Dr. Martin Compton is the College Lead for AI and Innovation in Education as well as College Lead for Programme, Module and Assessment Design working out of King's Academy which he joined from UCL in June 2023. He has been an educator for over 30 years, working in schools, colleges, universities in the UK and overseas. Much of his early career teaching was focussed on equity-centred, widening participation projects where 'open college' qualifications offered alternative paths to university for adults failed by the conventional UK education system. His doctoral research focussed on unorthodox approaches to lecturer observation and he has long been an advocate for focussing on the developmental potential of feedback by de-centring grades. He co-founded an informal cross-institutional 'Freedom to Learn' group which centres compassionate approaches to pedagogy and his ethos in terms of faculty development is about fostering open and dialogic learning environments.

As an experienced online educator, he found himself especially busy in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, and much of his ongoing work focuses on digital pedagogy and realising the potential of teaching in and across different modalities. At King's he leads on curriculum and assessment design which means that much of his time currently is looking at ways in which the opportunities and threats of generative AI (as well as broader technological changes) will necessitate changes to pedagogy, assessment and feedback practices across higher education. He is a Senior Certified member of the Association for Learning Technology and a Principal Fellow of the HEA.

Recent Publications

• Compton, M. (2025) What a Compassionate Approach to Transforming Practice Taught Me About Driving Institutional Change. In A. Syska, C. Buckley, G. Sedghi and N. Grayson (Eds) Transformative Practice in Higher Education Innovative Approaches to Teaching and Learning
• Compton, M., & Lindner, R. (2025). Liberating learning in the empathetic university. Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, (35). https://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1576
• Compton, M. (2024) AI = Assessment Innovation.Teachers Going Gradeless. https://growbeyondgrades.org/blog/ai-assessment-innovation
• Contributor to Heard-Lauréote, K. (ed) (2024)Navigating the complexities of artifical intelligence in education. QAA. https://www.qaa.ac.uk/docs/qaa/news/quality-compass-navigating-the-complexities-of-the-artificial-intelligence-era-in-higher-education.pdf
• Compton, M. (2023) Everybody’s talking – an approach to growing AI literacy in higher education.WONKHE: https://wonkhe.com/blogs/everybodys-talking-an-approach-to-growing-ai-literacy-in-higher-education/
• Bentley, C., Aicardi, C., Poveda, S C., Magela Cunha, L., Kohan M. D., Glover, R., Rigley, E., Walker, S., Compton, M. & Acar, O. A. A Framework for Responsible AI Education: A Working Paper (August 17, 2023). SSRN. https://ssrn.com/abstract=4544010
• Payne, A. L., Compton, M. & Kennedy, S. (2023). ‘Supporting and humanising behavioural change without the behaviourism: nudges and digital footprints.’Human Data Interaction, Disadvantage and Skills in the Community: Enabling Cross-Sector Environments For Postdigital Inclusion. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-31875-7_7
• Compton, M., Standen, A. & Watson, B. (2023) Realising the affordances of hybrid and online teaching for inclusive and sustainable education. JLDHE (26) https://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/948
• Compton, M. (Jan 2023) Who's afraid of ChatGPT?Teachers Going Gradeless. https://www.teachersgoinggradeless.com/blog/afraid-of-chatgpt
• Compton, M. & Alsford, A. (2022) Prestige, power, practice, and professional development: exploring transnational teachers’ experiences of a UK-based lecturer development course, International Journal for Academic Development, DOI: 1080/1360144X.2022.2119240
• Compton, M. and Gilmour, A. (2022). Walking the tightrope: enabling mindset and practice transformation at scale through compassionate academic development, International Journal for Academic Development https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2022.2066674