New Year, new job

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Stuart Sutherland

University of Derby Online logo
After five years at The National College I shall be leaving this Christmas to take up a new post in January as head of development and delivery at University of Derby Online. University of Derby Online is a new startup funded by the University of Derby to be the vehicle that develops and delivers online courses and programmes for the University.

At a time when the cost of Higher Education is rocketing, I am very excited to be part of this new venture. Part of its mission will be to make Higher Education accessible and affordable (and of real high quality) at a time when it appears to be less attractive and accessible. The social purpose of that part of the business is something that I am completely passionate about.

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The Amsterdam 300

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Stuart Sutherland

Amsterdam 300 riders stocking up in CalaisOn Thursday 15 September at 10.30 PM, I set off in a group of around 70 cyclists from SCOPE headquarters in London to ride to Amsterdam in less than 2 days. The Amsterdam 300 (which turned out to be over 330 miles long) was a fantastic event designed to raise much-needed funds for SCOPE. Continue reading →

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TeachMeet Midlands, May 20 2011

Posted on May 9, 2011 by Stuart Sutherland

I’m looking forward to what I am confident will be one of my most stimulating professional development experiences of the year on the evening of Friday May 20: TeachMeet Midlands at the National College. Continue reading →

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Learning design for collaborative online learning

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Stuart Sutherland

I work in a team at the National College that is widely distributed across the country. One way in which we ensure that we keep in touch with each other and share what we are working on and learning, is to have a quick, voluntary web conference at 9AM every Friday morning, led by different members of the team on different days. I find that the most enjoyable and fruitful of these sessions is where one of us talks about an area of work or interest that is unconnected with our work at the College and where we push and invite ourselves to think about what lessons we have learned from that area that might be of benefit to the College.
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The National College online network: a case study in building and managing a professional networking and learning system

Posted on March 12, 2011 by Stuart Sutherland

In January 2010, eLearn Magazine published its annual set of predictions for 2010. In her contribution, Jane Hart wrote:

I think (and hope) we will see learning systems moving away from managing or controlling users and instead providing open learning environments that enable both formal and informal, personal and group learning to take place.[1]

In April 2010, the National College launched just such a system for its members and for participants on its leadership development programmes. This case study tells the story of the development, launch and uptake of the College’s online network, and outlines some lessons that we have learned about the development and the management of this professional networking and learning environment.
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Etienne Wenger on communities of practice

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Stuart Sutherland

I was privileged to be able to attend a number of really stimulating events in 2010 focusing on how social technologies can be harnessed to foster the spread of knowledge and good ideas across organisations, communities and sectors. I attended the Dachis Group Social Business Summit in London in March, Mediating Boundaries: traversing the landscapes of online communities of practice in May and Beyond 2010 – Delivering more for less through digital technologies in October.
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Voices from the SSAT National Conference

Posted on December 15, 2010 by Stuart Sutherland

I was lucky enough to attend the last day of the SSAT’s excellent National Conference in November as part of my work for the National College on our Developing Leaders for Tomorrow (Primary) programme, which we run with the SSAT. The last face-to-face day for programme participants is always this day at the conference, which I think is a great way to conclude a leadership development programme for young, aspiring school leaders. It feels like the message this communicates to participants is: ‘This is your community. These experienced leaders and innovative practitioners are your peers.’
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The CancerNursing.org story

Posted on November 3, 2010 by Stuart Sutherland

The story of CancerNursing.org to date is the story of carefully-packaged but relatively uncomplicated e-learning resources … bringing high quality cancer nursing expertise to truly international audiences and to many audiences that simply could not access such expertise previously. It is a story of a small group of volunteers working alongside subject matter experts, working with negligible or no budgets, to share previously privileged or rare knowledge on a global scale.

This paragraph forms part of the conclusion to an article about www.CancerNursing.org that I co-wrote with Ray Irving for the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) Newsletter. This long blog post reproduces that article, with the kind permission of ALT and the Newsletter’s editor Morag Munro
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Community management lessons learned – Part 2

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Stuart Sutherland

Since posting ‘Community management lessons learned – Part 1’ a couple of weeks ago, I’ve learned further important lessons that I’d like to articulate in this second post. Again, these are lessons I’ve learned with and from colleagues through our work to look after and run the National College’s online network.

1. Know your readers from your writers. Find out about where your members ‘spend’ their attention.

You know from the community itself what the hot topics are, don’t you? These are surely the discussions or questions that are attracting the most comments and contributions? So, to boost the growth of the community, you should generate or promote more activity on these topics, shouldn’t you? Or should you?
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Community management lessons learned – Part 1

Posted on July 20, 2010 by Stuart Sutherland

This is the first in what I hope will be a series of posts in which I seek to articulate some of the lessons I feel that I’m learning with colleagues about community management, based upon our work to look after and run the National College’s online network. These observations and recommendations are not necessarily things that we have practised to date. Rather, they are are some personal lessons based on our experience so far, good and bad.
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