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A personal history: 26. How to be an independent consultant in online and digital learning

September 24, 2024

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The Canadian Corporate Tax System is one of the main challenges of being an independent consultant

I am writing an autobiography, mainly for my family, but it does cover some key moments in the development of open and online learning. I thought I would share these as there seems to be a growing interest in the history of educational technology.

Note that these posts are NOT meant to be deeply researched historical accounts, but how I saw and encountered developments in my personal life. If you were around at the time of these developments and would like to offer comments or a different view, please use the comment box at the end of each post. (There is already a conversation track on my LinkedIn site and on X). A full list of the posts to date will be found toward the end of this post.

Becoming an independent consultant

Because the Canadian tax system is so much more complex and different from that of the UK, I had always paid an accountant to help with my personal tax returns. By 2001, I had starting doing so much consultancy work, mainly on behalf of UBC, but occasionally independently, that my accountant suggested that I should set up a separate business account for independent extra-curricular consultancy work, so that there was a clear separation from UBC and private work, and no conflict of interest.

I discussed this with the senior administration at UBC and they directed me to one of the university’s lawyers, who helped me craft two ‘template’ contracts for external clients, one for a contract to be done through UBC, and one for me as a private contractor. The lawyer also gave me clear guidelines on avoiding conflicts of interest with the university.

The university was quite generous. As long as the client directly asked me (and not the university) to do the work, and as long as the work would not involve anyone else at the university, and would cost the university nothing, I was free to take the contract. In most cases, because of my work load, I was often more than happy for UBC to be the consultant, with the money except expenses going directly into the Distance Education and Technology unit. This meant I could get help from my administrator with travel arrangements, invoicing and accounting of the projects, and sometimes get others in the unit to do the actual work.

Occasionally, though, a client would ask specifically for me to do the work. In that case it would have to be either taken as vacation or from my sabbatical allowance, and I would have to get permission from the AVP Continuing Studies to do it as a private contract. Also, I was allowed to accept payment of a fee and expenses for speaking at academic conferences or running short workshops, and from 2001 onward I paid these through Tony Bates Associates, as far as possible.

Conditions for success

No conflict of interest

Up to 2003, this separation between myself and the university worked well. Apart from conference keynotes and workshops, most of the contracts were with the university, but any other extra-curricular work was managed through my business account. However, at the beginning of 2003, I was asked to retire from UBC at the end of the year. I had no intention to stop work though so I started letting my many contacts throughout Canada and worldwide know that I was open to private consulting.The offers poured in, for a number of reasons.

Demand (right place, right time, right topic)

Online learning was a ‘hot’ topic in 2003. There had been a dot-com boom and bust in 2001. Many universities had jumped into online learning and had been badly burned, but nevertheless, online learning was catching on, especially in campus-based universities and colleges, and institutions who had done little distance education needed help in planning and managing online learning or e-learning, as it was then called. At that time, there were almost no commercial online program management companies (OPMs), who did not emerge until around 2010.

Experience and name recognition

I had published five books in the previous eight years:

1995: Technology, Open Learning and Distance Education London/New York: Routledge (winner of the UCEA Charles A. Wedemeyer award for the best book on distance education in 1995; also published in Korean (1997), by the Korean National Open University Press; and published in Spanish (1999) by Trillas, Mexico

2000: Managing Technological Change: Strategies for College and University Leaders San Francisco: Jossey Bass; published in Spanish (2001) by Gedisa, Spain

2001: (ed.) (with Epper, R.) Teaching Faculty How to Use Technology: Best Practices from Leading Institutions Westport, CT: American Council on Education: Oryx

2002: National Strategies for E-Learning Paris: International Institute for Educational Planning

2003: (with Poole, G.) Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success San Francisco: Jossey-Bass

Also, in the two years 2022 and 2023, I gave a total of 27 keynotes in 13 different countries, so I was pretty well known within the online and distance education communities.

Personal networks

In 2002, I was invited to participate in a workshop at the Universidad de Guadalajara, the second largest state university in Mexico. They had also hired two other consultants, Paco Rubio, a Vice-Rector at the Open University of Catalonia in Spain, and Atsusi Hirumi, a professor of instructional design and technology at the University of Central Florida. At this workshop I also met for the first time Patricia Rosas and Bibiana Urrea, who were specialists in online learning at the Universidad de Guadalajara. These four became over the years great friends and colleagues, and directed a lot of consultancy work in my direction.

The notification in January 2003 that UBC would no longer be needing my services opened up a lot of opportunities. In particular, at the Guadalajara workshop, Pacio Rubio had already invited me to become a part-time visiting professor and advisor on online learning at the Open University of Catalonia.

From 2003, I was able to spend roughly three months a year in residence in Barcelona. Also, I was approached in 2003 by the Croatian Academic and Research Network (CARNET) to assist in the establishment of a faculty training program in e-learning for Croatian universities, which resulted in several visits to Croatia, sometimes with Jeff Miller and other colleagues from UBC.

I also got short contracts in 2003 from UNESCO, the World Bank, OECD and the Commonwealth of Learning for workshops in their headquarters in Paris, Washington D.C. and Vancouver.

