Now that some of the dust from the VLE transition to Learn Ultra is starting to settle, many of us in EDE have caught our collective breath and have a few minutes to look more deeply into other aspects of our VLE and its associated learning tools and platforms.    The transition to Learn Ultra […]

  I have recently been involved in the Learn Ultra Project that has been tasked to upgrade Learn Original, the University’s centrally supported virtual learning environment (VLE). Being part of a team that is focusing on the Ultra Base Navigation menu has given me some great insights into the student experience with Learn Ultra.   […]

I came across this image the other day through a tweet by Marina Amaral. Marina is a Brazilian artist who specialises in the accurate colourisation of historical photographs and her twitter posts are full of interesting, sometimes bizarre, sometimes hilarious images and the stories behind them. The image above is one of a series that […]

It’s getting to that time of year again. Welcome week is fast approaching and we’re all gearing up for the start of semester. To help staff and students with preparations we offer a variety of online Learning Technology training sessions covering a vast amount of topics. You can view and book all our available sessions […]

Learn provides lots of ways for users to take charge of what messages and notifications they receive and how they would like them delivered. One of the insights I gained through interviewing students and staff as part of the Learn Foundations Project programme of user experience research was how students feel about all those notifications, […]

As part of Learn Foundations’ latest round of user experience research, I have been interviewing students and staff about their use of real-time virtual and hybrid classrooms. This post looks at the multitude of ways students access their virtual teaching spaces and how we can make them easier to find.   As we have moved […]

  I’m now 15 weeks into my new position as Learning Technology Support Officer for Educational Design and Engagement – and I’m seeing a lot of similarities from my previous position in Learning Spaces Technology. Both teams look after services, providing user advice and support, contribute to service improvement and course design. EDE mostly supports […]

The VLE Standards Project aims to review the current use of the University’s main virtual learning environment, Blackboard Learn and develop strategies to ensure greater consistency in the way it is used. Consultations with staff and students by the Learn Service team and the commissioned Headscape review in 2016 both indicated that inconsistencies across such systems […]

In March this year, I began a secondment to Information Services (one day-a-week) in which I shall be evaluating the impact of learning analytics data on students’ academic performance. The courses I am involved with are all online, part-time Masters programmes, delivered via bespoke virtual learning environments (http://www.essqchm.rcsed.ac.uk/). We enrol around 400 students annually which allows […]

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 […]