At the UCD Gathering conference last week, Laura Yarrow’s talk on rebellious creativity was a definite highlight for me. She talked about what we can learn from children’s rule-ignoring, rebellion-embracing ways to improve our ideas, creativity and ways of working. A story about her 5-year-old son summed it up well. When frantically searching for an […]

I’m building a boat. A wooden boat, in a traditional hand-crafted way, I’m a student on a course on boat building, to build an Arendalspram, which is a traditional small Norwegian wooden rowboat, popular along the Skagerrak (love the sound of this word, its sounds so Viking, its the sea between Norway and Denmark) coast, […]

During a year where we’ve seen a switch to a new way of working, I attended the User Centred Design (UCD) online conference, covering all aspects of user-centred design and looking at research from various speakers and industries around the world. User experience and design is somewhat integrated within my role and I was looking […]

In his talk at the UCD Gathering event last week, Spencer Turner summed up the universal complaints he’s heard repeatedly throughout his career about meetings and workshops. I think we’re probably all familiar with problems like focus getting lost and conversations wandering off topic, calendars full of mysterious meetings we’re not sure why we’ve been […]

Earlier in September, my colleague Neil McCormick, Education Technology Policy Officer at LTW, and I took part in Jane Secker […]

So, day 1 back in the office (not the office), after a 9-week paternity leave which coincided with a sudden decision as a family to move countries. We are getting settled now in Risor – Trehusbyen (The town of wooden houses) Norway. Everyone seems to be settling faster than me, I have been asked by […]

Clearing, for those who aren’t familiar with it, is for applicants who have not yet secured a place at university, or who have a place but wish to apply to another university. This year, the University anticipated that more calls would be taken than usual so put a call out to staff for frontline call […]

Happy New Year from the Educational Design and Engagement team! The New Year is traditionally a time for new starts and resolutions. This year why not make a resolution to learn more about the learning technology tools and services provided by the University. There is a variety of courses and workshops to choose from catering […]

Following on from our ALT workshop in September, the “chatbot team” was asked if we would mind running a workshop at Edinburgh Zoo for the College eActivities Group (CeAG), in collaboration with SQA and College Development Network. It was an offer we couldn’t refuse! But unlike previous outings, I would be flying this one solo […]

It’s said that you can only be the first to do something once and I can definitely say that I have been part of a team that has done just that. UoE holds the record for being the first UK institution to launch a MicroMasters on edX. Yes, a year and half after we began […]