Paul Bacsich, MA, PhD, consults for a number of university, school, government, international (e.g. EU and UNESCO), commercial and venture clients in many aspects of online learning (e-learning) including VLE/LMS selection, market/competitor/pricing research, change management, business models, strategy development and funding/policy issues.
In 2018-19 he led the team which developed the innovative online course Teaching Teachers to Teach Online (TTTOL) for Wey Education plc. He also works on accreditation, quality, retention, cost-benefits, time, open resources, 21st century skills, competences etc relevant to “multiversities” and in particular “dual system” providers (HE/FE or FE/schools).He has led many EU projects and studies including VISCED, POERUP, SharedOER and ADOERUP and participated in many more.
His international work in recent years has covered Ireland, Sweden and France, as well as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Brazil, Thailand, Japan and Hong Kong. (He has also visited many other countries for inward missions and conference presentations.) In 2012 he was Visiting Canterbury Fellow in New Zealand. In August 2013 he co-led a workshop in Brazil for the leaders of private providers of HE. In 2014 he carried out global market research in e-learning for a Canadian university.
In 2015-16 he led the external review of e-learning at Uppsala University in Sweden, and advised the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education in Ireland on infrastructure issues for universities.
In 2018-2019 he made visits to several countries of the Commonwealth Caribbean under the auspices of the University of West Indies.
After graduating from the University of Cambridge, he did his PhD work at UCLA and the University of Bristol, then was a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford/Wolfson College before joining the Open University for 25 years and helping to found the Knowledge Media Institute. He then became Professor at Sheffield Hallam University (where he set up one of the first Virtual Campuses) and then a Director at the UK e-University before taking up full-time consultancy in 2003.
His current academic links are as Professor of Practice at the University of West Indies Open Campus and Visiting Professor of Online Learning at the University of Derby. He also has been Visiting Canterbury Fellow at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, Visiting Professor at the Global Campus of Middlesex University and a Visiting Fellow at both Deakin University Australia and the National Institute for Multimedia Education in Japan (now the Open University of Japan).In recent years, since his period as a consultant for an international venture capital firm he takes a close interest in start-ups targeting the education and training space
He finds the time still to carry on some research activity, including his newer interest of benchmarking and his long-standing interests in costing and in e-universities and virtual universities. Some of his consultancy work, including his editorial role on the UKeU Reports also leads to research outputs.
Paul is Visiting Professor at the School of Computing Science (now the School of Engineering and Information Sciences), Middlesex University. He is also an advisor to the Beyond Distance Research Alliance at the University of Leicester, and to several other universities in England and Wales. More recently he has become an advisor on e-learning strategy to the University of Gotland in Sweden.
He has been External Examiner at the University of Oxford for a range of computing courses including those delivered over the Internet. He formerly held similar roles at Middlesex University, the UK Open University and the Arab Open University.
He was on the Commissioning Panel for the ESRC Technology Enhanced Learning Programme (TeL), being run in conjunction with EPSRC and managed as a part of ESRC’s Teaching and Learning Research Programme – and has acted as advisor and evaluator for the European Commission on several of their programmes.
Pro Bono Roles
Paul is a Permanent Member of the Steering Committee of Online Educa Berlin, held each year in December in Berlin.
For six years he was a Trustee of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT), being also Treasurer and Chair of the Publications Committee during parts of that period.
He was a member of the JISC Committee on Networking (JCN) for the maximum period of ten years.