Professor Tom Crick MBE of Swansea University.

 

“Emergency remote teaching”, digital disruption and a new (ab)normal:reflections on the impacts of Covid-19 on UK universities

 

Biography

Tom is Professor of Digital Education & Policy at Swansea University, with his role split between the School of Education (Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences) and the £32m Computational Foundry (Faculty of Science & Engineering). Whilst his disciplinary background is in computer science, he has been heavily involved in digital policy in Wales and the UK over the past ten years, especially education, skills and national curriculum reform. Tom chaired the Welsh Government’s review of the ICT curriculum in 2013; he chaired the development of a bilingual Digital Competence Framework for all learners aged 3-16 in 2016; and has recently led the development of the Science & Technology area in the new Curriculum for Wales, published in January 2020. Tom was also inaugural chair of the National Network for Excellence in Science & Technology (2017-2019), a £4m strategic investment by the Welsh Government to support the research capacity-building and professional development of practitioners in this key area of the new Curriculum for Wales. Over the past year, he has been involved in a range of COVID-related research and policy activities to better understand the impact on education, including leading a major Welsh Government-funded learner voice project on the future of national assessments.

Alongside his academic roles, Tom is a Commissioner of the National Infrastructure Commission for Wales (2018-present) and a non-executive director of Swansea Bay University Health Board (2017-present), having previously been Vice-President of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT (2017-2020) and a member of the expert panel of the Welsh Government’s Review of Digital Innovation and the Future of Work (2019). Tom was appointed MBE in the 2017 Queen’s Birthday Honours for “services to computer science and the promotion of computer science education”; in 2020, he was made a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, the national academy for science and the arts; and was awarded the 2020 BERA Public Engagement and Impact Award for “Leading the Future of Science and Technology Education in Wales”.

More info: https://proftomcrick.com and @ProfTomCrick