Blended and Online Learning

Meet the Blended and Online Learning team.

The Blended and Online Learning team offers learning and instructional design services, consultancy for use of learning technologies, and project management support for course development. It additionally manages a number of platforms to support online degree programmes, short courses for CPD and executive education purposes, and MOOCs.

Irina Niculescu

Head of Blended and Online Learning

As Head of Blended and Online Learning, Irina provides strategic, pedagogical and service leadership to enhance digital learning experiences across UCL. She leads a multidisciplinary team to design and deliver inclusive, high-quality blended and online learning, working in partnership across faculties and professional services.

Irina Niculescu joined UCL in 2023, where she has worked as a Senior Learning Technologist and Head of Digital Education Support. Her work is driven by a commitment to empowering educators, learners and institutions to realise the transformative potential of digital education.

Prior to joining UCL, she held roles at the University of Surrey, including Digital Education Manager, Learning Designer and Learning Technologist, leading institution-wide initiatives, staff development programmes, and contributing to teaching on MA and PGCert courses.

Her interests centre on learning experience design, student–staff partnerships, and the social and human dimensions of digital practice. She is currently exploring approaches to developmental and systems change within higher education.

Oliver Vas

Education Operations Manager

Oliver started working at UCL in 2019 as a Teaching and Learning Administrator and has worked in both the Bartlett School of Architecture and the Department of Economics. Before this he was a student at UCL where he completed his Master’s Degree in Chemistry. As the Course Delivery Manager for the Blended and Online Learning Team, Oliver plans and administers the team’s course development work and is responsible for organising various aspects of the course design cycle.

Vicky Devaney

Senior Learning Technologist

Vicky started working at UCL in 2023 as a Senior Learning Technologist. Before this she worked at the University of London for 15 years in a number of roles, most recently as a Senior Learning Designer where she developed online only degree courses and MOOCs for scale learning.

Vicky is an avid learner and an advocate for online learning, having completed her Masters in Online and Distance Education in 2021 at the Open University. She is now enrolled on an online doctoral programme at Lancaster University in E-Research and Technology Enhanced Learning and hopes to complete her PhD in 2026.

Antonella Veccia

Learning Designer (Blended and Online Learning)

Antonella joined UCL In March 2021. She is a Learning Designer with over 15 years’ experience in the educational, commercial and charity sector. During this time, she has advised a very diverse range of clients in digital learning best practice and supported the development and use of digital technologies to harness learner-centred practices.

Antonella’s academic background is in Politics and Modern Languages; she spent more than a decade as a tutor of Italian in many establishments including Oxford Brookes University, Oxford University Language Centre and the UCL Language Centre (CLIE).

Matt O'Rourke

Learning Designer (Blended and Online Learning)

Matt first became involved with education in the FE sector as an English language lecturer in the mid 1990’s. He then went on to work abroad for 17 years, both in linguistics and in technology enhanced learning. The majority of overseas postings were with the British Council, but Matt also worked for other organisations including the United Nations and also UCL at their Foundation school in Kazakhstan during this time.

For the past few years, Matt has been working nearer to home as an on-line learning consultant for the HE sector. Recent clients have included The University of Oxford and Imperial College.

Matt has a Master’s Degree in Educational Technology and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. He is interested in photography and video making. He also enjoys creating MOOCs and also working with colleagues who are looking to incorporate innovative technology into their teaching.

Dionysis Dimakopoulos

Blended and Online Learning Advisor

Dionysis joined UCL Digital Education in 2021 after more than 10 years of managing face-to-face and blended short courses and with over 20 years teaching experience of IT subjects. He is leading digital education support across online programmes, short courses and modules. He is responsible for UCL's public-facing learning environment UCL Extend, as well as the service operations manager of other services including FutureLearn and the Learning Designer app. He splits his time between the Blended and Online Learning team and the Education Design product team.

He is the creator and main developer of the Learning Designer tool, on which he has been working since 2009 through multiple roles at Birkbeck and Institute of Education, based in the London Knowledge Lab.

Dionysis is a PhD candidate in Computer Science at Birkbeck, University of London, working on improving the way the Learning Designer tool can help teachers create, discover, adopt and adapt designs, in order to help them deliver outstanding learning experiences to their students.

Tim Otway

Blended and Online Learning Content Developer

Tim joined UCL in June 2022 with seven years of experience in the education sector. He previously worked at Pearson Education, where he created and edited print and digital content on market-leading ESL (English as a Second Language) titles. Before this, he was based in Madrid where he worked as an ESL teacher and teacher trainer, as well as Content Lead for a digital B2B magazine. Tim obtained a BA in History from the University of Warwick and has a keen interest in applied linguistics and communication within teaching.