As the University rapidly transitioned into a new way of learning and working in response to the global pandemic in October 2020, Sarah Thomas, Ros Claase, Jon Turner, and Joe Arton wrote a Teaching Matters post on The Development of the Edinburgh Hybrid Teaching Exchange. This post introduced Teaching Matters readers to The University of Edinburgh’s Hybrid Teaching Exchange. The Exchange was designed to be a curated digital hub, where staff could find plans, ideas, collide with the unexpected, and most importantly help co-create an evidence-base of best practice around hybrid teaching.
Over the next two months, Teaching Matters is taking the opportunity to revisit a rare moment in the University’s recent institutional memory, where we co-created, archived, and catalogued an agile, strategic digital resource for teaching and learning that transcended disciplinary silos in the context of significant adaptation and learning. In this hot topic theme, Revisiting the Hybrid Teaching Exchange, we’re bringing our readers a curated selection of the 240+ digital assets created by staff and students across 21 different schools and units during the last year for the Hybrid Teaching Exchange.
This series marks the fact that Teaching Matters will become the new home for many of the videos, blog posts, infographics, thematic illustrations, and podcasts generated for the Exchange. While you will still be able to access the Exchange, the site will technically now be archived, with no new content being added, or previous content being edited.
The Hybrid Teaching Exchange was designed based on the learning that we’d gained from working on the Teaching Matters blog, which, by 2020, was already a key strategic learning and teaching resource for the University. Today, Teaching Matters embodies the sector-wide importance of capturing and sharing institutional memory through public engagement in pedagogy. By migrating staff-generated insights from the University’s transition to hybrid teaching and learning to Teaching Matters, we are able to ensure that the staff and student experience of everything from critical moments on a Teams call to the impact of University-wide transformations is not lost. Indeed, these experiences can continue to be responded to, added to, updated and discussed, but in a more public domain.
Posts in this September and October ‘Hot Topic’ series will include updated versions of the following Hybrid Exchange resources, which we feel could be helpful to our readers for the start of Academic Year 21/22:
- Exploring the sense of belonging in hybrid learning, by Dr Cathy Bovill and Professor Tina Harrison
- How to focus on pre-recorded lectures, by Dr Sarah Ivory
- Reflection on use of personae in learning design activities, by Tracey Madden.
- Digital citizenship and the importance of creating safe and inclusive online learning spaces, by Vicki Madden.
Plus many more.
You may also be interested in (re)reading previous Teaching Matters blog posts and other resources for some straightforward advice on delivering online teaching:
- Top ten tips for teaching online from colleagues leading the MSc in Clinical Education Programme.
- Advice from Velda McCune (IAD) on making the adjustment from teaching on-campus to teaching online
- A short video about hybrid and online teaching from Velda McCune.
- Tips for hybrid teaching from colleagues in Information Services.
You can also access a wealth of insight experience and practice from colleagues across the whole of the University by searching the Spotlight on Remote Teaching and Spotlight on Alternative Assessment series.
Finally, you can view a list of hybrid teaching and learning resources on the new Teaching Matters page: Resources.
Happy reading!
Joseph Arton
Dr Joe Arton is an Academic Developer at the Institute for Academic Development at the University of Edinburgh, he is a member of the University’s Curriculum Transformation Programme Team and curated The Edinburgh Hybrid Teaching Exchange, the University of Edinburgh’s internal site for Hybrid Teaching and Learning resources and best practice. He has a PhD in Film and Media and specialises in digital media (video, audio, and design) for academic development. Read his Times Higher Education Campus article on video techniques for increasing student engagement.
Jenny Scoles
Dr Jenny Scoles is the editor of Teaching Matters. She is an Academic Developer (Learning and Teaching Enhancement), and a Senior Fellow HEA, in the Institute for Academic Development, and provides pedagogical support for University course and programme design. Her interests include student engagement, professional learning and sociomaterial methodologies.
