I am hoping to focus on research and publication output over the next few years to establish myself as an early career researcher and give my work an evidence base which I hope will cement my skills further into good practice and establish me as a reputable and valued member of the learning design community and help to extend the field of which there are still gaps in research.

Over the long term I am hoping to help to bridge the gap between professional and academic positions in higher education and to work towards a role where I am able to have a more direct influence over institutional strategic direction and strategic policy related to blended learning and technology enhanced learning. I would like to become a leader and advocate in the space and support institutions and academic/teaching staff continue to improve teaching and learning in ways that are scalable, sustainable and consider both student experience and academic's support needs as part of the approach.

I am interested in testing my research findings from my Masters' thesis and continuing this research through a PhD and other publications, when building future development and support models to see if addressing and breaking down these attitudinal factors first and more tightly integrating pedagogy and technology in strategies leads to more successful professional development outcomes for academic and teaching staff. I am hoping to build opportunities to test these early tentative findings at a practical level in future work and to hopefully build further models and strategic plans based upon this evidence.

My thesis was a small-scale exploratory qualitative study with only seven VET educators interviewed over a teaching semester. The limited sample group also resulted in those interviewed typically being early adopters or staff who were already motivated to use e-Learning. While I believe these insights are still valuable both in exploring an under researched group and topic and in offering practical ideas for me personally, further research is still required to see how transferable these perceptions are to other educators more broadly both in VET and in Higher Education. In particular, as personal motivations and attitudes toward teaching and technology appeared to be enablers for these staff who were already self-directed in their e-Learning adoption, it would be interesting to conversely explore other VET teachers' personal attitudes and motivations, particularly those who have not engaged with e-Learning, to look thematically for comparisons and parallels/contrasts.

In addition to using the findings from my work on a day to day basis, undergoing a long-term research focus has provided me with both a better understanding of the pressure for academic teaching staff who have to juggle teaching and research (further increasing my empathy toward those I work closely with) and provided me with a further love of scholarly practice which I am hoping to continue in order to shape my career trajectory toward research, strategic planning and academic development related work. I am keen to continue to explore further research related to e-Learning integration, particularly in relation to types of professional development and support models that might best support both vocational and higher education teaching staff to implement and maintain blended and online learning. I am particularly interested in looking at both strategies and approaches that might work from a training and communication perspective, but also the ways in which myself and others in support, training and advisory roles can build and foster relationships and communities of practice.