This month we’ve been speaking to Richard Chantler, former colleague in TELT (when it was the E-learning Unit), now of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Who am I?
My name is Richard Chantler and I am the Digital Learning Manager for Humanities and Social Sciences.
I began my journey at QMUL as a Joint Honours student, studying Human Geography with Business Management, graduating in 2005 and I have been working at the university ever since. My love of e-learning was sparked when lecture capture was piloted in 2011 and I was responsible for scheduling recordings in my role as a Timetabling Coordinator and was involved in the projects which saw the service growing exponentially. I have since worked as a Learning Technologist and Senior Learning Technologist in the TEL Team and am now enjoying my time in the faculty’s Education Team.
My team
My team consists of 6 Digital Learning Advisers who work alongside our 4 Digital Learning Officers to provide fantastic support to the schools to help achieve our elearning needs and make enhancements in the use of digital technologies, as well as 2 Digital Accessibility Assistants who are working across the faculty to address accessibility issues and make recommendations to help ensure our students receive the most inclusive learning experience.
What I enjoy doing
I thoroughly enjoy finding solutions to problems which are being faced and finding ways to make improvements to processes. There are lots of different tools available to staff, so its all about finding the right one for each scenario and offering advice on the pros/cons of the different options.
Projects I am currently working on
I am currently coordinating a faculty-wide project to make accessibility improvements to learning resources – highlighting best practice, making recommendations for new processes and creating online reading lists to ensure that content is accessible as possible. I’m delighted that this project has just been extended so that we can continue this sizeable piece of work, assisting even more of our academic staff and benefitting a greater number of our students. Alongside this work we have been delivering workshops, creating guidance and working with academic leads to improve digital accessibility awareness and embed new processes.
I am the project exec for LinkedIn Learning, for which we have a university-wide license and access to 17,000+ hours of video content. I have been working with our stakeholders to promote its use, identify opportunities to support staff and students with their learning, bridge workplace and technical skills gaps and increase graduate outcomes. We have recently formed a curators’ network so that staff may share curated content, best practice and find other applications for its use.
We have recently concluded the first instance of our Student Digital Champions initiative, in which students reviewed captions and transcripts for lecture recordings – assessing their accuracy, breadth of use and presenting their student voice on what improvements might be made. We also looked at the student induction process for elearning and our Champions are now continuing their work with the TEL Team to implement the recommendations that were made. We hope to be starting on the second iteration of this initiative shortly, which I am sure will prove to be as interesting and provide excellent insights into how our students use digital technologies and how we might better support them going forward.
Other work includes identifying and implementing best practice for administrative processes to improve the learning environment for students and ensure a consistent level of excellence is provided.
Hobbies / interests
I’m a keen DIYer, with a never ending list of projects around the house to keep me busy. There’s not much I haven’t tried my hand at, whether that be plastering, rendering, tiling or carpentry (with differing results). My last project was installing a chimney breast in the living room. I am also a keen traveller and photographer and love to get away as often as possible.
Fun fact
I am also an avid Arsenal fan and have been a steward at Arsenal Football Club for the past 18 years, with me now looking after a team which has responsibility for the Diamond Club and Directors Box for matchdays and concerts. Its the best view in the house and there’s never a dull moment – with lots of opportunities to meet the players, celebs and other VIPs.
