Matt's Senior CMALT Portfolio – Association for Learning Technology CMALT

Matt Lingard’s portfolio for the Association for Learning Technology’s certified membership, Senior CMALT.

Contextual statement

Photo of Matt Lingard. A bald man, half-smiling, wearing spotted shirt. — Matt Lingard

I’ve been working in digital roles in higher education in London since 1999.

Prior to working in universities I was an English teacher in Japan, which was when I first owned a computer and discovered the internet. When I returned to the UK, roles combining computers and education followed, although for the first few years I was completely unaware of ‘learning technology’.

My current role

Since January 2023 I have been Head of Digital Education and Library Services at The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. The Tavistock and Portman is a small HE provider offering postgraduate qualifications and CPD in mental health, social care and management and leadership.

I lead two teams, each with operational managers, the Digital Education Services team and the Library Services team. The teams are managed separately but collaborate frequently, particularly in relation to artificial intelligence, digital skills development and the administration and integration of platforms & services.

One of my first tasks at The Tavistock and Portman was to produce its first digital education strategy. This has framed and prioritised our work over the last two years and continues to do so. The strategy goes beyond the work of the Digital Education Services team. Currently the three strands of the strategy are:

Developing staff and student digital fluency
An inclusive digital learning environment
A learning design framework

Senior roles in learning technology

Prior to the Tavistock and Portman I worked for 11 years in senior roles at City University, London (now City St Georges, University of London), the University of West London (UWL) and, most recently, the London College of Communication (LCC), part of the University of the Arts London (UAL).

At UWL and LCC, I was the first post-holder of newly created leadership roles, and introduced a strategic approach to digital education, which included developing the learning technology teams.

The roles were quite different though due to the nature of the institutions and the context. At UWL I was at the heart of a smaller centralised institution and was the ‘business owner’ for the digital education platforms. Whereas LCC is just one of six colleges within UAL with a central IT Services and university-wide digital education staff too. My role focused on developing the college’s approach while initiating, influencing and collaborating on university policies and activities.

Working as a learning technologist

I worked a learning technologist at three universities: London Business School (LBS), London Metropolitan University (London Met) and the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE). At LBS I was a learning technologist without realising it, or even knowing that ‘learning technology’ was a thing. I was employed as a general IT Trainer but got involved in supporting faculty to teach online. This led to dedicated learning technology roles at London Met and LSE spanning 10-years with a focus on staff development and support, as well as project management. It was while I was working at London Met that I discovered the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) and I attended my first ALT Conference in 2002.

Involvement in ALT and the wider community

I have been an individual member of ALT since 2009 when I joined ALT’s Publications Committee. In 2011 I was elected to the Board of Trustees. This was a huge honour and extremely daunting at the same time. I felt somewhat inexperienced alongside the likes of Gilly Salmon & Diana Laurillard! In my role as Trustee, I became the Chair of the Publications Committee and the Chair of the Editorial Board for ALT’s journal, Research in Learning Technology. In 2021 I co-chaired ALT’s Annual Conference which was held online due to pandemic restrictions.

In addition to my work with ALT I have founded two community groups. In 2017 I set-up the UK Poll Everywhere User Group which ran 3 national events and in 2021 I initiated the Anti-racism Learning Technology Group which later became an ALT Special Interest Group. I was also a member of the Steering Groups for the Heads of eLearning (HeLF) while working at UWL.

Why CMALT? Why now?

I am very late to CMALT given the stage of my career and my prior involvement with ALT. I don’t have a good excuse for this as I have generally been engaged in my own professional development! For example, I have Senior Fellowship of Advance HE.

This year I signed up The Tavistock and Portman to the Bloomsbury Learning Environment (community) and a key driver for that was to enable the whole Digital Education Services team and other Tavistock colleagues to join the BLE cohort and work towards CMALT together.