Learn Ultra Early Adopters: Insights from the School of Literatures, Languages, and Cultures
Over the last year or so, in preparation for our ongoing institutional transition to the new Learn Ultra VLE, a large team of Early Adopters have been graciously offering their time and effort to trial (and feedback about) courses run fully in the new environment. While our University community may have grown more used to the Ultra Base Navigation in Learn since it was switched on in June 2022, there will be another significant milestone in May and June of this year as we begin the New Academic Year Process in Learn (NAYPL). New courses for the 2023-24 Academic Year will all be created in Learn Ultra, and this migration process has remained a main focus of the Educational Design & Engagement section in ISG for well over a year.
Thanks to our Early Adopters, we have been able to assemble a comprehensive suite of resources and training programmes to help manage these changes, and we have been able to bring some questions and concerns back to platform owners Anthology for future development of the VLE itself. Learn Ultra is a more dynamic environment than the last, and so provider updates to the new VLE will happen more frequently and with greater ease than ever before. In order to share more about the Early Adopter experience, I had a chat with one such project contributor, Dr Anouk Lang from the School of Literatures, Languages, and Cultures (LLC).
When we spoke about her experience teaching in Learn Ultra, Dr Lang noted some of the differences she had found to be most salient between the two VLEs, for example the new maximum folder depth of two levels beyond the left-hand menu. She had found it valuable to be offered the chance to familiarise herself with the new digital environment prior to the rollout, and to be able to experiment with the new features in playground courses.
Dr Lang ran two Early Adopter courses, one in each semester, with the semester 1 course being a new offering from the Edinburgh Futures Institute. This course made use of a range of Ultra’s new features as well as a pre-set skeleton, and was co-taught with fellow digital humanities specialist Dr Beatrice Alex. Given there was no historic version of the course to migrate into Learn Ultra, they were able to use Learn Ultra’s many content-building options (e.g., modules, release conditions, sequencing) in order to design a shape for the course that worked for teachers and learners alike. ‘It was a huge help to be co-teaching with Bea, who had already had some experience putting together an Ultra site for another Early Adopter course that had run earlier in the semester’, she said, affirming the value of putting those with less experience together with those with more.
Dr Lang also made it clear to students in both her Early Adopter courses that, as they were participating in a pilot, their feedback on Ultra was especially valuable. Students reported that although the site was initially unfamiliar, they soon got used to the new structure and found Learn Ultra very intuitive.
Once she was using the new VLE regularly, Dr Lang found processes like adding users and creating groups much quicker and smoother, and commented that Ultra generally supported a better experience with regards to navigation and visualisation. As an example, she and her students found Learn Ultra’s inline viewer especially useful for displaying PDFs and other files in class. She appreciated the fact that Learn Ultra facilitates better visibility of all courses, which can be particularly helpful for those enrolled in quite a large number of them. Perhaps the most telling part of Dr Lang’s Early Adopter experience was that while shuttling between one class in the previous Learn environment and another in Learn Ultra, Dr Lang found herself wishing the former could be moved into Learn Ultra.
There is, of course, always room for improvement in any VLE, and there will inevitably be parts of Learn Ultra which do not work as well for everyone in the University at first, even if they will increase accessibility and engagement in the long term. New frameworks for discussion boards and communication with students will require some adjustment, and indeed may still change by September in line with Anthology’s Learn Ultra roadmaps. Our teams in Information Services are working hard to address concerns, train users, and acknowledge where there is still much left to be done. This transition is ongoing and collaborative, and we are very appreciative of all the incredible feedback we have had from users since the earliest stages of this project.
Through ongoing conversation with Dr Lang and other Early Adopters, our central team in Information Services is better able to respond to user needs and ensure that this transition is as well-supported as possible, and that we are doing everything we can to make our new VLE as inclusive as possible.
[More information about Learn Ultra is available on the Learn Ultra project SharePoint, and a training programme including the 10 Things to Try in Learn Ultra course is available now]
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