Author: mhighton

International Women’s Day 2020

Issue 26 p. 1 front cover
Illustration of hanging a sheet on a washing line
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This is the second time I’ve been on strike across International Women’s Day. The UCU strike action two years ago was at the same time of year.

That year, while we were on strike we were also hit by the ‘Beast from the East’ -unprecedented snow.  This year we are hit by Coronovirus and the University is hurriedly making preparations ( but not reparations obv.).

The snow and the virus are acts of G_D and can be seen as business continuity incidents. The impact of both can be mitigated by use of learning technology.

If you are wondering why your university is slow to publish guidance on using tech for remote teaching and working from home. It may be because some of the professional expert teams are on strike.

The strike is not about short term things, it is about long term things and these are things worth recognising on IWD. The lack of equality at the University of Edinburgh is real. The pay gaps are real: gender (16.7%) and race (7.9%).

It is frustrating to not be able to come into work but we have gone for some digital celebrations, most of which do not require anyone to cross any picket lines.

To celebrate International Women’s Day on 8th March 2020, events and activities are taking place across Information Services Group to celebrate women and their contributions to the University and beyond.

To celebrate International Women’s Day, a new training room at JCMB is being named after computer scientist and educator, Xia Peisu.

Xia Peisu (夏培肃) (1923 – 2014) has been hailed “the mother of computer science in China.” After graduating from The University of Edinburgh with a PhD in electrical engineering in 1950, she returned to China where she was recruited by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Xia eventually became a founding professor of the Academy’s Institute of Computing Technology and led the development of Model 107, China’s first locally designed general-purpose computer.

Throughout her long career, Xia made numerous contributions to the advancement of high-speed computers in China and helped establish both the Chinese Journal of Computers and the Journal of Computer Science and Technology. A devoted educator, she taught China’s first course in computer theory and mentored numerous students. In 2010, the China Computer Federation honoured Xia with its inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her pioneering work in China’s computer industry.

LinkedIn Learning playlist

The Digital Skills and Training team have compiled a LinkedIn Learning collection of International Women’s Day themed videos and courses. The collection includes videos in a wide range of topics, presented by women who are experts in their field, and will be available from Monday 24th February. To access this playlist, make sure you are logged in to LinkedIn Learning with your University account, and choose My Learning > From Your Organization > International Women’s Day 2020. Alternatively, you can view the collection at https://edin.ac/37Nhs1N.

In addition to this collection, you may also be interested in the following Learning Paths on LinkedIn Learning: Women Transforming Tech: Navigating Your Career and Women in Leadership.

For more about LinkedIn Learning, see www.ed.ac.uk/is/linkedinlearning

Digital Wall in the Main Library

The Main Library’s Digital Wall is showcasing images and videos of women who are shaping the University and those who have had a significant impact in their field. These range from content from our historic collections including L&UC digital images collections and videos have been curated from the Media Hopper media asset collection.

Visit the Main Library to see the Digital Wall, which will be live until the end of March 2020 as part of Women’s History Month.

Data-Driven Innovation – Women in Data campaign

The Data-Driven Innovation Women in Data campaign aims to showcase the rich landscape of women working with data science, technology and innovation across a diverse range of industries, fields and sectors in the City Region. From students to government ministers, chief executives to lab technicians, the campaign captures their achievements, careers and hopes for the future in our 60+ eclectic interviews.

Women in Data aims to show women and girls that others ‘just like them’ are thriving in these areas, including from atypical and ‘non-scientific’ backgrounds. The campaign sheds light on their stories and talents, and supports long-term, critical conversations about the ongoing journey to gender equality.

See the Data-Driven Innovation website for more information.

 

 

pandemic planning

Strike that from Waddington’s Lexicon, ‘the Wonder Game’.

I am very lucky to have a team who think of everything.

The University of Edinburgh lecture recording policy includes a specific clause about reuse under exceptional circumstances including a pandemic (1.3.7). There is also a specific clause about reuse of recordings during industrial action (1.4.3).

I gave a presentation last year at ALT conference about how multiple forces  can combine to hit your business continuity. Last time we were on strike it was snow and floods, this time it’s pandemic planning altc.alt.ac.uk/2018/sessions/

Just saying. Get your learning tech policies in order and next expect locusts.

