Launching the Digital Skills, Design and Training Blog

Welcome to the Digital Skills, Design and Training team blog.

Digital Skills, Design and Training (DSDT) is a new, diverse team within the Learning, Teaching and Web directorate of the University’s Information Services Group. The formation of the new team brings together a number of key services from skills development to graphic design.

DSDT has a broad range of expertise in digital skills training and professional development programmes for staff and student audiences, including our in-house CMALT (Certified Member of the Association for Learning Technology) programme and two successful Edinburgh Awards. We also run two programmes accredited with a University of Edinburgh Open Digital Badge – 23 Things for Digital Knowledge, and Developing Your Data Skills. The development programmes run alongside our Digital Skills Programme, comprising of over 140 course titles delivered throughout the academic year. Our instructor-led training offering is supported by LinkedIn Learning – an online skills development service that every student and staff member can access free of charge during their time at the University.

At the heart of our mission is the commitment to producing and sharing high quality Open Educational Resources (OERs), contributing to accessible, openly licensed learning and knowledge. The OER service provides support for staff and students in using and creating OERs and open knowledge in their teaching, research and learning practice. This includes our Wikimedian in Residence, who helps students and staff benefit from and contribute to the free and open Wikimedia projects through workshops, advice and curriculum work.

Digital safety, citizenship and wellbeing remain central to our service, as does leading policy development for EdTech initiatives. Our sought-after Graphic Design service is well versed in designing user-centred and aesthetically pleasing digital and print products for customers based within the University. Among our other current key focus areas are Artificial Intelligence, digital skills in the curriculum, project training, learning analytics, open eBooks, and playful engagement.

This blog is a place for us to reflect on our practices and share knowledge. We encourage every member of the team to contribute to our new blog to showcase the variety and breadth of work our team does, and how we contribute to and support the University’s vision and values. This also ensures we all have an opportunity to engage in professional development through reflecting on our work.

We hope that you enjoy reading and engaging with our upcoming blog posts.