I studied Industrial Design at Brunel University, graduating in 1995. For one of my placements I worked as a Designer In School, which kickstarted my interest in education
For my final year project I developed a multimedia kiosk based on the Science Museum’s Space Gallery and started to develop educational websites for the early world wide web.
In 1995 I started at the University of Hertfordshire on a one year research contract working for the IDER group in their Manufacturing Systems department, developing Design Builder, a CD-ROM using AI techniques to create virtual experts to guide a student through the design to manufacture process of a winch. The system was sold to over 100 Universities and Colleges worldwide.
We subsequently developed Blueprint, a simplified version of Design Builder aimed at secondary schools and required children to design a racing car and race it against their classmates.
In 1998 I moved to the Learning Technology Development Unit, a specialist unit tasked with developing educational software to support learning and teaching.
Initially much of our work was focused on specialist projects ranging from drug simulations to online learning environments to support Masters courses in Law.
Since 2001, my focus has been the managing the development and support of the , support in-house Managed Learning Environment, StudyNet. This system, featuring individual customisable portals and course websites for every university course, has been developed using Lotus Domino and is available using any web browser.