The Beyond Distance team was named as national joint winner of the ALT Learning Technologist of the Year: Team Award 2009 at the conference's gala dinner.

The aim of the ALT Award is to celebrate and reward excellent practice and outstanding achievement in the learning technology field.

The judges commented:  “In the four years since its inception, Beyond Distance has made remarkable progress, and has become established as one of the UK’s leading learning technology research and development teams, with an impressive range of outputs, and a remarkably high degree of team cohesion.

“Beyond Distance has succeeded in supporting and decisively influencing the University of Leicester’s successful and growing use of learning technology in its own core provision. At the same time BDRA has remained outward-looking in its work.

“The panel was particularly impressed at the emphasis Beyond Distance puts on collecting and interpreting learner feedback in its research and development projects, at its focus on ’low cost/high value‘ interventions, and at the team’s commitment to working collaboratively with external partners.”

Professor Gilly Salmon, Director of Beyond Distance said: "We are extremely pleased to have been recognised by the ALT-C Award for Learning Technology Team of the Year. The achievements of Beyond Distance are twofold: first, in high-quality research undertaken and successfully disseminated; second, in contributing to the University’s strategic vision and positioning in e-learning and distance learning. The credo of the department is ‘innovation to mainstream, research to practice’ and the research at Beyond Distance is evidence led rather than target driven. Beyond Distance, as a ‘research alliance’, is oriented towards sharing research outputs and best practice internally across both the HE and FE sectors."