After almost 22 years working in a variety of different roles at the University, I’ve made the decision to leave. It’s been a hard decision as there is so much I love about my job but I need a chance to catch up with myself. I’d like to have a bit of time to swot up on other areas I’m interested in such as sustainability and AI (or even the sustainability OF AI). In the last few days, I thought I’d think about how much things have changed since I started in Biological Sciences in October of 2004 as an eLearning Project Officer ….
Roles
I was initially brought in funded by a Principal’s eLearning Fund project officer and I was on a fixed term contract to encourage the uptake of ‘eLearning’ in the School because the Principal believed it was something useful to be invested in. There were quite a few of us across the Schools at the University which made it a nice environment but it was a bit ‘new’ and some parts of the University were maybe not massively enthusiastic about it. Nowadays ‘eLearning’ is just synonymous with learning. It’s just part of what we do at the University. The University now has a much larger number of learning technologists and related roles – both centrally and in Schools.
Hardware
There have been massive changes in tech since 2004 unsurprisingly. Everything is much smaller now and despite being smaller, can do much more. I was very involved in a college project to roll out ‘clickers’ when I was in Biology, supporting Schools across the college and even in Biomedical Sciences. We had to hand out these infrared devices to students, either on loan (I developed a barcode reading application to allow them to be signed out) or hand them out at the start and back in at the end of the lecture. If you want a wee blast from the past, you can see how they look and an old web page with marketing information about them. I can’t believe pages this old still exist!
Ironically, one of the procurements my team did when I took on my Head of DLAM role was to replace our audience response system, 18 years later! We procured Wooclap which has no infrared and no separate keypad because everyone just uses their smart phones to interact with it. To explain why we had these infrared ‘clickers’ in 2004, this is the sort of phone I had in 2004. The only thing ‘smart’ about it was that it had a retro game called ‘Snake’ on it and the battery lasted for about 6 times as long as my new iPhone’s does.
“2009 01 06 – Russett – Old Nokia 1” by thisisbossi is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Platforms
Our VLE used to look like this:
“WebCT” by michaelseangallagher is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. [How clever of the University’s own Michael Gallagher to make an openly licensed graphic of WebCT for future posterity, way back in 2009! ]
Now it looks way better (although we have higher expectations!). Platforms are generally more accessible. So that’s all good. But some changes have been less positive as time has passed – our websites need to be far more secure and locked up now and sometimes more recent developments have meant sites are more bloated in terms of the size and impact on the environment. I think we are more aware of this now but one of my fabulous interns, Otis, compared the size of some websites now vs the late 90s early 2000’s and found the size had massively increased. We have more stuff now, things look better but as a result often the size has grown. There was a time where we had to compress files we used for websites or uploading to the VLE because we’d have killed our internet or printers if we didn’t. Now we mostly have faster internet and much more generous storage allocations, we’ve forgotten that it’s good to compress things/throw digital things away. It’s something I, myself, need to be better at and working with Otis has shown me where small changes can make big impacts.
Data
In 2004, data was hard to come by and not joined up. People ran different systems and things were pretty messy. Data analysis was hard. Now, things aren’t perfect but they are better and improving all the time. Tools like PowerBI make it easier for non-data-specicalists to join and visualise data in ways which tell deeper stories. An intern in DLAM, Hera, has been doing just that with loads of our data, putting it into PowerBI so we can share it with Schools. It’s amazing what she’s done in a small amount of time. If you are based in a School and want to look at the LTW data we have about the school, please put a call into the IS Helpline and ask for access to the LTW Dashboards.
Accessibility
I’m ashamed to say that back in 2004, accessibility wasn’t a big feature of my life. I was aware of basic website accessibility and the tools to check it (remember Bobby?) but I didn’t truly get it. I have done a lot of work in the area now and do understand it a lot better – sometimes I wonder if we are so focused on the regulations that we forget about the people. We have our intern David working on accessibility and his project on making music accessible for his friend, really brings a tear to my eye. This is what our goals should be in terms of accessibility.
Digital Safety and the Truth
So much is better and has moved on since 2004 but not everything is a positive. There’s more digital crime – hacking, fraud, scams and now we have to contend with fake news, deep fakes, online bullying and harassment. It’s a digitally dangerous place out there. We have training and support but this was never something I really worried about very much in 2004. We have a Digital Safety Officer here in LTW (Ricarda Fillhardt) to keep us all in the know about Digital Safety. She has a huge job on her hand….
So, a lot has changed – some good, some bad. The world is a different place. The main thing is that in the 22 years I’ve worked at Edinburgh University, I’ve learned so much and have a wealth of experience to take away with me as well as some brilliant colleagues and friends, who I’ll miss very much indeed.
