Ann works nationally with various organisations and sector leaders to support the education sector to transform their online learning practices and in reimagining models of law degrees fit for the digital age. Cited by the House of Lords, and in recognition for her strategic leadership in online learning with impact across the sector, Ann has been awarded National Teaching Fellow and Principal Fellowship of Advance HE. Ann is co-author of Digital Lawyering, the world’s first textbook in this field, and is co-author and co-editor of Teaching law: Future readiness and digital empowerment of law students. Ann has co-led the development of the Digital Learning Design Framework and Toolkit (supported by Jisc and published by EDUCAUSE), a freely available resource for use across the education sector, which has had global reach for learning design.
Ann’s work is a catalyst to commence Teesside University’s Education 4.0 ambitions and setting the sector standard for driving excellence in online course design and delivery through her work nationally, which has shaped practices on technology and learning, working at the intersection of strategy, design, learning and technology in higher education. Before joining Teesside University, Ann’s published work on academic perceptions of technology-enhanced learning significantly influenced the work of Teesside University in shaping an ambitious digital transformation programme which has delivered radical changes in the student experience.
Ann is very passionate to build on the affordances of legal education as an anchor discipline. She is founder and host of ‘Digital Lawyering’, an international initiative consisting of a global interdisciplinary audience to shape the direction of legal education for the digital age. In a quest to digitally transform legal education, particularly in today's rapidly changing legal landscape, where becoming a digital lawyer is vital to success within the legal profession, Ann is co-authoring the first ever textbook commissioned to prepare undergraduate and postgraduate students across the world on the concept of ‘digital lawyering’. Drawing on her experience as an educator, academic leader and researcher within the fields of online learning and legal education, Ann is most passionate about approaches to learning and teaching which embed high-impact, realistic and interdisciplinary experiential learning, particularly in reimagining this in online learning environments, as well as the infusion of digital literacies within curriculum so that students are equipped in creative ways to become future-ready for careers and professions that are evolving due to the impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.