Over half a year has flown by since I joined the Information Services Group, and I cannot believe that my internship has come to an end. I have had the opportunity to help get the Open Textbook Creation Service going from its initial stages, and seeing the fruits of my labour has been particularly exciting recently.
In seven months, I have adapted and published eleven teaching resource packs made by students at The University of Edinburgh, allowing their hard work to be freely accessed and modified by educators across the world. My favourites have been the ones from the School of Geosciences, as they are aimed towards primary school students, which makes them more likely to be fun as well as informative. Hopefully, they are as engaging for the children as they are for me. These open educational resources have been posted to tes, which is a global educational solutions provider, and their platform enables teachers to find full lesson plans that they are free to adapt to their needs.
My name is in the credits of an actual textbook that is to be published in the new year, which is such an incredible opportunity as an undergraduate student. I have made an impactful contribution to the project, and my work has tangible recognition in this textbook that I will be able to show people (which I definitely will). Working on these resources has taught me so much, both about editing and publishing, but also in the subject matter about interdisciplinary teaching methods and the basics of music theory.
I was able to undertake the Edinburgh Award for Work Experience with my internship, which allowed me to actively take the time to reflect upon the skills I have gained and developed. I have found learning styles that work for me, developed my interpersonal skills when speaking to authors, and have tried to make a positive impact on the people around me.
As a part of my internship, I was able to sit in meetings with prospective authors of open textbooks and provide advice on certain processes, and it took persuasive skills to convince them to change the way that they operated and organised themselves. This also took into account my status as an intern, as I was clearly less experienced to the workforce than everyone else. I often had to explain myself a lot more before people could trust what I was saying as someone with specific experience with a particular topic, rather than being humoured as the intern that was just a nominal part of the team. Persuasion has not been a deliberate and formal action but rather getting people to understand your perspective and opinions and considering them in the greater decision. It comes in conversations, comments left on documents, and process guides that influence actions and decisions.
Overall, the Digital Skills, Design and Training section has given me first-hand experience in academic publishing, allowing me to apply what I already know, building my skills that I was not confident in, and discovering wholly new aspects of the job that I had not even known to exist. It has been an incredibly welcoming environment for me to work in, and this allowed me to be comfortable in trying out new things and building my confidence.
Leaving behind the (exceptionally and famously ugly) Argyle House will be a shame, since the views of the castle and the sound of faint saxophone playing are wonderful from Floor K. I will look upon its jarring Brutalist architecture with fondness as I remember the 498.5 hours I spent within its walls (checked my timesheets!).
I am incredibly lucky to have had a team that has supported me as I learnt the intricacies of copyright licensing, Adobe InDesign, educational resource editing, and publishing, and allowed me to observe and participate in meetings with authors. I would like to thank everyone that I have met over the course of this experience for making it genuinely enjoyable, and I cannot wait to see the textbooks I worked on being published next semester!
