Alumni profiles
Career opportunities
Graduates from the programme can follow a number of career paths. Some continue to work in their existing posts, but often with enhanced status; some move into teacher education, materials development, publishing, the media, managing self-access facilities, testing and assessment, research; some set up their own businesses. Alternatively, graduates may use the programme as a springboard into further study, eventually leading to a PhD.
Four former students serve to highlight this diversity:
Mobile Learning Manager
When I started the MA DTCE I had just been offered the position of eLearning Consultant with the British Council. This job would have been much harder were it not for the MA. I was responsible for creating and managing online teacher training courses for English language teachers and the reflections, new ideas and access to information that came with the MA helped me develop better and better course materials with a deeper understanding of online pedagogy and learning in general.
Despite the pressure of a full time job and an MA, the balance of reading, critical reflection, learning from peers and tutors and practical assignments was excellent.
The freedom in study paths within the MA framework saw me focusing on mobile learning in my final year culminating in developing a smartphone app for language learners that formed my dissertation. The work for the MA ensured I had growing knowledge in development, design and evaluation of educational technologies and the app, MyWordBook, became a successful and popular app in the Apple iTunes store. Shortly after completing the MA I became Mobile Learning Manager at the British Council in charge of managing and developing a suite of mobile learning content for language learners. Neil Ballantyne
The e-learning designer
I was employed with my Master’s degree at the Arab Open University. It is a non-profit Higher Education Institution established mainly to enable those who missed the chance of attending the University to pursue their higher education through distance learning.
I belong to the faculty of computer studies, while they also have languages and business studies. We offer undergraduate as well as postgraduate studies at the AOU! I’ve planned two modules for this semester. One is “Education and ICT”, the other is “Using Computer Software in Education”. I’m using the best that I have experienced in Manchester to construct stimulating courses.
The schoolteacher
Home country: Cyprus
I am a primary school teacher and ways in which computers should be used in classrooms to benefit primary learners was the topic of my dissertation. By the end of my dissertation, I realised that before delivering mathematics lessons with the use of ICT, the teacher must first dedicate some time to teach directly to children the basic skills required to handle the software. Otherwise, the focus of pupils’ attention becomes the software rather than the mathematics.
I took advantage of the above facts when I completed my studies and started working back in my country. I was assigned to teach computers to 9-12 year old pupils in a whole-day primary school. Due to this, I was given the opportunity to put theory into practice. For instance, before I invited to pupils to compose their own fairytale on the computer, I dedicated few lessons to teach pupils how to insert and edit pictures and callouts in a word document. What is more, prior asking pupils to co-operate and create their school newspaper on the computer, I taught them how to write passages in columns and how to edit text.
The researcher
Home country: Republic of Ireland
I found it a very useful course – I had studied photography as an undergraduate, and subsequently worked in the field of development education – and I found that this course consolidated and built upon many aspects of my previous experience.
I learnt many things about the social and educational aspects of media and technology, as well as about working and learning in groups – and this prompted me to further explore my emerging interests in wikis and collaborative learning environments.
I have developed that learning in a PhD – focusing on Wikiversity, an educational “sister” project of Wikipedia which I’ve helped to set up and develop, and which can be found at http://en.wikiversity.org.. I’ve also had the privilege to teach on various units on the MA:DTCE, bridging my experience as student, researcher and teacher.
