What does Mark Excell teach?

Mark Excell teaches computing and digital technology at further education level, covering web development, programming fundamentals, computational thinking, cyber security, digital safety, big data, software testing and professional skills for the digital industries. He is currently delivering the OCN Level 2 Diploma in Skills for Professions in Digital Industries and Technology at a local college of further education in Oxfordshire.

How does Mark Excell approach inclusive teaching?

Inclusive teaching means ensuring that every student has a genuine opportunity to reach the best possible outcome, regardless of their starting point or the barriers they face. In practice this involves differentiated resources adapted to different learning needs, modified assessment approaches where appropriate, one to one support for students who need it, and a classroom environment where asking questions is encouraged rather than discouraged. Students with SEN and mental health challenges require specialist consideration, and the approach is to understand each student's specific needs and adapt accordingly.

What is curriculum design in further education?

Curriculum design in further education involves developing the full programme of learning for a qualification or course, from the overall scheme of work through to individual lesson plans, learner resources, assessment frameworks and feedback mechanisms. It requires a thorough understanding of the awarding body standards, the needs of the specific learner cohort, and the subject knowledge to translate qualification outcomes into engaging, coherent learning experiences. Where published guidance is insufficient, original curriculum materials must be developed from first principles.

Why does industry experience matter in further education teaching?

Teaching a technical subject well requires understanding it at a level that goes beyond the qualification content. Industry experience provides the real-world context that brings technical concepts alive for students, the practical judgement to know which fundamentals matter most, and the credibility that comes from having worked in the field rather than only studied it. Students in digital industries benefit particularly from teachers who can connect the curriculum to current industry practice rather than teaching to an abstracted specification.

How does Mark Excell use creative approaches in technical teaching?

Technical subjects do not have to be delivered in exclusively technical ways. Visual resources, diagrams, real-world creative industry examples and alternative documentation tools beyond standard office software are used to engage students who respond better to creative approaches. Encouraging students to document their work using tools they find genuinely engaging produces better evidence of their learning and develops a broader set of professional skills alongside the technical curriculum.

Teaching and Curriculum Design

Q: What teaching qualification does Mark Excell hold?

Mark holds a Level 3 Award in Education and Training from City and Guilds, which is the recognised entry-level teaching qualification for further education in England. He is working towards a higher level teaching qualification at Level 4 or Level 5.

Mark Excell is a computing lecturer and curriculum designer based in Witney, Oxfordshire, currently delivering digital technology qualifications at further education level. Teaching is the third discipline on this site alongside SEO and design, not because it is separate from the others but because it draws on the same underlying capability: the ability to understand something deeply enough to explain it clearly, to the right person, at the right level, in a way that actually lands.

Explore my work

Knowing something and teaching it well

There is a meaningful difference between knowing a subject and being able to teach it. Knowing it means you can do it. Teaching it means you can help someone else understand it from where they are, not from where you are. That requires a different kind of attention: patience with the unfamiliar, the ability to find multiple routes to the same understanding, and the willingness to recognise when an explanation is not working and try a different one. Twenty years of explaining technical concepts to non-technical clients was, in retrospect, the best preparation possible for a classroom.

Understanding before delivery

Every unit begins with a genuine attempt to understand what the learner needs to get from it, not just what the specification says it should cover. Qualification outcomes describe what students should be able to demonstrate at the end of a unit. They do not describe how to get there. The gap between the two is where curriculum design happens, and filling it well requires subject knowledge, pedagogical thinking and an honest assessment of where the specific cohort is starting from.

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Industry experience in the classroom

Teaching digital industries subjects from a position of current industry knowledge changes the quality of the conversation in the classroom. Real-world examples from live projects, current tools and genuine professional experience give students a clearer picture of what they are learning towards. The question "when would I actually use this?" has a better answer when the person teaching has used it professionally rather than only encountered it academically. That connection between the curriculum and the real world is one of the most motivating things a teacher in a vocational subject can provide.

Creative approaches to technical subjects

Technical content does not have to be delivered in exclusively technical ways. Visual resources, diagrams and real-world creative industry examples are used to engage students who respond better to visual or creative stimulus. Students are actively encouraged to use documentation tools beyond the standard office software suite, which develops a broader set of professional skills alongside the technical curriculum and produces evidence of learning that reflects the range of tools used in the actual industry. Bringing creative thinking into a technical classroom makes the content more accessible and the outcomes more interesting.

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Teaching that works for everyone

Inclusive teaching is not a separate practice applied to a subset of students. It is the foundation of good teaching for everyone. Every cohort contains students arriving with different starting points, different learning preferences, different challenges and different definitions of what a good outcome looks like for them. The goal is to ensure that every student has a genuine opportunity to reach the best possible outcome, and that no student is disadvantaged by the way the teaching is delivered. In practice that means adapting constantly: to the room, to the individual, to what is working and what is not.

Differentiated resources

Resources are developed at multiple levels where the subject matter and cohort require it. A student who needs additional scaffolding to access the core content gets a resource that provides it. A student who is ready to go further gets material that challenges them. Delivering a single resource to a mixed-ability cohort and expecting uniform outcomes is not teaching. It is distribution. The distinction matters.

Adapted assessment

Assessment methods are adapted where appropriate to ensure that a student's ability to demonstrate their learning is not limited by a barrier that is unrelated to the subject being assessed. A student with dyslexia demonstrating their understanding of computational thinking concepts verbally rather than in writing is demonstrating the same knowledge through a more appropriate channel. The outcome being assessed is the understanding, not the format.

