Ken Allen's Profile

I have been working at Ultralab for over five years as a researcher particularly using an action research methodology. The first three years were on the Talking Heads project. This involved facilitating the head teacher communities in Think.com and later in Talk 2 Learn. In addition to working with the head teachers there was substantial online work designing the community spaces and designing an online facilitation course for the National College for School Leadership. Essentially this work was an action research consisting of a number of iterations involving online community and the construction of knowledge by community members. I recently had a paper published based on work done in this project in the Innovations in Education and Teaching International Journal. This article looked at a theoretical framework for online community and how key features of this were practiced within the online communities.

For the last two and a half years I have been working on the Ultraversity project. This again is an action research looking at a completely online research based degree for undergraduates. Last year, with Stephen Powell, we took the first of our undergraduate researchers through the final year of their research based degree. This year, together with other colleagues, I am working with 150 undergraduates on the third and final year of their degree course which will give them a BA (Hons) Learning, Technology and Research. Being in the first cohort of the degree we have been, innovating the actions for the first cycle of the research, evaluating the outcomes of this and passing on our experience and lessons learnt to later cohorts. I am currently completing a paper for publication in a peer reviewed journal examining the effects upon students self worth as a result of doing the online degree.

Prior to working at Ultralab I was a teacher in inner city Liverpool for thirteen years and a head teacher for twelve. As a head teacher within my school I initiated and led two related pieces of action research on the amalgamation of two very different inner city schools and ways of improving standards within the inner city.

I have a keen interest in music both playing the keyboard individually and with others.

As a Christian I am heavily involved in my church which currently numbers over eight hundred and is growing rapidly in central Liverpool. I am currently examining the possibility of combining both my interests in researching learning with issues of faith.