Keynote Speaker Profile - Dawn Leeder

Dawn Leeder is Director and Founder of Universities' Collaboration in eLearning (UCeL), University of Cambridge. UCeL is a multi-institutional, interprofessional consortium creating, using and evaluating high quality e-learning resources in the form of reusable learning objects (RLOs) for health professional education. UCeL's interactive workshops, where practitioners engage in hands-on content creation activities, were devised by Dawn, and have been running to international acclaim since 2002.

Dawn is Local Academic Coordinator and Reward & Development Manager for RLO-CETL at Cambridge University with special responsibility for staff development programmes, international dissemination and long-term sustainability. RLO-CETL is a three-way collaboration led by London Metropolitan University in partnership with the Universities of Cambridge and Nottingham.

Dawn's background is in media industry including music production and recording, television, radio, advertising and PR. She is an experienced interactive multimedia developer and has authored numerous papers on e-learning, web-based education and supporting and sustaining communities of practice.

In addition to her presentation, "E-is for Excellence: what happens at the Centre for Excellence in Reusable Learning Objects", Dawn will be leading a workshop focussing on Reusable Learning Objects and Learning Designs.

Keynote Speaker Profile - Donald Clark

After 23 years in the e-learning industry, a founder and CEO of Epic Group plc, which was sold on the stock market in late 2005, Donald describes himself as "free from the tyranny of employment". Donald is a board member of University for Industry, the Brighton Arts Festival, the Interactive University and SEMN. Donald maintains his own blog where he posts his thoughts and observations on learning & development issues in general.

Donald will be launching our event in January. His presentation - "Learning 2.0: Learning for the 21st Century" will examine a range of learning technologies and the application of the social web to elearning.

Conference Announcement

Addressing the development needs of staff is one of many challenges facing employers in the social service sector: balancing increased demand for services with limited operational budgets, maintaining staffing rotas with scarce human resources etc.. Enabling staff to access learning and development opportunities in this context can be particularly challenging.

In response to this, and as part of our commitment to supporting the implementation of the National Strategy for the Development of the Social Service Workforce in Scotland , the Scottish Social Services Council, in partnership with the Scottish Institute for Excellence in Social Work Education, is organising a one day conference focusing on the potential uses of learning technologies to support workforce development.

In addition to presentations from Dawn Leeder (Director and Founder of Universities' Collaboration in eLearning (UCEL)) and Donald Clark (founder of Epic Group plc, one of the UK’s leading eLearning companies), the conference will offer delegates a range of workshops aimed at demystifying the use of learning technologies and offer demonstrations of a range of technologies and assistance in developing cost efficient, accessible elearning solutions for the social services workforce.

Further details will be posted here as we approach the conference date & these pages will be used to post material from the conference and enable delegates to discuss issues raised following the event