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Web 4 All conference 2012: A Challenge to Web Accessibility Metrics and Guidelines


Today and tomorrow (the 16th and 17th of April respectively) mark the 9th International Cross-Disciplinary conference on Web Accessibility in Nice, France.  This year the event is being live streamed via the website http://www.w4a.info/2012/ allowing me to virtually attend, and, in particular, eavesdrop on David Sloan’s presentation of our joint paper, co-authored with Martyn Cooper and Brian Kelly. Dedicated reportage is also being supplied by a battalion of tweeters using the #w4a12 and #w4a12live hashtags.

Today, David presented our communication paper ‘A Challenge to Web Accessibility Metrics and Guidelines: Putting People and Processes First. Our paper is available for free, with abstract via the University of Bath online repository in Word, PDF and HTML formats.

Cooper, M., Sloan, D., Kelly, B. and Lewthwaite, S., 2012. A challenge to web accessibility metrics and guidelines: putting people and processes first. In: W4A 2012: 9th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility, 16-18 April 2012, Lyon.

In addition, David’s slides are now available on Slide Share:


I’ll be sure to add a link to any recordings from David’s presentation on this page as and when they become available.

The Platonic Upper Cut


Watching some of the tweets rolling out of South By South West (SXSW) I was reminded (again) of the continuing relevance of cyberfeminist theory for Human Factors, HCI and UX researchers. In particular, Katherine Hayles work “How we became post-human: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics” (1999) springs to mind, in terms keeping an eye to the messy complexity of users, in balance with the ‘perfect’ world of code. I think this has particular relevance for those creating scenarios and personas or otherwise seeking to ‘abstract’, summarise or theorise a user group.

At the risk of alienating all but the most committed readers – here’s a snipped from my thesis where I discuss Hayles’ work. Here, I highlight problems with collecting onscreen information without consulting a user about the purpose, meaning and motivation behind their activities.  Please excuse the appallingly academic language, I have added some links to expand on particular terms that may have different meanings for different readers.  Comments are welcome.

The following excerpt is taken from p 125-127 from:

The sections quoted are from:

  • HAYLES, N. K. (1999) How we became posthuman : virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics. Chicago, Ill. London, University of Chicago Press.

Onscreen Data:

…In analysis, the results of screen capture have been used primarily for illustrative purposes, for reference and data triangulation (Merriam, 1999). This has been for several reasons. Firstly, from an ontological position, I have felt it important to recognise that shifting the focus of research from the individual to their onscreen representations would fail to report authentic understandings of this content. Privileging my own view on student screen phenomena arguably instigates a research hierarchy that privileges the researcher’s observation over the student construction of meaning that those artefacts realise.

There is also a further ontological issue at stake here, available to us through arguments posited by Hayles (1999). Hayles actively seeks to complicate the abstract dichotomies present in dominant technology discourse. In a statement of intent, she problematises the leap from embodied reality to abstract information, with important implications for research straddling these spaces:

Abstraction is of course an essential component in all theorising, for no real theory can account for the infinite multiplicity of our interactions with the real. But when we make moves that erase the world’s multiplicity, we risk losing sight of the variegated leaves, fractal branchings, and particular bark textures that make up the forest. (Hayles, 1999: 12)

Hayles continues to identify two moves that she deems central to the construction of an information/materialist hierarchy that distorts understandings of the real world and its online equivalents. She terms these the ‘Platonic backhand and forehand’:

The Platonic backhand works by inferring from the world’s noisy multiplicity a simplified abstraction. So far so good: this is what theorising should do. The problem comes when the move circles around to constitute the abstraction as the originary form from which the world’s multiplicity derives. Then complexity appears as a ‘fuzzing up’ of an essential reality rather than as a manifestation of the world’s holistic nature. (Hayles, 1999: 12)

This back-to-front semblance of the real world in theory is important, but not complete. When considering the interface between ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ realms, the ‘platonic forehand’ comes into play:

Whereas the Platonic backhand has a history dating back to the Greeks, the Platonic forehand is more recent. To reach fully developed form, it required the assistance of powerful computers. This move starts from simplified abstractions and, using simulation techniques such as genetic algorithms, evolves a multiplicity sufficiently complex that it can be seen as a world of its own. The two moves thus make their play in opposite directions. The backhand goes from noisy multiplicity to reductive simplicity, whereas the forehand swings from simplicity to multiplicity. They share a common ideology – privileging the abstract as the Real and downplaying the importance of material instantiation. When they work together, they lay the groundwork for a new variation on an ancient game, in which disembodied information becomes the ultimate Platonic Form. (Hayles, 1999:12-13)