SEN and mental health awareness

Students with special educational needs and mental health challenges require specialist consideration as part of standard teaching practice rather than as an exception to it. Understanding the specific needs of each student, working within any support plans in place, and maintaining a classroom environment where students feel safe to ask for help are all part of the baseline. The goal is a learning environment where the support is present without being conspicuous, and where every student is treated as capable of achieving a meaningful outcome.

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Curriculum design from first principles

Designing a curriculum properly is a substantial piece of professional work. It is not the same as following a scheme of work or delivering pre-packaged lesson content. It requires a thorough understanding of the qualification framework, the awarding body standards, the subject matter itself and the needs of the specific learner cohort. When the published guidance for a qualification unit is insufficient to build a coherent learning programme from, the curriculum designer has to develop the missing material from first principles.

The qualification currently being delivered is the OCN Level 2 Diploma in Skills for Professions in Digital Industries and Technology, an Open College Network qualification covering eleven units across technical, professional and workplace skills for the digital industry. Approximately half of the units in this qualification were published with insufficient guidance to deliver effectively. For those units, original curriculum materials, assessment frameworks, learner resources and marking criteria were developed from scratch, drawing on industry knowledge and pedagogical judgement rather than published documentation.

The qualification covers the following units: Working with Colleagues, Computational Thinking Concepts, Introduction to Big Data, HTML and CSS Basics, Software Testing Principles, Health and Safety in the Workplace, Digital Safety and Security, Cyber Security, Programming Fundamentals, Understanding the Uses of Social Media for Business, Solving Work Related Problems.

The breadth of this qualification is significant. It spans pure technical subjects such as programming and cyber security, applied technical subjects such as HTML and CSS and software testing, and professional skills subjects such as workplace health and safety and collaborative working. Developing coherent curriculum across that range, at a level appropriate for Level 2 learners with varying degrees of prior experience, requires the ability to move between subject areas with genuine confidence in each. The industry background across web development, digital marketing, graphic design and professional client management means that confidence is grounded in real experience rather than research alone.

Qualifications and professional development

Level 3 Award in Education and Training

The Level 3 Award in Education and Training, awarded by City and Guilds, is the recognised entry-level teaching qualification for further education in England. It covers the principles and practice of learning and teaching, planning and delivering inclusive sessions, and assessing learning. It includes an assessed teaching practice component. It is the qualification that enables practitioners with industry expertise to bring that expertise into a formal educational setting, and it is the gateway to higher level teaching qualifications in the further education sector.

Higher level teaching qualification

Working towards a Level 4 or Level 5 teaching qualification as the next stage of professional development in education. The specific qualification has not yet been confirmed but the direction is clear. Continuing to develop as a practitioner in education alongside the technical disciplines is a deliberate choice rather than a default, and the further qualification will reflect that commitment.

This page as a live example

The other discipline pages on this site use the site itself as a live demonstration of technical capability. The SEO page documents its own structured data. The web development page documents its own code architecture. The UX page documents its own design system. This page takes a different approach. The live demonstration here is in the writing itself. A page about teaching should be well taught. It should be clear, progressively structured and written with genuine attention to whether the reader is following, not just whether the content is technically present.

Plain language and clear structure

Every section on this page opens with the core point stated plainly before any qualification or elaboration is added. This is a deliberate pedagogical choice as much as a writing one. In a classroom, leading with the concept before the detail gives students a framework to hang the subsequent information on. On a web page, it gives the reader a reason to keep reading. The structure of this page, from philosophy through to practice, qualification and evidence, follows the same progressive logic as a well-designed lesson: establish the principle, explain the practice, provide the evidence.

Progressive complexity

The page moves from the general to the specific in each section. The teaching philosophy section establishes the overall approach in broad terms. The inclusive teaching section goes a level deeper into specific practices. The curriculum section goes deeper still into the specific qualification and the work done to develop it. A reader who stops at any point has understood something complete. A reader who continues gets progressively more detail. This is how good educational content is structured at every level, and it is not coincidental that it also describes good web content structure for SEO and GEO purposes.

Visual and structural clarity

The heading hierarchy on this page is consistent and logical. H1 for the page title, H2 for major sections, H3 for items within sections. No heading levels are skipped. The section labels in small uppercase above each H2 provide a navigational layer for readers who are scanning rather than reading in full. The FAQ at the bottom of the page answers the questions a reader who has scanned rather than read in full is most likely to have arrived at. Every structural decision is made in service of the reader's experience rather than the appearance of the page.

Teaching work in practice

The following pieces of evidence reflect the range of teaching and curriculum work described on this page.

OCN Level 2 Diploma — curriculum development

Curriculum design

Currently delivering the OCN Level 2 Diploma in Skills for Professions in Digital Industries and Technology at a further education college in Oxfordshire. Approximately half of the eleven units in the qualification required original curriculum materials to be developed from first principles, including lesson plans, learner resources, assessment frameworks and marking criteria. The qualification spans technical subjects including programming, cyber security and web development alongside professional and workplace skills units. Developing coherent, engaging curriculum across that breadth, at the right level for a mixed-ability Level 2 cohort, is the primary piece of curriculum design evidence on this page.

Twenty years of informal mentoring

Mentoring and knowledge transfer

Before the formal teaching role, the same skills were applied informally throughout a twenty-year career in digital. Explaining technical concepts to non-technical clients. Helping junior colleagues understand subjects they found difficult. Breaking down complex processes into steps that someone encountering them for the first time could follow. The formal teaching qualification formalised what was already a consistent practice, and the classroom has confirmed that the skills developed informally transfer directly to a structured educational context.

Common questions about teaching and curriculum design

These questions and answers are present in the structured data on this page. The FAQPage schema in the JSON-LD means AI engines can extract and cite these answers directly.