Work Bio

Lou has over 20 years experience as a Librarian in the field of learning and teaching, both for government and National Health Service organisations as well as academic institutions. Much of this experience has been in the capacity as a service, project or programme manager. Professional interests include: the impact of information and communication technologies on learning and teaching, in particular the learning literacies of students and staff (such as information literacy, critical and academic literacy, communication and tool literacies); cultural and organisational issues affecting institutions, individuals and communities involved in learning and teaching; effective development, management and use of digital content; student generated learning resources and curriculum design, open education and OERs.

Lou is currently acting as a consultant in eLearning and information management. Her most recent salaried post was as a JISC Programme Manager on the eLearning team where she was responsible for developing a new ‘Learning Resources and Activities’ strand of work, which aimed to develop an holistic approach to the effective use of educational content. She developed and led on the 2008 national conference  ‘Using learning resources: transforming the educational experience’ which was successful in engaging the community in discussion around sharing and re-purposing of learning materials and also managed the JISC online innovating eLearning conference which focused on institutional transformation and lifelong learning. Lou has worked on a range of projects and programmes that focus on digital repositories and learning materials, including Digital Libraries in the Classroom (DLiC), Exchange for Learning (x4l), Repurposing and re-use of digital university-level content and evaluaton (ReProduce) and the SFC eLearning Transformation Programmes. Lou was on the Steering Group of the CD LOR (Community Dimensions of Learning Object Repositories) Project and also worked on the Stor Curam Project – a storehouse of learning  resources for social care.

Lou is commitmed to supporting collaborative working and believes that a cross-sector approach and multidisciplinary team work are the keys to effecting transformational change in the world of learning and teaching. Her experience across many sectors and both professional and subject disciplines has developed a wide ranging network  of contacts and she is a a member of several online communities including EMERGE (community of practice of the JISC Users and Innovation Development Model), and ELESIG (Special Interest Group for those involved in investigations and evaluations of learners’ experiences of e-learning).

Lou has strong writing, synthesis and presentation skills, experience of face-to-face and online teaching at a HE level, and has carried out research and evaluation during several projects.