When conceptualising online spaces, it is thus desirable to recognise any instinct towards the abstraction of the Real, and, arguably, over-estimation of the complexity of online representations. For this reason, my interviews privileged students and the meanings that they ascribed to online phenomena and activity, rather than the ‘authentic’ onscreen phenomena itself. Where dissonance between onscreen phenomena and student talk occurred, this was raised within the interview. In this way, the interviews could be characterised as ambulant; moving through online spaces, charting them with respect to the guidance offered by participants.

 

Paper Accepted for #W4A12 Conference


Earlier this week I returned from San Diego to receive news that my joint paper “A Challenge to Web Accessibility Metrics and Guidelines: Putting People and Processes First” has been peer-reviewed and accepted for the 9th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility – 16/17th April 2012 – Lyon, France. This year’s conference theme is “Web of Data”. The conference is notably co-located with WWW2012. Web Accessibility people may also be interested to know that select papers from this years’ conference will be published in a special issue of  Universal Access in the Information Society.

Our communications paper was written in collaboration. Martyn Cooper (Open University) was lead author, working alongside Brian Kelly (Bath University) David Sloan (Dundee University) and myself. Those of you with sharp memories will know that Brian, David and I worked together on a previous W4A paper, Developing Countries; Developing Experiences: Approaches to Accessibility for the Real World which won the John Slatin award for best communications paper back in 2010.  Perhaps interestingly, I still haven’t actually met Brian (or Martyn), but I’m sure that day will come!

“A Challenge to Web Accessibility Metrics and Guidelines: Putting People and Processes First” will be publicly available next month. The paper itself argues that web accessibility is not an intrinsic characteristic of a digital resource by highlighting political, social and contextual factors that shape user experiences in combination with technical aspects.  As a result, it can be inappropriate to develop legislation or focus on metric that deal with the properties of a resource regardless of context.  From this point we describe the value of standards such as BS 8878 and use a case study illustrating how learning analytics could provide data to support the improvement of inclusive learning resources, developing a broader perspective of the resource in-use.

Brian Kelly will deliver a post on the UK Web Focus blog which will discuss these ideas, and the challenges which are presented to legislators,  policy makers and practitioners who develop practices based on a view that web accessibility is an intrinsic property of a resource at a later date. Watch that space!

Multiple Perspectives on Interaction Design for Older People


This week the 27th International Technology and Persons with Disabilities (CSUN 2012) conference begins in San Diego. I will be contributing to three sessions (a discussion panel and two papers) all now highlighted on my diary page and available on the conference web pages. It looks like papers will not be available until after event itself. As a result, mine are available here for preview and comment. Hopefully they will be of interest to general accessibility/social media readers as well as delegates. First up (and previously blogged) was: “Peer-to-Peer Accessibility in Social Networks“, a paper for a session that will be exploring how web accessibility can be socially mediated by peers within social networks, using evidence from research with disabled students at UK Universities. Second, a preview of the panel discussion “Does Accessibility have to be Perfect?” has been previewed for discussion over at Henny Swan’s blog. Please head over there and check it out.

Finally, I will be presenting a paper on aspects of the MyUI.eu project. The paper is entitled “Interaction Design for Older People”. Beneath this rather generic title, I will be specifically focussing on the tensions raised by multiple perspectives on disability and aging in interdisciplinary work. The paper’s introduction is reproduced below. A PDF of the full document (approximately 1,000 words) available below, both for download and embedded in Google’s PDF viewer. If you would like to read the paper in a different format, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Interaction Design for Older People

This paper highlights an approach to promoting e-Inclusion which focuses older users in context. It is based on research conducted as part of the user-centred, collaborative work of the MyUI project (Mainstreaming Accessibility through Synergistic User Modelling and Adaptability). The research has raised important conceptual issues during its conduct, particularly regarding the ‘practical ethics’ of modeling disability and age-related impairments. In short, there is no neutral language with which to describe disability [1, 2, 3], as such all research is conducted through a particular ideological lens. In this interdisciplinary and cross-cultural research, the application of critical perspectives, grounded in social theory and disability studies, has offered fresh insight into the conception of impairment and disability amongst the technically-based prerogatives of human factors and HCI research. This paper introduces the MyUI project and the value of applying post-structuralist approaches from critical disability studies for human factors research.

