In late April we had the opportunity to attend the 24th annual Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference, affectionately known as #durbbu, hosted in historic Durham. This year’s theme, Little Things that Make a Big Difference, was a pleasant shift in focus, moving away from (seemingly never-ending) AI discourse to the subtle yet impactful changes that we […]

When we first heard about the relocation plans to Forrest Hill, we were cautiously optimistic. Knowing there was a studio there, and given that our studio at Argyle House was modelled after Forrest Hill’s, it suggested that moving to an already familiar setup on the fourth floor would be easier than starting from scratch. The […]

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 […]

What is reflection? Reflection, as used here, means more than simply thinking about the past. Instead it means analysing it in depth, particularly for the purpose of informing the future.  Why reflect? Being able to critically analyse your past experience and use it to plan for future activities, is a crucial skill in any role […]

Congratulations to Eden Swimer, winner of the Staff Student Member of the Year Award at the 2024 ISG Staff Recognition Awards. Eden was employed by the OER Service in 2023 to help organise and run our Digital Collection Day as part of the University of Oxford’s Their Finest Hour project, which aimed to collect and […]

At the end of this month we’re saying goodbye to all four of our fabulous OER Service interns Mayu Ishimoto, […]

In July 2023, I began working on Their Finest Hour, my internship, I was initially told, would last six months. Yet, I am now clocking off, one year later, after continuous exciting and rewarding work on the project. The last year has involved a huge variety of challenges. Organising the collection day itself involved events […]

Over the last few months, I have been working on an Open Educational Resource (OER) based on Their Finest Hour and stories and objects collected during the Digital Collection Day in Edinburgh. The OER, Recording Everyday Social History, which is aimed at the second and third levels of the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence (age range […]

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 […]