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Paul Bacsich
In addition to the skills cited under Matic Media Ltd, Paul Bacsich worked for 25 years at the UK Open University ending up as Assistant Director in the Knowledge Media Institute (KMI). During this phase he was Project Director of the JANUS satellite e-learning project under the DELTA programme of Framework 3. He then set up the virtual campus Programme at Sheffield Hallam University in 1997-99, including a large educational and technical research programme, and moved to be Director of Special Projects for the UK e-University (UKeU) in 2003-04.
For six months in 2007 he was he was part-time Advisor to the Rector of the Arab Open University (with branches in 6 countries across the Middle East), focussing on updating its learning and teaching strategy including all e-learning aspects during its revalidation/reaccreditation process.
Since 2005 he has been mainly working on benchmarking e-learning, change management and quality issues - under such National initiatives as the Pathfinder Programme, and Gwella in Wales, both run by the Higher Education Academy.
Since 2007 he has also been a Senior Consultant at Sero Consulting Ltd, focussing on contracts for JISC, Becta and the Open University, but now an increasing amount of EU work
VISCED
Paul Bacsich was Project Manager of VISCED.
POERUP
Paul Bacsich was Project Manager of POERUP
Biography from Mendeley (last updated 24 March 2012)
Paul Bacsich became a full-time consultant in April 2004. In his earlier career he was at the Open University for 24 years, finally as co-founder and Assistant Director of the Knowledge Media Institute. In 1996 he left to take up a professorship in the School of Computing and Management Sciences of Sheffield Hallam University. He set up and ran for three years the Virtual Campus Programme, and the Telematics in Education Research Group (TERG) from which bid for and won many contracts in the general area of e-learning from JISC (costing and change management), Becta, DfES and Sun Microsystems. In 2005 he became a consultant to the HE Academy, first through the three phases of the benchmarking e-learning Programme, then for Pathfinder Phase 1 and more recently for the Gwella benchmarking and enhancement project in Wales, with recent responsibility for Glamorgan and Aberystwyth Universities. He has personally benchmarked over 20 universities and his team have benchmarked over 40. Benchmarking is now one of the core activities of Matic Media Ltd.
In August 2007 he took up a part-time Senior Consultant role with Sero Consulting Ltd, working on a range of research and development contracts mostly for Becta (CAPITAL project and others) but also with involvement in JISC (Libraries 2.0 and costs), Becta and DCELLs (Wales). More recently he created, bid for, won and now leads the EU project VISCED (Virtual Schools and Colleges) which started in January 2011 and (with Bieke Schreurs) created, bid for, won and now leads the EU project POERUP which started in November 2011.
He is currently working on a range of topics including benchmarking, quality, retention, cost-benefits, time, OER, 21st century skills, competences and other topics relevant to the new ICT-enabled broad-spectrum providers of education in the future.