We are happy to announce that the University has officially reached an incredible milestone of 4 million enrolments on our 80 free short online courses! A huge thank you to our keen learners who engage meaningfully with the courses and participate in lively discussions.    These online courses are completely free to take and have no entry requirements. Led by world-class academics and supported by teaching assistants, they […]

Last week I was delighted to see a project that I’ve been working on since the beginning of the year come to fruition with the publication of the Fundamentals of Music Theory open textbook on the University of Edinburgh Library’s new ebook platform Edinburgh Diamond.  The open textbook was created by the the Open e-Textbooks […]

It is our responsibility to live in a sustainable manner to ensure a better world for society to live in, warranting that the planet’s resources can be enjoyed for generations to come. The University of Edinburgh provides several free short online courses, and a significant number of these are related to the environment and sustainability. They are completely free to […]

This is a belated transcript of the talk I gave at the ALT Summer Summit 2020. Slides from this presentation are available here: For the Common Good – Responding to the global pandemic with OER. At the height of the global COVID-19 pandemic, UNESCO estimated that 1.57 billion learners in 191 countries worldwide had had […]

Why are MOOCs important to UoE? The University of Edinburgh has a long history of online education and innovative use of technology, with a strong reputation for MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) development. Our MOOCs also offer us an opportunity to innovate in online delivery methods at larger scale and learn lessons that might be […]

The Scot-Bug meeting was held at the University of Stirling on June 20th, 2014. Blackboard Roadmap Dominic Gore, the Blackboard Representative, outlined the latest upgrade to Learn 9.1. Details are available from the upgrade area at help.blackboard.com.  The new student preview mode is a key feature of the latest upgrade. Dominic then outlined Blackboard’s thematic […]

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 […]

I always take an interest in new learning technologies and how they may best fit our own institutional needs here at The University of Edinburgh. So on 25th April 2013 I attended a JISC RSC event in Glasgow on Open Badges, their design and application. The full day session was led by Doug Belshaw from […]