An educational practitioner – working in academia and flipping experiences for a wide range of students in Higher Education. Simon Thomson is a “flipped academic” (Bruton 2012), an academic Head of E-Learning at Leeds Beckett University (formerly Leeds Metropolitan University). “Flipping” experiences for a wide range of staff and students he endeavours to make a practical difference to the staff and student experiences.
He has led on a number of externally funded projects including a JISC/HEA funded OER project as part of the Phase 1 UKOER programme, an institution-wide pilot of tablet devices as part of funded research into the impact of 1to1 tablet device deployment and the effects that has on learning & teaching and more importantly the learners and teachers. He has presented and published his work at a number of national and international conferences, predominantly in the areas of learning technology and open education.
A passionate advocate of open education almost all of his work is available under a creative commons license (where he is permitted to do so).
His current research focusses on the development of a conversational framework for e-learning. The purpose of the framework is to humanise the use of technology and to begin to seek to establish the use of technology as a solution to a task or problem rather than a “must have” activity. The “4E Framework” can be attributed to questioning the use of e-learning in the following ways:
• What can technology “enable” us to do?
• How can technology “enhance” what we already do?
• How can technology “enrich” our learning experiences?
• How can technology “empower” learners & teachers?
Simon is an National Teaching Fellow, Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, SEDA accredited in Embedding Learning Technologies and an Apple Distinguished Educator.