Biography

Professor Paul Bacsich is CEO of Dualversity, an e-learning consultancy and training company. He is also Founding Director of Matic Media Ltd (a consultancy company active in e-learning systems and methodologies). For recent activities see his blog/website bacsich.org

His current and recent consultancies focus on quality/benchmarking schemes for online learning, online training of online teachers (TTTOL), cost-benefits of online learning and specification and procurement of online examination systems. This last activity continues over 20 years work in benchmarking LMS. His current work is on the impact of AI (LLMs in particular) on assessment practice and reconstructing assessments to be appropriate for the age of AI.

He has consulted for many UK universities, government departments and agencies; for clients in US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and Sweden; and for many international agencies including UNESCO, OECD, European Commission, and European Parliament. His most recent non-UK consultancy activities have been focused onIreland in 2025 and on the Middle East over 2021-24.

During 2018-21 he was Professor of Practice at the University of the West Indies Open Campus, where in summer 2021 he led the Summer MOOCs program which provided in Canvas five open access courses on online course design, online course teaching, cybersecurity, business planning and leading virtual teams. He has also been Visiting Professor at the University of Derby and Middlesex University and Visiting Research Fellow at University of Canterbury New Zealand, the National Institute of Multimedia Education in Japan (now part of Open University of Japan), the School of the Future in Brazil and Deakin University in Australia.

For many years he was Senior Consultant at SeroHE, where he worked on many projects for JISC and HE Academy, and bid, won and led several large EU-funded projects and studies on virtual K-12 schools and on OER. He also carried out many smaller EU studies.

From 2003-04 Paul was Director of Special Projects at UK eUniversities Worldwide Limited (UKeU). Among his activities there was competitor analysis of e-universities and virtual learning environments and helping to set up the TELCERT project founding a European IMS conformance testing centre.

Prior to that he was for seven years Professor of Telematics, Head of the Networks & Multimedia Group and Head of the Telematics in Education Research Group (TERG) at Sheffield Hallam University. While there he taught modules on the Networked Information Engineering online Masters, including the final residential module where small groups of students created and pitched business plans for internet start-ups to an expert panel

He started his academic career at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, then moved to the UK Open University where over 24 years he held a variety of academic, managerial and research posts including Assistant Director of the Knowledge Media Institute (KMI).