Claude and I have been working together to do more stuff since my first blog post about Claude. We’ve added a whole lot of new things to our prototype Survey of Scottish Witchcraft site including a chatbot to ask questions about the data (a challenge received by Lesley Greer), ‘stories’ …

A question has been doing the rounds recently: do we actually need site search? It’s a fair question and one I have been giving a lot of thought to. With AI-powered summaries increasingly answering queries before users even reach a website, and with navigation that, when it works, can get people where they need to […]

If you search for ‘impact of AI on EDI’, you mostly get returns discussing Electronic Data Interchange. But with a few tweaks we can find a growing corpus of information. We can use AI to speed up  some of our EDI tasks, But there are big risks if we don’t actually know what we are doing. EDI …

After Stratos’s blog post last week, I revisited Joshua Mitchell’s experiment asking an AI to simulate what using a screen reader actually feels like, not to replace proper testing, but to generate a transcript of the experience that could be shared with stakeholders who had never encountered one. The results were striking: skip links that […]

The Role of Profiles project produced 10 recommendations for an improved University profile provision. To start actioning these, I assembled a working group of specialists and drew on UX design principles – implementing practical prioritisation while seeking innovative solutions that addressed the research findings. Recognising the widespread value and strategic importance of communicating the work, […]

From the birthplace of the original Industrial Revolution, a group of around 2000 intrepid EdTech practitioners and enthusiasts sought to examine and understand what has been dubbed the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution.’ I was fortunate to be among them for Jisc Digifest 2026 in Birmingham this week. There were many opportunities to contribute and get creative […]

As someone who is really interested in developmental psychology, I often find myself thinking about how different tools shape our habits and influence our cognitive behaviours, particularly when it comes to thinking and learning. The kind of thinking I’m referring to is the kind that happens when you’re halfway through solving a problem or trying […]

This year’s Digifest conference in Birmingham has just wrapped up, and my brain is buzzing with ideas. The 2026 theme, ‘From disruption to direction’, landed exactly where my head has been at lately. As I attend talks and workshops, I tend to map what I’m hearing to the work our team is doing back at […]

This year’s University Mental Health Day theme is ‘human connection’. So of course, we have to start with the (arguably?) opposite: Artificial Intelligence! AI-driven chatbots have become a popular mental health advice source amidst lack of other support and a growing sense of disconnection and loneliness.   AI and mental health Mental health advice The […]

There is an expression that is used more and more when referencing use of AI, and makes me uncomfortable: “Keeping the human in the loop”. I, instead, believe we need to ensure that we “Keep the human in the middle”. What is more relevant with this then, other than reflecting on the impact, negative but […]