‘Interaction Design for Older People’ PDF

Call for Papers: Digital Inclusion and Learning Special Issue


Newsflash: Research in Learning Technology currently have an open call for papers for a Special Issue of the journal focussing on Digital Inclusion and Learning, to be edited by guest editors  Jane Seale, Professor of Education at Plymouth University  and William Dutton, Professor of Internet Studies, Oxford Internet Institute.

Abstracts can be submitted to Jane Seale for informal feedback until 1 March 2012; Papers should be submitted via the online submission system by 1 May 2012.

The special issue is not the only reason why the journal deserves special attention. Research in Learning Technology became an open access journal at the start of the year – with it’s entire catalogue being now available freely online. Particularly attentive readers will know I’ve highlighted a previous Research in Learning Technology special issue on Disability Technology and eLearning edited by Jane Seale on this blog as part of a Routledge open access event . The good news is that these articles are now permanently available to all (I’ll be fixing all the links shortly).  For those of us seeking to develop inclusive technologies in practice, teaching and research, this appears to be a step towards a very welcome marrying of a more digitally inclusive form and digitally inclusive content.

University Email: A PhD Exit Strategy


This post marks the third instalment in an occasional series on the underbelly of the PhD.  This week: Developing your exit strategy.

email iconSo you’ve submitted your PhD. Congratulations. OMG, you did it. Two gold-embossed hardbound copies handed over.  Maybe some tears.  Now you simply have to extricate yourself from postgraduate life and reconnect with the real world, your friends, your family and get some hobbies and exercise.

Of course, things do not stop, or even start properly here. There are administrative tasks that you will have to undertake following submission, for which there may be little information available. So let’s come to the point; this post is not about moving on, job hunting or developing your research career: it is about sorting out your university email. Thrilling, I know – but bear with me.

First thing’s first. Your email account has been an academically sanctioned identity for three or more years. And, unless you have a particularly benevolent institution that guarantees email for life, your account is about to end. Full stop.  You may receive a letter asking you to ‘forward all important emails to an external account’ before your account is sedated (suspended) and put out of its misery (erased). If, like me, you have come to rely on your university email, you need an exit strategy, fast.

First you need to recognise how important your email account is. My university email had been honed over the years; I’ve backed up chapters of my PhD and numerous other documents by emailing them to myself. My Outlook address book was incomplete – but the Outlook search function gave me access to details of hundreds of connections. The account also automatically sifted listserv messages from groups I’ve subscribed to, filing them for me to read, or search for specific keywords when I had time. These included:

In addition, all the projects I’ve worked on, applications I’ve made, files I’ve sent and received, funders I’ve communicated with, institutions I’ve visited – everything is recorded in my inbox.  In short, email represented a resource too important to lose, especially given the fact that networks and contacts are essential to next steps in academia. Now, two essential factors come into play. They’re so important; so you can quote me.

  1. Your email is not yours. It belongs to your university.
  2. Your university email address constitutes and validates your academic identity. This signifier is about to expire.

These two facts have various implications. Each requires action.

Step 1: Check the conditions of closure for your university email. At Nottingham, the process of suspension and closure was scheduled over a period of three-six months from my final submission date. My account was due to be suspended three months after submission (ceasing to function) and then deleted three months after that. Note: If you are at Nottingham, you still need to check this. Don’t blame me if conditions have changed.

Step 2: If you haven’t already got an alternative email account, you need to set one up. If you are considering changing your personal email, now is a good time.  In addition, you need to update any mailing lists, social networks, webpages and blogs so they point to your new address.

Step 3: Next set up a notice on your email account (using the Out of Office function) as soon as possible, to let everyone who emails you know, automatically, that your email address will be closing on a given date. This message should include a new email address where you can be reached, along with any other contact details as you see fit. Encourage people to update their address books and start using your new email to instigate communications and respond to messages.

Tip: If your University uses Outlook, you can set your Out of Office function up so anyone emailing you will only receive your closure notice once. If you are giving three months’ notice, you might like to reset this message each month to ensure no one slips through the net.  Adapt this rule as necessary.

