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My Journey - The Personalisation of my Professional Life
Since leaving school, I have taken on many different roles within the education, learning and teaching sector. My undergraduate qualification is in Physical Education and Teaching, where I started my career as a PE teacher in secondary education. With my main sporting passion being Rugby, I coach the school's Rugby club, as well as taking on the Athletics and Cricket clubs during summer.
Being young and wanting to travel, I undertook a qualification in English Language Teaching, and this ended up taking me to Japan to teach English there. I spent 5 years in Japan teaching English to people aged from 3-years-old to 70 years old, from both the formal classroom and school setting, to the private after-school language schools. I helped students prepare for local speaking contests and university entrance exams, business workers wanting to improve their international communication, and helped doctors write articles for medical journals and prepare for international conference presentations. It was quite a variety of work I carried out during my time there.
After leaving Japan, I returned to Scotland and enrolled on a Master's programme in TESOL. Some of the modules I elected were centred around using computers and technology to assist and enhance learning, and this really kickstarted my interests in E-Learning. With the combinations of modules that I had elected, together with my core modules, I was able to graduate with an MSc in TESOL and Computer-Assisted Learning.
My dissertation was focused on the way learners interact with online learning materials in a flipped approach to language learning. This resulted in a very interesting pilot study that I later gave presentations on at conferences and transferred into my teaching.
I took my new degree and my new passion with me to the Middle East. Lecturing at a university in Saudi, I approached my Head of Department with my proposal - I wanted to revamp our programme and put in place a Flipped/Blended learning approach. With his approval, I worked collaboratively with the module coordinators in redesigning the syllabus and content and creating materials for an online learning element of the module. After using my classes as guinea-pigs, we were able to roll out the new programme to the whole cohort. The learners enjoyed this as it allowed them more flexibility in the way they learn; the faculty enjoyed this as it allowed them to act more as facilitators rather than lecturers during the class contact time. Ultimately, I enjoyed this as it was a great challenge and allowed me to put what I learnt into practice in a real environment.
After the Middle East, I moved to Ireland. I took the role of Director of Studies for a language school. It was a lovely school with an emerging online learning presence. We were always looking at ways to reach more learners as well as cater to the learners we had on site. We looked into different programmes that we could deliver online and ways we could adapt our current programmes online too. We were constantly trying to improve our syllabus and offerings and introduced an IELTS preparation course. Unfortunately, my stint in Ireland was short, and I ended up moving back to Scotland.
Back in Scotland, I took on a position within Academic Registry at a local university. This was a very different role to my previous positions but I quickly became familiar with the Student Records System as this was a main tool for the position. While in the position, we did overhaul much of our processes - and with it, our detailed process notes. We had to revisit this again unfortunately when Covid hit and much of our processes had to be revamped for digital and remote delivery. I enjoyed the problem solving aspect of figuring this out with my team and we managed to have a completed process up and running quickly without delay which added to and built upon the effectiveness and efficiency of the previous system.
After a brief step out of my comfort zone, my next move took me back into the side of education that I prefer. I took on the position as Digital Learning Designer where I honed my skills and training to develop and design digital learning solutions for a Further Education and training provider. The height of the Covid pandemic necessitated the drive to facilitate online learning. I hit the floor running here with tight deadlines from the get go, as we needed to figure out how we could deliver our programmes remotely and effectively. We made the move away from face-to-face learning and even expanded our bank of programmes and offerings available, all through an online/blended approach.
Unfortunately, we got some upsetting family news and had to make a quick and unexpected move back to Ireland. There, I took on the role of Digital Learning Specialist. This was a great step though and I was able to push my learning and experiences further. It took me a little out of my comfort zone as I was working within the Horse Racing Industry - focus on detail was essential here, as I quickly learned, as this is a very tight-knit industry and one I was unfamiliar with. Luckily, I had a great team around me, eager to educate me in horse racing life.
We wished our short move back to Ireland was under better circumstances, but at least professionally I managed to grow during that time. On return to the UK, I took on the position of Instructional Designer, this time in Compliance Learning. This position allowed me to focus wholly on the learning and the learners journey. I worked with content experts in designing market ready courses, and with stakeholders and clients in delivering more bespoke courses with their content and needs. I had to liaise strongly here with the subject matter experts and stakeholders, especially for the international clients who had to ensure different compliance learning details for different regions.
My next stop took me away from compliance learning and back towards a field that I was much more familiar with - designing learning for training people how to write properly for business. Being back in an area that was much more familiar to me definitely made my role easier. Although I still had SME's to draw on, I had a deeper understanding of it and could work much more collaboratively with them. Alongside creating and developing the materials for our face-to-face trainings, we also launched our first fully digital online learning option, with others mapped out and ready to be developed.
But the draw of the Middle East still called. When I was contacted about an opening back at the University in Saudi Arabia, we thought this would be a great opportunity for the family. Back in my old position, my time has been split between lecturing on Academic English and creating fully digital offerings to support the students in our faculty. Unfortunately, the courses had developed and changed so much that much of what I had created during my previous visit here was outdated and not in use. But I was fine with that as my skills had also improved, and I've been able to give much more engaging and informative digital learning solutions.
For now, that's me all up-to-date. Feel free to get in touch if you want to contribute to adding to this section ...
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