A taste of things to come

Peter Scott is a man on a mission – to use data and technology to transform students’ learning experiences and to change their lives.

It sounds like a big ask, but for the Professor and knowledge media researcher, it’s really all in a day’s work. As the new Assistant Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education), Scott works with staff and students to deploy innovative learning solutions to create and sustain positive change in the university’s learning and work spaces.

“Technology is a critical part of the learning mix for the 21st century university,” he says. “But it is only one part of that mix. I want to see a new vision of how we fit people, places and learning designs together with technology into UTS life.

“UTS is living its mission. Our new campus and our Learning.Futures strategies bring together online learning and the ‘place’ of Sydney into a perfect learning locus. That is a vision I want to help deliver.” 

Scott arrived in Australia from the UK with his family in July. He didn’t bat an eyelid at this jump, however, as he was born into a family of roving British civil servants and grew up hopping from country to country.

“Over the years, I’ve learned to speak with a plausible English accent, but I have never been ‘English’.

“My family are all Scots. I was born on a tour of Singapore and grew up in shorts and thongs in Hong Kong. For me the cosmopolitan mix of Sydney is what the world should be.” 

Back in the UK, Scott studied Honours Psychology at the University of Warwick, followed by a PhD in Cognitive Science from the University of Sheffield.  

“My undergraduate enthusiasm for cognitive psychology grew into a postgraduate enthusiasm for cognitive science – and computer models of the mind. My early research on intelligent tutoring led me to believe that before we could use the computer to ‘replicate’ the human mind, we must first use it to ‘augment’ what the human mind could do.”  

After a stint teaching psychology at the University of Sheffield, he spent nearly 20 years at the Open University (OU) – the UK’s leading distance learning university, which has more than 200 000 students.  

As the Director of the Knowledge Media Institute at the OU, Scott was at the forefront of research and development in disciplines that intersect to improve learning with technology.

He was also OU’s lead on its launch in iTunes U, he worked on the release of interactive research and teaching iBooks, established a university podcast infrastructure, and created an online student service for large-scale, live interaction in science.

“The OU has shown the world how to do learning in virtual spaces brilliantly, with over 70 million international downloads of innovative learning resources from its iTunes U channel alone,” he says.

His first project at UTS is to deliver a review and new vision for postgraduate learning.

“Our postgraduate students are amongst the strongest cards in our deck. We do postgraduate well, but I want to find out how we can do it better. There are new ways to help students achieve the best possible mix of the digital and physical.”

For Scott, his move to Sydney has also brought another unexpected delight. 

“I expected the food, the wine, and the people to be brilliant here. However, what I did not expect was to find Sydneysiders to be as passionate as I am about coffee. Perfection!”