Step 3: To reiterate: Your email is not yours. It belongs to your university. If you want to export your email, you have to take action. I was anxious to export my mailbox, so I contacted my institution’s IT Support Team. They indicated that I could export my email as an Outlook Data File (ODF). However, this would require their intervention, and advance permission from the University Registrar. I then contacted the postgraduate administrators in my Department to establish what was required for making this request formally. There were forms to complete, permissions to be gathered, and an appointment to be made with IT Support whilst I still had access to my PhD office desktop. The final steps at my institution were fairly smooth, and I received my email (all 200MBs of it) directly to my portable harddrive, in person. As soon as the file was made, however, my email stopped, so be aware that you need to schedule your email export carefully.

Warning: To access the emails and files contained in my ODF file, I required a new version of Outlook Express, at some expense.

Step 4: Alongside action to export your email, make sure you also forward your most important emails, contacts and documents from your university inbox to your external address.  This is essential, as there is no guarantee that your university will release your email to you, in a format that you can access, at a time that suits you.

Step 5: People will continue to try your old email address after it expires. So at this point, you should consider your online profile. If someone receives a ‘message undelivered’ notice and subsequently types your name into a search engine looking for a point of contact, can they find you easily? You need to make sure that your academic identity remains publically intact as you move on (either within, or without) your Alma Mata. LinkedIn is perhaps the least social of the social networks, but I have found it functions well as an address book for academics on the move. Academia.Edu will also allow you to present yourself, your work and connections. These are two amongst a plethora of options.

Step 5: Recognise that many of your colleagues will not be taking the steps outlined above. Staying in touch with other students (now distinguished PhDs) from your class is important, but not always easy. Again, in my experience, unless your department routinely gives notice of who has completed their viva, corrections and submitted, colleagues can disappear from your wider peer group without a trace.  Facebook has proven to be where I have kept up with the majority of my class, particularly international PhDs, who graduated before and after me, and who are now spread all over the world. However, it’s important not to assume that everyone will be on Facebook, or want to be on Facebook.

So these are my 5 steps to email freedom. Any comments are welcome.

 

Event: Disability and Social Networks in Education


On Wednesday February 8th 4.00-5.30 pm, I’ll be presenting to the Technology Mediated Learning Group at King’s College London (Waterloo campus). The seminar is free, and usually comprises 45 minutes of presentation followed by 45 minutes of discussion. I’ve submitted the following abstract, developing positions from my PhD research with a view to several channels of publication. If you’d like more details or to register to attend, please get in touch with Mary Webb to reserve a place.

Disability and Social Networks in Education

In the UK social networks have become near-ubiquitous. Social networks offer spaces for interaction and display that permeate all aspects of public life. They are now deeply enmeshed in the real world. As these networks ‘fade into the foreground’ questions are raised concerning the impact of network effects and how these colonise the self, giving rise to new subjectivities. Social networks have been considered from diverse theoretical perspectives; however, I will argue that it is thought the lens of critical disability studies that the most significant fallout of the networked-self emerges.

Much has been written about technology’s ability to ameliorate disability by removing the physical and social barriers that exclude students with cognitive and physical impairments. However, attention to accessibility alone ignores the ways in which social networks produce and suppress disabled identities. In this presentation, I will advance a Foucauldian perspective and use evidence from doctoral research to demonstrate how network conditions depend upon and evoke a state of normalcy, propelling users towards disabled or non-disabled subjectivities. In this way, all users are ‘disciplined’ by social networks and compelled to adopt non-disabled interactions, or maintain disability within strict discursive limits. Amongst those who adopt non-disabled interactions, an ontological rupture occurs that confirms disability as a deficit, discredited identity. Amongst those who cannot, or will not perform a non-disabled self, the network is experienced as punitive and disabling. In each case, authentic and diverse experiences of impairment become inhibited. Social networks produce disabled subjectivities whilst systematically erasing them from view.

In this presentation I will discuss the resulting invisibility of disability in social networks. I examine a digital divide that is barely perceptible, to challenge a discourse of technology that promises engagement and inclusion whilst simultaneously quantifying, itemising and excluding the disabled individual.

