The non-traditional side of ALT-C?

As a first timer I wasn’t sure what to expect before attending the ALT conference on the 23rd and 24th October 2025. Being from a project management background I don’t necessarily think of myself as a learning technologist but I do work in learning technology so maybe I’m just a non-traditional learning technologist?

That word non-traditional came up quite a bit across the 2-day conference and it was those sessions that most caught my interest. Stuart, Fiona and I had our own presentation covering what we have been doing in this area – specifically around the Short Courses Platform. In our presentation Stuart positioned that at Edinburgh non-traditional learning had been termed as extra-mural, or outside the walls, this was not unusual description of adult learning but could be one reason why non-credited courses and their learners have been seen as non-traditional business for the University. Changing this attitude had been one of the drivers for the new short courses platform.

Matt Cornock, Head of Online Learning at the University of Leeds, led a workshop on the first morning encouraging attendees to consider “Institutional Readiness for the future”. In setting the scene Matt referenced research by KellyOGC’s 2025 Global Re:work Report that 65% of [US] organisations are moving to skills-based recruitment rather than for degree qualifications. This has parallels with the findings of research we commissioned from CarringtonCrisp in 2022 which informed our short courses platform programme and pointed to learners being driven more by the right learning outcomes or skills obtained rather than a specific credential.

The timely publication of the UK Governments Post Education and Skills white paper last week also helped frame the workshop discussion on institutional readiness for lifelong learning, although it’s perhaps a shame that given the conference was in Glasgow that Matt didn’t also reference the long existing Scottish Governments 22-27 Adult Learning Strategy.

The scenario the group I was in was asked to discuss the challenge of providing learners with a ‘portable skills wallet that they could retain for life’. This didn’t feel very “future” to me as open digital badges is something we’ve offered for a number of years through the BadgEd service, but it was still an interesting discussion to get other perspectives and hear similarities across organisations. The group I was in included representatives from the University of Glasgow and the Botanics and we had a good chat about where we each were on our ‘non-traditional’ journey and in particular how we were similarly supporting a range of learning needs, from the immediate microlearning up to degree programmes preparing learners for longer term objectives. This range is illustrated in this simple image below taken from Matt’s slides.

A further session I attended linked to non-traditional education was presented by Mairi McLaughlin, Partnership Manager at SportScotland. Mairi talked through their implementation of a catalogue and learning platform to support their range of courses and provide an access point for many learning resources. This work had direct links to our own short courses platform implementation and it was interesting to hear the similar challenges they had around agreeing consistent branding and a common language for their course catalogue. Mairi, like us, did feel like the effort put in up front to ensure consistency in the catalogue and also the course designs are now providing the benefits to the learner experiences.

My ALTC-2025 experience ended with Stuart, Fiona and I presenting on our own Edinburgh journey with non-traditional learning. Our slides are online if you would like a look. While lifelong and non-credited learning had less focus at the ALT Conference it does feel as though Edinburgh is just ahead of the game on this with more institutions having launched similar short courses catalogues this year, each with slightly different approaches, including Herriot-Watt, Stanford and Aberdeen. So maybe it’s time to make some new traditions?