The last ALT-C I attended was when it was hosted here in at The University of Edinburgh in the impressive McEwan Hall in 2019, just before the world changed. So it felt appropriate that the opening Keynote by Chris Friend (Keane University, USA) ‘Humane Education: Empathy in Policies, Places, and Platforms’ focused in on the […]

I attended the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) Universities Marketing Forum (UMF) on 6 June in London in my capacity as a member of its Volunteer Executive Group and as a member of the forum itself.The CASE Universities Marketing Forum is a community championing senior professionals working in marketing, communications and student […]

Earlier this month, on the last day of the PebblePad 2024 conference in Edinburgh – as part of my presentation – I had a chance to share my reflections on an interesting issue (interesting to me that is!) which I call “the conflict of efficiencies”. Having been involved in designing and supporting e-portfolio implementations for […]

With the first phase of the Early Adopter Project complete for the new Short Courses Platform, we attended our first Canvas User Group at the University of Birmingham. We spent the day finding out the latest updates to the learning platform, and discussed challenges and good practice for tackling some of the key areas involved […]

Following the procurement of a solution to deliver an end to end Short Courses Platform for all non-credit short courses using Instructure (Canvas) and Drieam (Eduframe), we were delighted to attend our first Canvas User group at the University of Birmingham. Whilst we are in the first phases of implementing the learning environment of the […]

The Media team have recently passed their GVC with A2 CofC drone training examinations and are now qualified, commercial drone operators. The course required us to undergo theory and practical training, each requiring separate examinations to achieve accreditation. Drones are now utilised in a great many fields, including, security, agriculture, search and rescue and in […]

In early 2020, pre-pandemic, I was asked for my opinion on using TikTok for university marketing.  At the time I honestly thought it was the cringiest idea ever, not suitable at all for “serious” educational institutions. At the time, TikTok was synonymous with silly dances and funny challenges. It still is, to an extent, but […]

Quick link to useful resources >> This year we have been celebrating 10 years of massive open online courses (MOOCs) at the University of Edinburgh, having delivered more than 100 short online courses and shared over 1000 videos as open educational resources (OERs). We have an infographic that captures these achievements, alongside an impressive number […]

We’ve had an Accessible and Inclusive Learning Policy at Edinburgh since 2013.  It was radical at the time, particularly in allowing students to audio record their teaching, but was looking rather dated even before the online pivot in 2020.  In the context of an ongoing Curriculum Transformation project, how might we change it? I’ve been […]

The Instructional Design Team have just completed a project with the OER (Open Educational Resources) Service which, as all good projects do, started with a mysterious old dusty spreadsheet. It was a record of legacy MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) that had been developed over the years; MOOCs that hadn’t been through the robust processes […]