Richard Millwood

My overall experience since 1976 relates to designing and developing the best possible use of technology in learning. My early career skills were in teaching mathematics and computer programming.

The central part of my career was in the research and design of learning opportunities from the micro to the macro: making software, visuals, multimedia, television, web sites, module designs, team teaching and an innovative online degree course. I have supervised five PhDs to completion and currently I am supervising six more.

In recent years I have developed skills in strategic analysis, planning and delivery, leadership of a large team of creative educationalists, course direction at Masters level, doctoral supervision and in public speaking.

My future goals include researching Computational Thinking across the lifecourse to find out more about conceptual development in this area. I still care about the invention of new educational organisations, designed from the ground up, to use the best of modern technology to make learning more widely available and to fit people’s lives through work- focussed learning. I am also interested in developing the history of educational computing through my work on the UK National Archive of Educational Computing.

I am also a founder and director of Core Education UK Ltd, a nonprofit team devoted to innovation in learning and technology, across all phases and sectors in education. Recent clients include Macmillan Cancer Support and the British Educational Research Association and earlier with the UK Improvement & Development Agency, UNESCO, the UK Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, BECTa and Apple.

Until October 2017, I was Assistant Professor and Course Director for the MSc in Technology and Learning in the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin. Until summer 2013 I was Reader in Distributed Learning in the Institute for Educational Cybernetics at the University of Bolton, where I developed new degree courses for work- focussed, action-inquiry learning at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. I also worked on the TELMap project to support European efforts to roadmap the future of technology enhanced learning.

From 1990 to 2006 I worked with Stephen Heppell to develop the structure and ethos of Ultralab one of the most successful innovation centres in learning and technology throughout the world managing research & development to build successful large-scale action research projects in education. I supported the creative, ethical and conceptual thinking at Ultralab and supervised PhD students in the field of educational computing. I took over as director from Stephen in 2004 until Ultralab’s closure at the end of 2006.

For ten years before joining Ultralab in 1990, I led software development in the Computers in the Curriculum Project at King’s College London after beginning my career as a school teacher of Mathematics and Computer Studies in London in the late 1970s.