Among all the crises currently impacting our University, from the climate crisis to the cost of living crisis to the casualisation crisis and pension crisis, there is another which is often left out of the conversation. I would term this a crisis of compassion, a natural offshoot of the systemic burnout (see link below) which […]

  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.   […]

Elizabeth Scarefellow has recently inherited a stately family home from a distant relative. She decides to move from her flat in the city out to the remote estate, before she makes up her mind whether to sell it, as she has always wanted to live in a more rural area. Although she did not know […]

Yes, another wooden boat blog post, I’m turning into that boat person. So, I’m coming onto the closing stages of my yearlong boat building experience. And as with everything I do and probably many others here, it’s viewed through the lens of learning, digital, pedagogy, experience. It is hard not to relate to these things […]

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, […]

Last month saw the first Digital Skills Festival, organised by the Digital Skills and Training team, of which we hope there will be many more. Together, we facilitated four sessions on different topics across the area of learning design.   The first session, ‘How to… design a course online using ABC’, sparked a lot of discussion around how the pandemic has changed the way we teach. Participants were really engaged with how ABC can help them in […]

We are looking forward to presenting four interactive sessions at next week’s Digital Skills Festival. Each session is based on our experiences, particularly over the past year, when we moved our support for learning design online.  All of these sessions are open for booking by Edinburgh staff and students.  We look forward to seeing you there!    […]

Of all the things we do, learning design workshops were probably the last things we wanted to consider moving online; if it had been thought to be the better option, we probably would have already made that change long before lockdown. But when it was clear that we weren’t going to be able to hold […]

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 […]

Sitting in our team EDE section meeting and listening to an update from the always engaging Lauren Johnson Smith on recent sign-up figures for online courses. When MSc Ancient Worlds was listed with 67 registered students at launch, it took a second or two for me to register why it was familiar before blurting out […]