In 2004, as a result of a recommendation from my UBC colleague, Mark Bullen, I received a major contract from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology in Calgary to develop a strategic plan for e-learning.

In 2004 I was also invited by Volkswagen in Germany to be a member of their Scientific Board for its AutoUni, an in-house training system for their workers.

I was also hired by ETH, a major technological university in Switzerland, to be on their team evaluating their World Program.

And finally, through and with my good friend Jean Watters, I spent some time between 2004 up until 2010 advising Faculté St-Jean, the University of Alberta’s francophone program, on its online and distance education activities.

So there was no shortage of work for me when I left UBC and this continued for another 20 years until 2023, when I decided to stop all consultancy work.

Advice on being an independent consultant

(Note: this applies only to Canada. Other jurisdictions will have different requirements).

Hire a good accountant and track very carefully your revenues and expenses. If you earn more than $10,000 a year from the business, it makes sense to register as a corporation. Your accountant will advise you on whether to incorporate or not. (Incorporation is simple – you register with the province. Your accountant will tell you how). The Canadian Government though does not make it easy to run a small private business. I have no objection to paying taxes on my consultancy earnings, but the corporate tax system is not simple or straightforward, particularly in terms of what you can charge as expenses. If you have a client in Canada, you will need to charge HST/GST, and this will vary, depending on which province your client is located. You are responsible for collecting HST/GST then sending it to the CRA. If you pay yourself (as an individual) dividends/profit from the corporate account you will be required to pay personal income tax on a portion of this, although some dividends are tax free due to the corporate tax paid. (After 20 years, I still don’t fully understand this aspect of corporate tax law.)
Beware of conflict of interest. This is an ever-present challenge to a private consultant. First, the CRA is very suspicious of full-time academics setting up a private business, especially for lecture fees (they see it as part of your personal income). It is best to wait until you have left your employer before incorporating a consultancy business. The CRA will tax you as an individual if they believe you are working for only one client, even if you have left your university or college, so be careful. Again, this is why you need a good accountant. Apart from avoiding working as a consultant when still employed by a university or college, you need to treat what you learn from your client as strictly confidential. You should not for instance, tell one client what are the strategies or actions of another client, at least without written permission. This can cause problems if you wish to publish the results, in, for instance, an academic article.
In most cases other than lectures or workshops, get a contract signed by the client. (If you want to publish eventually the results of your work, put this in the contract). Get a good corporate lawyer to draft a boilerplate contract, so you are not liable for damages, for instance. Some clients will want you to have insurance against accidents to you or others on their work sites. This can be expensive and unnecessary, especially if you are working off site most of the time. Sometimes the client will require you to sign their contract template. Read it carefully and if in any doubt, consult your lawyer first. Make sure not only the amount but the method of payment is clear, separating fee from expenses (unless you are happy to be paid cash in local currencies – not advisable, been there done that).
Don’t scrimp on the costs of accountancy or legal advice, so be sure you can earn enough as a consultant to carry these and other overheads.
If you accept a contract, see it through, but don’t be afraid to say no in the first place. This could be for a number of reasons (each of these has applied to me at some time):

it would be too dangerous because of lawlessness or political uncertainty (I’ve worked in China, Iran and Afghanistan in the past, but I would hesitate now); if you are going somewhere that is not safe, be sure your hosts can look after you and keep you safe;
you are already over-committed; don’t take on too much
you are not qualified or interested in the specific job you are being asked to do,
you could not possibly work with or trust the individual who wants to hire you or you are unhappy about the ethics/reputation of the client organisation;
your partner is fed up with your being away all the time (if so, try to take them with you, especially if it is somewhere nice or interesting,) but otherwise don’t argue, it’s not worth it. Take some time off.

What about working in countries where you are strongly opposed to the current regime for ethical, diversity or social reasons? This is a tough one, but without education they are not going to change. I believe that online learning when done well is a strong tool for social change and usually I found myself working with people who did want their countries to change, and were able to influence others in their country, but if you’re not comfortable, just say no. That too sends a message.

I am sure there are other pitfalls -I’d like to hear from other consultants on this. (Please use the comment box at the VERY BOTTOM of this web page)

In conclusion

However, overall, I thoroughly enjoyed being a private consultant.

First of all, I liked the freedom to pick and choose what work I did.
I met lots of great people and visited interesting places.
I was often working on strategy or policy, which is a lot more fun and less hard work than implementation (although I would spend a lot of time on advising on implementation but thankfully not having to do it.)
I learned more than my clients from the process of consulting;
and in nearly all cases, my clients were great fun to work with.

Sometimes, the expertise I was bringing was already available in-house (for instance, in the Centre for Teaching and Learning), but no-one was listening. As a consultant, your voice can be the force for change for the better.

I am now winding down my company but that’s another story.

Up next

I’m going to cover my time in Guadalajara teaching their Masters in e-Learning, and then my time as a visiting professor at the Open University of Catalonia, focusing on the dynamics of open and online learning in different countries.