ALT Annual Conference Glasgow 2025 – Stronger Foundations, Broader Horizons
Summary
Jonathan Mori's reflection on the ALT Annual Conference in Glasgow 2025.
I recently attended the ALT Annual Conference in Glasgow from October 23rd – 24th and I was particularly looking forward to the theme of ‘Stronger Foundations, Broader Horizons’. In our ever fast changing landscape we need to adapt, show resilience and support the evolving foundations in learning technology.
My main focus with the Association for Learning Technology lies with the CMALT Programme that I host at the University of Edinburgh therefore I was quite keen to catch up with the new ALT CEO as well as individuals I’ve collaborated with over the past two years in developing the CMALT Programme.
All things CMALT aside, I felt this conference was important in developing my skillset regarding innovative approaches to pedagogy and looking at new opportunities in the ‘classroom’ across the wider community. I was eager to get some hands-on experience with the practical workshops that were hosted as well as the interactive panels.
I’ve always had an interest in immersive VR environments so the session that stood out for me in this regard was ‘Rethinking Immersive Learning: A Practical and Sustainable 360 Approach for Higher Education’ which was hosted by Cardiff University. This session explored how immersive learning can be made sustainable, practical and scalable within a higher education setting without requiring specialist teams, huge budgets or advanced 3D design skills.
Cardiff’s journey began by looking into fully immersive VR environments but it quickly became clear that creating custom 3D assets and environments would be incredibly expensive, time consuming and ultimately unrealistic for most teaching staff to adopt – exciting ideas! But is it sustainable?
Cardiff took a more accessible approach using interactive 360° imagery and video. It’s quicker, cheaper, and far easier to create, which makes it a much more viable option across their university. They were able to develop a pilot 360° learning experience that not only demonstrated the potential of the format but was also designed so that staff could adapt or create their own in the future—with minimal technical knowledge. All great content but what about ThingLink?
Moving on from VR, I wanted to learn more about ‘The Hero’s Journey: Storytelling in Digital Learning Design’ so I attended this 60-minute workshop which was hands-on, informative and fun! Along with my colleagues from EDE we were able to collaborate and interact with the session content in order to create our own scenarios and solutions.
This interactive workshop was designed to guide participants through exploring the affordances of storytelling techniques across the digital course learning design lifecycle. Specifically, the workshop equipped us all with frameworks from storytelling that can be harnessed as a mapping tool to Wiggins & McTighe’s Backwards Design to aid with collaborative approaches to learning design.
My final highlight was the session titled ‘The Amazing Race: Digital Literacy Edition – LinkedIn Learning vs Jisc Discovery Tool’ which is very familiar for me as the service manager for LinkedIn Learning and the Jisc Discovery Tool (Digital Skills Framework) at the University of Edinburgh. How do both platforms compare?
The University of Birmingham made its decision to focus on increasing engagement with LinkedIn Learning, rather than pursuing an institutional license for the Jisc Discovery Tool. I was very interested to find out how and why!
Support for students, professional services staff and academics is often provided by disparate areas of an institution, yet digital literacy skills are a requirement for all. Despite the fact that these skills are fundamental to the uptake of any new digital tool, providing institutional support sits between so many stakeholders that it often falls between the cracks.
The University of Birmingham ran a twelve-month project to evaluate the capabilities of LinkedIn Learning and the Jisc Discovery Tool to see which might best serve them institutionally to start addressing the gaps in digital literacy support.
This project focused on assessing the digital skills of students in Classics and Ancient History and professional services staff within the library and evaluating whether LinkedIn Learning or the Discovery Tool worked best to support their self-identified skills gaps.
Using evaluation forms and focus groups to compare the experiences, the project team concluded that developments within LinkedIn Learning have outpaced those within the Jisc Discovery Tool, to the point that functionality (such as ‘personalised’ recommended resources) is now better facilitated in LinkedIn Learning than in the Discovery Tool.
I enjoyed learning more about the findings from their evaluations but also how to run a comparative project such as this in order to make real institutional change based on convincing data.
Plenty of food for thought for me personally however I’m still convinced that both platforms can offer more on an individual basis if executed the right way in our institution. This session was a great learning curve!
