Achieving a breakthrough in adult learning with technology

Between January and May 2012 I had the luck to have worked with Adrian Perry, Clive Shepherd, and Dick Moore researching and writing the report Scaling up - Achieving a breakthrough in adult learning with technology [PDF, 53 pages] for the Ufi Charitable Trust. The Trust will be open for Stage 1 applications for funding on 2 July 2012.

One facet of the report is that many of its recommendations flow from interviews with people who are active in the field. In case it is of interest, here is a full list of those we spoke to.

• Martin Baker, CEO, Charity Learning Consortium
• Ray Barnes, Chair of Ufi Trust and former Chief Administrative Officer of Visa International
• Ben Betts, Managing director, HT2
• Sal Brinton, Ufi Trustee and a working Liberal Democrat peer in the House of Lords
• Dan Buckley, until recently, Director of Research, Cambridge Education
• Donald Clark, Ufi Trustee, board member of Cogbooks, LearningPool and previously founding CEO Epic Group plc
• Alastair Clark, Development ICT and Learning, NIACE
• Bryn Davies, Ufi Trustee, and Principal of Ystrad Mynach College, Wales
• Mark Dawe, Chief Executive, OCR
• Gareth Dent, Chief Executive, Open College of the Arts
• Kirstie Donnelly, City and Guilds
• Viv Drake, Lifelong Learning, Skills and Communities, Sheffield City Council
• Gavin Dykes, Fellow, Education Impact
• Stuart Edwards, Deputy Director, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
• David Frost, Ufi Trustee, Chairman of the Studio Schools Trust, and past Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce
• Rob Hubbard, Chair, eLearning Network
• David Jennings, Director, DJ Alchemi Ltd
• Charles Jennings, Managing Director, Duntroon Associates, and former Chief Learning Officer for Thomson Reuters
• Sarah Jones, CEO learndirect
• Bobbie McClelland, Deputy Director, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
• Sugata Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology, School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences, Newcastle University and visiting professor, MIT Media Lab, USA
• Ros Morpeth, Chief Executive, National Extension College
• Laura Overton, Chief Executive, Towards Maturity
• Susan Pember, Director of Further Education and Skills Investment, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
• Vanessa Pittard, Trustee of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) and past Director of E-strategy at Becta
• Dave Pratt, Professor of Mathematics Education at the Institute of Education
• Aaron Sloman, Honorary Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, University of Birmingham
• Donald Taylor, Chairman, Learning and Performance Institute
• Josie Taylor, Professor of Learning Technologies, and Director of the Institute of Educational Technology, Open University
• Sebastian Thrun, Research Professor at Stanford University, Google Fellow, and Vice President and a co-founder of Udacity
• John Weston, Retiring Chair of Ufi’s Trustees, and past Chief Executive of BAE Systems
• Dylan Wiliam, Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment at the Institute of Education, University of London
• Jane Williams, Ufi Trustee, previously Principal of City of Wolverhampton College, a Director in DfES, and an Executive Director of Becta
• Peter Williams, Editor, e.learning age magazine
• Tom Wilson, Retiring Ufi Trustee and Director of unionlearn – the TUC’s learning and skills organisation
• Alison Wolf, Sir Roy Griffiths Professor of Public Sector Management, Kings College London
• Conrad Wolfram, Strategic and International Director, Wolfram Research
• Rob Wye, CEO, Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS)

Comments

[Stephen Downes]

This list seems to be over-represented with Chairs, CEOs and Directors. I know that this sells well for politicians, but these people are seldom the experts in the fields they lead and their intuitions, while excellent in the field of office politics, are less than reliable in science and technology.

[Seb Schmoller]

Stephen. The extent to which the views of the "Chairs, CEOs and Directors" fed through to the report varied widely, as you'd expect. Seb