Journal Hacks for PostGraduates


Impact and Dissemination: two words to strike fear into the heart of any research student.  However, sharing your research is important, particularly in emergent and interdisciplinary fields, where research can become lost between academic genres. Publication is also increasingly necessary for bagging an academic post following study.   Fortunately, there are several straightforward ways for you to get your research Out There. For those with a finished thesis this may mean publishing a string of papers stemming from the PhD across several journals. For others, it may be preferable to publish a thesis online in a University or Open Access repository (for example nottingham Universities etheses repository), or with a Creative Commons licence in a personally hosted space. Importantly, the two may be mutually exclusive: some journals will not publish research that is already in the public domain for copyright reasons. As a result – consider which approach you will adopt, and which you can reasonably achieve.

With debate raging over the future of academic publishing, copyright and closed versus open access models of publishing your publication decisions may be swayed by ethics, politics, practical issues of audience share, accessibility and/or consciously aligning yourself with institutional values. In any event, between and amongst these controversies there are other opportunities available for sign-posting your work at both the middle and end of your studies. In each of the following instances I sketch options available to PhDs, postgrads and even…undergraduates.

Using a Journal to Circulate your Abstract

Last year, the journal of Disability and Society launched a ‘completed thesis’ list section to their journal to encourage new PhDs to share their research with a wider research community and help build Disability Studies as a discipline.

The journal cites this as as an important resource for readers, as well as a mode for sharing the names of new entrants to the discipline. Embracing new entrants in which way, is an important step for any learning community, be it focussed on a journal or a wider discipline. Junior researchers contribute new ideas to any discipline. Moreover, boosting the status of undergraduate and postgraduate researchers in the production of knowledge, promotes what Tang, Xi and Ma (2006) identify as the ‘scale free’ or egalitarian networks that prove more effective for knowledge transfer than traditional hierarchical networks.

I submitted my 100 word synopsis several months ago, and I recently received notice that my abstract will be included in the December issue of Disability and Society (Volume 26, Number 7). The information I submitted ran as follows:

  • Name of author: Sarah Lewthwaite
  • Thesis title: Disability 2.0: Student dis/Connections. A study of student experiences of disability and social networks on Campus in Higher Education.
  • University awarding degree: University of Nottingham, UK, PhD 2011.
    At university many undergraduates depend upon social networks such as Facebook to enter student life.  Using accessible internet-enabled interviews with 18 disabled students from three UK universities, this qualitative study examines disability as a socio-technical, networked experience. Networked publics are found to be highly normative. For some disabled students the network supports ‘normal’ status. For others, the network must be resisted as a form of social domination that is punitive and disabling. Foucauldian analysis demonstrates how, in each instance, social andtechnical network conditions propel students towards disciplinary techniques that mask diversity, rendering disability invisible. As a result, disability is both produced and suppressed by the network.

When drafting this text I was aware of a tension between the language of internet research / digital sociology (“networked publics”) and a wider Disability Studies audience.  I would not claim that this abstract is by any means “plain language” or summarises a 100,000 word thesis adequately. However, I do feel that my most important conclusions are outlined and key words gesturing to specific methods and discourses are highlighted (“Foucauldian”, “accessible”).

If you are a scholar in disability research, I highly recommend that you add a submission to the “completed thesis” to your post-phd ‘to do’ list. If you are working in another discipline, you may want to check journals in your field for similar opportunities, or request that this kind of space is developed.

Position Pieces and Student Perspectives

A second opportunity for postgrads is available in the form of a position piece. These are often short communication papers (not necessarily requiring data and hard research) that assert a new perspective on a research domain. Postgraduates are often uniquely positioned to supply these viewpoint pieces, bringing fresh ideas into a field. I was invited to submit such a paper to the journal of Learning Media and Technology who have a Viewpoint section combining postgraduate perspectives with more established arguments. This kind paper allows you to position your arguments within a field without exposing unfinished data. Check the journals in your field for similar opportunities.

In addition, Student Perspective sections are also valuable.  Disability and Society have launched a ‘Student Perspectives’ section for such papers. Again, this offers an excellent space for position pieces exploring any topic relating to disability research. The journal’s invitation for submissions runs as follows:

We have established a section within the Journal, entitled Student Perspectives, in which student papers will be published. Papers will be refereed and can explore any topic related to disability issues and questions. The papers must be authored by students undertaking under-graduate, postgraduate or research degrees. The papers need to be between 3000 and 7000 words (maximum).
The papers should:

  • Provide an adequate review of disability studies literature.
  • Have clearly acknowledged sources.
  • Be specifically written for the Journal taking into account its ethos and audience.
  • Conform to the academic requirements of the Journal
  • Where necessary adequately discuss the methods used.
  • Have particular attention paid to the presentation and analysis of empirical data.
  • Pay attention to the Journal’s policy on language.

