Friday 25th July
Dear All,
Thank you for your work this week.
Thank you to everyone who baked and ate, we had 25 bakes and 10 raffle prizes. Check out the LTW Colleague Hub to find out how much we raised and if you are a winner Drum roll, please….. The Bake Sale results are in!!
If you have ideas for our next cultural foodie event, post it in the colleague hub, and ask Edward about yam fest Why Food Is the Ultimate Bridge: A Tale of Two Cultures
This week we wave goodbye to Christina Xu, our MyEd User Research Intern who has helped us enormously in understanding how students use MyEd and underestimate its power. Next week we will also wave goodbye to Vivienne Mayo, also from the MyEd team who came to us from EDINA and has helped us in ensuring that MyEd stays as good as it can be for our users.
MyEd is one of our most important student experience systems and one of our few open-source systems which we develop in partnership with other universities as part of the Apereo Foundation uPortal | Apereo Foundation For those of you interested in software development, it is important to know the difference between open-source and proprietary software in terms of ownership, accessibility and flexibility. Female role models in open-source are rare, remarkable and worth celebrating.
In proprietary software news, the vendors of our new short courses platform, Canvas have announced something they think is exciting in AI. Instructure and OpenAI Announce Global Partnership to Embed AI Learning Experiences within Canvas
Meanwhile Katie has posted some frightening statistics about use of AI AI and Sexism – ISG Reading Group recap. I am interested in any ideas how we, as technology service and training providers, can tackle sexism in AI. Send me your thoughts. I note that both authors Laura Bates Laura Bates: Misogyny Reinvented | What’s On | Edinburgh International Book Festival, and local boy Richard Susskind are speaking at the Book Festival if you are interested Richard Susskind: Navigating the AI Revolution | What’s On | Edinburgh International Book Festival (hosted by EFI). Ask your manager if you can claim festival tickets as a work expense.
Our newest shiny chunk of glass (Catalyst Award) is now in its place in the trophy cabinet on Level E. You won this award for the Learn Foundations Intern programme (LFI) Each summer we recruit 10 students (70 in total since 2019) for our 12-week LFI programme. These colleagues enhance the Learn VLE experience for the wider student body by performing a range of tasks including data migration and content mapping. A crucial component of the LFI is conducting annual accessibility audits across courses. On average, a random sample equating to about 6% of all courses in each School are audited, measured and marked across a set matrix against the most up-to-date WCAG guidance (currently 2.2). The students work through the random sample of course content in Learn, looking at the structure of documents, quality of alternative text for images, captions on media materials, naming conventions of files and other criteria which might make a course more or less accessible. The criterion is scored for each course, and a report is given to the corresponding School summarising the findings and including recommendations for improving accessibility going forward. We give these reports each year and some Schools are much better than others. Accessibility is important for all types of learners, and the role of Learn Foundations Intern has a important role to play in improving the student experience. The 93% Club and widening access to career opportunities
Ari has blogged about her visit to a work-related conference Higher Education Marketing Conference 2025 – Educational Design and Engagement and about her development as an Aspiring Manager
If you would like to be like Ari and engage in some staff development, there are new pages on our LTW Colleague Hub Staff Development Opportunities
Have a good weekend,
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