Government Technology

Learning technology is the broad range of communication, information and related technologies that can be used to support teaching, learning and assessment.  A large and growing number of people in industry and in private and public sector education have learning technology as a core part of their role.  Our mission is to ensure that use of learning technology is informed by research and practice, and is grounded in an understanding of the underlying technologies and their capabilities.

Aims
Formed as a Registered Charity in 1993, ALT aims to: 

• represent and support our members, and provide services for them;

• facilitate collaboration between practitioners, researchers, and policy makers;

• spread good practice in the use of learning technology;

• raise the profile of research in learning technology;

• support the professionalisation of learning technologists;

• contribute to the development of policy.

Membership
We have over 500 individual members, and well over 200 organisational members including over 50 corporate/sponsoring members. Our sponsors include: the DCSF, DIUS, JISC, Becta, Epic Group plc, HEFCE, the Higher Education Academy, LSC, Quality Improvement Agency, Learning and Skills Network, Desire2Learn, John Wiley and Sons, Adobe, Blackboard, and the Scottish Funding Councils.

Activities
We organise events, such as ALT-C, the UK's main conference for learning technologists – our 2008 conference will be between 9 and 11 September in Leeds. Keynote speakers will include: David Cavallo, Chief Learning Architect for One Laptop per Child; Hans Rosling, Professor of International Health, Karolinska Institute, Sweden; and Dr Itiel Dror, Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Southampton.  See http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2008/ .

We run CMALT, our peer-based Certified Membership Scheme, through which we accredit individual members as learning technologists. Achieving CMALT enables members to prove their personal commitment to their professional development as a learning technologist and increase their value in the labour market. See http://www.alt.ac.uk/cmalt/ .

We produce regular and influential responses to consultations relating to learning technology and e-learning – most of these we publish at http://www.alt.ac.uk/documents.html.

We publish: 

• a fortnightly members' email digest;

• ALT-J, an international peer-reviewed journal devoted to research and good practice in the use of learning technologies;

• a quarterly printed Newsletter, ALT-N, available online at http://newsletter.alt.ac.uk;

• publications aimed at practitioners, sometimes produced with other organisations.