The paper should not be a straight reproduction of work produced for academic assessment.
Submission details are the same as for main articles. See link to Instructions for Authors.

This is great for sharing an angle on a final year project, MA/MSc/MRes work or early PhD findings and literature that brings something new to the field, but might not constitute a full research paper.  It may also also offers a useful sandpit for those researching outside traditional social disciplines where a project may be undertaken but rarely disseminated outside a department, despite valuable findings (Computer Scientists, I’m looking at you). Importantly, Disability and Society invite both undergraduate and postgraduate submissions, so if you are undertaking research or developing a position at any level of university study – you have the opportunity to enter the refereeing process and potentially share your research in a international academic journal. Guidance is published on the Disability and Society webpages.

All of the above are possible, in addition to more traditional forms such as Letters and Book Reviews. If I have missed anything, or if you have additional thoughts, please comment.

Rhetorical AccessAbility


This post is a trailer for a new book ‘Rhetorical AccessAbility: At the Intersection of Technical Communication and Disability Studies’, edited by Lisa Meloncon at the University of Cincinnati. I penned a chapter for this book in collaboration with Henny Swan. Together we consider ‘Web Standards and the Majority World’, taking a socio-cultural look at the values that web standards convey to a global audience.  In particular we were interested in examining the ways in which Web Standards can export Minority (that is developed/Northern/post-industrial) notions of disability to the Majority world, with potentially counter-productive results. We make our arguments by attending closely to Web Standards as a form of technical writing through the lens of critical disability studies and research. Disability scholars might be interested to know that aspects of this chapter were informed by MMU’s Disability and the Majority World conference, a recently inaugurated event that seeks to globalize disability studies.

Publishers Baywood have now listed Rhetorical Accessibility as available for pre-order as part of their Technical Communications Series (Edited by series editor Charles H. Sides). The publishers’ book summary follows. Further details (including a table of contents and Author information) will become available from Baywood over the next few weeks via the Rhetorical Accessibility pages.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Rhetorical Accessability is the first text to bring the fields of technical communication and disability studies into conversation. The two fields also share a pragmatic foundation in their concern with accommodation and accessibility—that is, the material practice of making social and technical environments and texts as readily available, easy to use, and/or understandable as possible to as many people as possible, including those with disabilities. Through its concern with the pragmatic, theoretically grounded work of helping users interface effectively and seamlessly with technologies, the field of technical communication is perfectly poised to put the theoretical work of disability studies into practice. In other words, technical communication could ideally be seen as a bridge between disability theories and web accessibility practices.

While technical communicators are ideally positioned to solve communication problems and to determine the best delivery method, those same issues are compounded when they are viewed through the dual lens of accessibility and disability. With the increasing use of wireless, expanding global marketplaces, increasing prevalence of technology in our daily lives, and ongoing changes of writing through and with technology, technical communicators need to be acutely aware of issues involved with accessibility and disability.

This collection will advance the field of technical communication by expanding the conceptual apparatus for understanding the intersections among disability studies, technical communication, and accessibility and by offering new perspectives, theories, and features that can only emerge when different fields are brought into conversation with one another.

Intended Audience: Scholars and practitioners of technical communication, disability studies, rhetoric, and usability/user experience. Suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate classes in: web design; document design/information design; topics courses in technical communication and disability studies; cultural studies courses in internet or digital culture; introduction to the field of technical communication; research methods; and rhetorical theory.

New Post at King’s College London


Following graduation and a spell on the MyUI.eu project with the Human Factors Research Group at the University of Nottingham, I’m delighted to report I have recently accepted a position as post doctoral research associate in Student Experience at the King’s Learning Institute, King’s College London.  I’ll be taking up the post in December. I’m looking forward to contributing to a cutting-edge programme of research within a distinguished research centre, headed by Prof Paul Blackmore. I’m sure the new role will also inform this blog, as well as providing plenty of opportunities for writing on my new commute.

Via a separate stream of activity, I’ve also confirmed a presentation in the KCL Technology Mediated Learning seminar series on the 8th February in the new year. Title and abstract to be confirmed and signposted on the Diary pages soon, for more formal information about the seminar listings visit the TML pages to be added to the TML mailing lists.