This morning I waited at my garden gate to see a hearse go by. My neighbour, Aileen Christianson died during lockdown. She would often talk with me over the garden fence. The picture in her Guardian obituary is in our tenement’s shared back green.
She was a lecturer at Edinburgh and a feminist and writer. There are a couple of nice obituaries for her in the Guardian and The Scotsman.
Anyhow, I made a Wikipedia page for her in her memory. It seemed like the right thing to do.
We all know the job market is crazy at the moment. Some industries are not recruiting at all, others are scrabbling to get the best expertise they need for this new world. The market for learning technologists is hot and I’ve never seen so many job ads out.
Here’s what I am seeing at Edinburgh:
Another solution may be to try to grow your own learning technologists in house. We are giving that a go too.
If you’ll forgive me for celebrating yet another really impressive piece of work completed by LTW and the team of learning technologists from across Schools to establish a co-ordinated learning design service to support hybrid courses in Learn. I’ve always suspected that learning design was key to delivering learning technologies at this institution, I’m glad we have such an excellent team across LTW and the Schools, and that people are able to give time, even when everything is so busy. Thank you to Jon, Ryan, Tracey, Neil, Brendan, Meredith, Lizzie, Graeme, Alison and Lorraine.
Learning design for hybrid.
They have
This is exactly what we need right here, right now.
You’ll remember that we have been working on equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) issues in ISG for some time.
Directors have now agreed that this work should continue. Which is full credit to many ISG colleagues who have been involved and given their time to supporting this work and organising events. I was very lucky to have a student intern (Dominique) working with me over several years and now to have an Equality and Data officer (Lilinaz) for the next two years. This has given us the resource and time to really engage with our research. We have carried out 2 E&D surveys in ISG. One in 2015 and one in 2019. Both surveys led directly to recommendations for action.
You can read a report of the 2019 survey findings:
EDI ISGReport Summary Report 2020
Recommendations for EDI development in ISG for the next 2-5 years are drawn from staff feedback gathered from workshop participants, research literature and from interpretations of data gathered from ISG staff.
Here are some of the things we aim to do:
Quick top ten:
Develop Networks
Make time to attend
Attend to Recruitment
Develop teams and leadership
If you have a shortage of learning technologists about the place, you may need to grow your own in-house.
If you can find colleagues who have a lively interest in learning and teaching and excellent digital skills, just sprinkle with them with a nutritious training programme and try to equip them with the resilience for coping with a lot of crop.
Our excellent teams in LTW have come up with a new learning technologist training toolkit.
This toolkit provides learning design and digital skills development resources and training for those new to working with learning technology, whether they have just joined the University or have moved internally from another role. It can be used as part of an on-boarding plan, or more generally for skills development.
The toolkit aims to build a foundation level of knowledge across our pool of learning technologists, covering the core learning technologies used at the University alongside learning design practices. Details of school-specific tools and practices should be added locally.
Additionally, the toolkit aims to develop and maintain the University’s network of Learning Technologists through which you can meet others in similar roles, keep up to date with the fast-changing teaching landscape, share good practice and support each other.
The toolkit offers flexibility through providing a variety of guidance and training, which you can work through on a self-study basis. In recognition of the variety of roles that exist in this area, you should use the toolkit on a pick-and-mix basis identifying with your manager which areas are most relevant to your role.
The toolkit is based on Jisc’s Developing Digital Capability model and Learning Technologist role profile, job descriptions of learning technology roles advertised in the University in May 2020, and the University’s Digital Skills Framework. For further information, see the Digital Skills and Training web pages at https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/help-consultancy/is-skills/programmes-courses-and-toolkits/development-programmes/new-learning-technologist or email us at is.skills@ed.ac.uk.
This post can be read in conjunction with this one which describes how we re-skilled library shelving assistants to be learning technology assistants.
During lockdown it quickly became clear that some of the staff who work in ISG could not do their roles from home. In some cases this was true for whole teams, e.g. our staff who manage the library shelves, our staff who work on drop-in help desks, our staff who manage buildings and facilities, our staff who fit AV and IT equipment into teaching rooms.
One of the advantages of working in a large, converged service ( IT, learning technology, libraries, museums and collections together) is that we could take a holistic view and look across the organisation to find new opportunities. In some areas there was new, urgent demand for people. I was in no doubt that we needed many more people to help with the huge shift to hybrid teaching for semester 1, so it simply made sense to re-skill in house. We have converted shelving staff to subtitlers and facilities staff to access facilitators.
Within ISG we decided to find flexibility in our workforce and offer opportunities to re-skill to our staff. In the Learning, Teaching and Web Directorate, we offered 3 roles for colleagues to move into: Learn VLE Assistant, Web Editor and Subtitling Assistant. We offered a job description, training and support for working from home.
The result of this re-organisation and reskilling is that we have 7 colleagues from other parts of ISG now working to do accessibility audits in our VLE, another 7 adding subtitles to public facing video content and one new web editor. All of these roles need a high attention to care and detail, accessibility and accuracy. All of these roles bring with them a chance to learn new digital skills and to understand the challenges our diverse groups of students face when they use our online content and the solutions which facilitate better access.
Thank you to the teams in LTW who welcomed and trained our colleagues into these new roles, and thank you to those colleagues who were so willing to add new skills to their repertoire. When the lock down ends and we go back into our libraries and teaching rooms, I am sure we will feel the benefit.
This post can be read in conjunction with this ones which describes how we are growing our own learning technologists, and recruiting more.
This year, more than ever, our new and returning students need to know we care about their learning. Edinburgh is in a strong position to respond to the challenges ahead whilst maintaining a quality learning experience.