Hazard Information and Packaging, a subcommittee of the Advisory Committee on Toxic Substances, which consults on issues relating to the hazard classification, labelling and packaging of chemicals.

Miscellaneous [back to top]

During most of my employment with The Sheffield College, I was a senior and influential officer within NATFHE, the trade union and professional association which represents academic staff in colleges, and which merged with the Association of University Teachers to form UCU in 2006.

I was one of 5 people shortlisted for Becta's ICT in Practice Award 2003 in the category 'Leadership Post 16'.

I publish Fortnightly Mailing, an opt-in web-based newsletter and web log with nearly 450 subscribers. Fortnightly Mailing summarises resources and news I come across in the course of my work which I think will be of value to others with an interest in online learning and the internet.

I am keen Nordic skier. Pictures from Jotunheimen, 2003, Rondane, 2004, Jotunheimen, 2005, Tafjordfella, 2006, Jotunheimen/Breheimen, 2007, Vang and Hardangervidda, 2008.

4. Views

Some of my views about e-learning are summarised:

in this Summer 2005 interview in the Epic Newsletter;
in this July 2007 piece by Tom Robinson in the US Greentree Gazette [112 kB PDF file];
in this November 2007 interview with Lisa Neal, Editor-in-Chief, of eLearn Magazine.
in my Fortnightly Mailing.