OER14, the fifth annual UK OER (Open Educational Resources) conference, was held in the Centre for Life in Newcastle on 28th & 29th April. The conference themes this year focussed around OER as a catalyst for building communities of open practice which, given recent criticism of the OER movement for over-emphasis on autonomous learning and […]

I joined the Learning Services team in June 2013.  Coming to e-learning from a librarianship background there have been many words and terms that were unfamiliar to me ‘Big data’ is a term that I hadn’t heard before I started working in Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL); so when the chance came up for me to […]

EDUCAUSE 2013 was again held in the Anaheim Conference Centre in southern California, which is an ideal location. In order to get the most out of the conference I had deliberately chosen to target events that focused on these specific topics: MOOCs Adaptive Learning Multi Media in Learning and Teaching Learning Analytics Learning space design […]

Staff from different parts of the University of Edinburgh, with different areas of interest and responsibility were able to attend a “roadmap” consultation event organised by Blackboard in October 2013, as part of their series of consultations with HE customers in the UK. This is an attempt to draw together the observations and “highlights” from […]

The University’s IT Futures conference returns this year with the theme of Disruption. It will take place on Thursday, 12th December 2013, 0930-1630, in The Informatics Forum. New technologies disrupt our ways of working, they disrupt our lifestyles and our settled habits. Sometimes this is good, sometimes not. Sometimes tiny factors turn out to be […]

How can you fault an event that starts with hot bacon rolls and ends with wine and chocolate? As ever the JISC Regional Support Centre Scotland know how to create an interesting, enjoyable and engaging event. Learning Services were well represented as David Findlay, Wilma Alexander and I all took the chance to attend this event […]

The relationship between the University of Edinburgh and The University of Copenhagen (TUCh) was already initiated through a visit by senior staff from Copenhagen to Edinburgh in January 2013. Hosted by Edinburgh’s Institute for Academic Development, the group identified a number of areas in which collaboration would be mutually advantageous. Sharing good practice both in […]

Since being appointed as Head of the Learning Services team in June 2012, I’ve been working to develop strategic direction for IS learning technology provision to the University in collaboration with other IS colleagues working in this domain. Between summer and December 2012, I had been reading as much research and strategic literature as I […]