Tim Williams's Profile

Born West Ham, emigrated to Essex, now living in Suffolk.

For 18 years I taught in the London Borough of Redbridge, Essex and Suffolk. As an ICT Co-ordinator in Suffolk I carried out research into the use of ICT in science. Following this, I worked as an Advisory teacher for Tesco SchoolNet 2000. This was an early research project into the potential of e-learning in schools on a national scale carried out by Ultralab in conjuntion with Oracle, Tesco plc and Intuitive Media.

Following this I worked as a NOF tutor for mPowerNet before joining Ultralab in 2001 as a researcher for the Talking Heads project. This project carried out Action Research into the development of facilitated Online Communities of Practice for school leaders. This became the foundation of the online learning communites for theNational College of School Leadership . During this project I acted as a consultant to develop online communities for the DfES Primary Strategy and Pathfinder schools programmes. In addition I worked with colleagues to develop and facilitate the Online facilitation and tutoring course and presented at regional Fasttrack teacher's conferences.

Since 2003 I have been a researcher for Ultraversity, a fully online degree for people in work. This is a multi faceted action research project, which is developing an online, inquiry based research undergraduate degree. This is exploring e-learning pedagogy through facilitated online learning communities. The research considers the adaptation of teaching and learning for online learners, student support infrastructure and e-assesment.

My particular areas of interest in the research for Ultraversity are the retention of students and the integration of an online degree into Anglia Ruskin's structures. I am the Pathway leader for the BA(Hons) Learning, Technology and Research degree at Ultraversity and I work in liaison with the Faculty of Education to develop analogues of the University procedures for an online degree.

I also worked on the eViva research project which continues to inform the development of e-assessment in Ultraversity. In this project, I worked with a Cambridgeshire secondary school which trialled the eViva software.