About Eric Baber

I am an independent education consultant with a range of experience and expertise in the areas of teacher training and development; educational technology; English as a Medium of Instruction/Bilingual Education; ELT Education Reform; and Educational Management.

Professional portfolio and background

My portfolio and background includes:

Director of Professional Learning and Development, Cambridge University Press & Assessment. In this role I oversaw Cambridge ELT's professional learning and development products and services. These included an award-winning list of teacher development publications, online development courses and programmes and a global network of trainers. Development areas included Communicative Language Teaching; Learner Motivation; Teaching the Four Skills; EMI/Bilingual; Using Technology for Teaching and Learning; and more. Service provisions included short, one-time training sessions to long-term teacher development programmes for individual schools, school chains and at state level. Programmes included needs analysis, programme design and delivery, and impact evaluation.
ELT Product Training Director, Cambridge University Press ELT. In my role as ELT Product Training Director I was responsible for the training of our internal sales teams on new products and technology platforms. The role also supported our global teacher trainers, ensuring consistently high quality of training provision to customers in all our markets.
Learning Solutions Support Director, Cambridge University Press ELT. In this role I worked directly with our major blended learning customers to ensure the initial and ongoing successful implementation of our large-scale digital products. I worked with a number of in-house teams to prepare implementation plans for new and existing customers, and to ensure the ongoing product and platform delivery to maintain continued customer satisfaction. complementary organisations
Innovations Director in the New Directions Group of Cambridge University Press. This role included exploring new technologies potentially of interest to CUP; fostering innovation within the organisation; and seeking out and establishing relationships and partnerships with related or complementary organisations
Pre-September 2008: Associate Lecturer for the Open University's courses in Learning in the Connected Economy, Innovations in eLearning and Exploring the English Language
Online tutor on the Institute of Education's course in Online Education and Training
Online tutor for The Consultants-E's courses in Learning How to Use Moodle and Teaching Business English
Key author for the Cambridge University Press Professional English Online website
Designing and running tailor-made seminars, workshops and training courses for institutions in the private and state sectors around the world. For more on the types of training I offer please visit the Training page
Consulting on issues related to the implementation of ICT in educational environments. Clients have included the British Council, Cambridge University Press, and Queen Margaret University College
Online Course Designer for Royal Holloway University of London (2002 - 2006).
Co-founder and Director of NetLearn Languages, an online-only language school which has been teaching around 10 languages live online since 1998. We also held the first ELT-specific online conference, the ELToc, in November 2002. We furthermore e-publish the ELT Newsletter, a website featuring articles by and for teachers of English as a foreign/second language, updated weekly
Giving plenary and other talks at conferences and other events; please see the Talks page for more on this
Author of articles in a range of publications as well as a number of books - see below

My main areas of interest are researching new technologies, assessing them for usability for educational and publishing purposes, developing suitable methodologies and course content and training educationalists in their uses.

Organisational affiliations

Since February 2023: Member Board of Trustees, The Publishing Training Centre. As a member of the Board of Trustees I help the PTC define its future strategy; explore new products, services and business models; and define tactics for growth.

October 2012 - July 2022: Member of the British Council English Language Advisory Group. The English Language Advisory Group advises the English and Examinations leadership team and influences how the British Council’s vision and strategy are developed. The English Language Advisory Group reports to the Executive Board and is a forum for advice and support. Membership of the ELAG is on a voluntary basis and by invitation.
April 2010 - April 2014: President/Vice President of IATEFL, the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language
2006 - 2009: Joint Coordinator of BESIG, the Business English Special Interest Group of IATEFL
Since 2009: Member of the Executive Committee of ELIG, the European Learning Industry Group
Member of TESOL

Publications

50 Ways to Improve your Business English Using the Internet, Summertown Publishing 2007. Also available from Amazon here.

Co-author of the book Teaching English with Information Technology, Keyways Publishing/Modern English Publishing 2005. An extract in Adobe Acrobat format is available here.

Co-author of the chapter “Best Practice and Practical Considerations of Language Instruction via Internet Audio/Videoconferencing” in U. Felix (ed.) Language Learning Online: Towards Best Practice, Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger (2003)

Numerous articles in publications including the BBC English magazine, the EL Gazette, IATEFL Issues, the BESIG Newsletter, the LTSIG newsletter et al.