On strikes:  1.4 iii. “Recordings will not be used to cover University staff exercising their legal right to take industrial action without the lecturer’s consent.”

On exceptional situations:  1.3 vii. “A School may use a recording held within the lecture recording service in exceptional situations to provide continuity, as specified within business continuity plans relevant to the School. Examples of exceptional situations might include significant disruption from a pandemic or other natural event or the unforeseen loss of part of the University estate. The School will, where reasonably possible, inform the lecturer beforehand that their lecture is to be used and for what purpose, and the lecturer will retain the right not to permit this use. If the lecturer, acting reasonably, objects to use for this purpose, the School will not be permitted to use the recording.”

the state of our lecture recording service

In 2020 90% of lecture courses are taking place in rooms where recording is enabled.  Of those, 89% are using the automatic scheduler developed by ISG and Timetabling teams to minimise the admin burden for staff.   The percentage coverage of 90% is above the sector average, which is approximately 80%.  

Use of the service has risen rapidly, reflecting the expansion each year to cover more rooms.  In 18/19 we had 470,000 video views, in 19/20 we have 1.14 million. Coverage across schools has been good with only 4 schools currently below 80% in semester 1 19/20. 

Recorded lectures are made available to students via Learn VLE as a supplement to face-to-face teaching. In 17/18 500 course in Learn had recorded lectures. In 2019, the number is 1605.  With lecture recording implemented university-wide, negative comments on the lack of a central lecture recording service are no longer appearing in the NSS.   

A focused study was undertaken in the Medical School and among the benefits discussed, the most common was the use of lecture recordings to enhance or complement students’ learning practices, such as revision, clarification purposes, and especially learning in their own time.  Staff participants perceived lecture recordings as an accessibility tool, which can be useful for students who may struggle to learn, e.g. those with learning adjustments. The provision of lecture recordings was seen as reassuring and conducive to better engagement by all students interviewed, as they discussed that they can immerse themselves in the lecture experience rather than struggling to take notes while listening and trying to understand the taught material at the same time.  Early findings from research done in Moray House institute of Education and Sport indicates that Students perceive lecture recording as a ‘luxury’ service provided by the university to enhance accessibility and enable a more individualised and flexible approach to learning. 

2019 Ayrton Prize of the British Society for the History of Science

Signatures of the Edinburgh Seven in the University of Edinburgh Archives.

The BSHS Ayrton prize recognises outstanding web projects and digital engagement in the history of science, technology and medicine (HSTM). The prize name was chosen to recognize the major contributions of Hertha Ayrton (1854-1923) to numerous scientific fields, especially electrical engineering and mathematics, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The prize is awarded once every two years.

2019 Ayrton Prize of the British Society for the History of Science is awarded this week.

Given the remarkable strength of the field, they decided to supplement the main Prize with a Highly Commended category, to be awarded to two further projects.

I’m delighted to say that our University of Edinburgh Wikipedia project “Changing the ways the stories are told” is one of the two Highly Commended projects! The judging panel were particularly impressed with the initiative’s track record of contributions to the infrastructure of knowledge on which research and public engagement in the history of science depend.

 

Our submission:

‘Changing the ways the stories are told’: Engaging staff and students in improving the Wikipedia content about women in the history of science, technology and medicine in Scotland.

This project began 5 years ago and has been delivering more and more each year with wider reach, large engagement numbers and considerable impact in terms of public engagement and media coverage. This project is supported by University of Edinburgh and we work in partnership with science, engineering and heritage organisations in Edinburgh to run events to edit and improve Wikipedia content of topics specifically related to the history of women in science.

Our mission is to work with staff, students and members of the public to support them in developing the digital skills they need to engage in writing and publishing new articles on Wikipedia. We have a specific focus on the history of women in science and medicine. Our first ‘edit-a-thon’ in 2015 was based on ‘The Edinburgh Seven’- the first women to study medicine and our most recent was in conjunction with Young Academy Scotland at the Royal Society of Edinburgh. This work towards getting all students and staff in the university to be active contributors is unique in the sector.

The audience for our content includes any members of the public who look at HSTM articles on Wikipedia.  The audience for our skills development training are staff and students who learn about how historical information can be brought out of the university (and other) archives to illustrate, enhance and improve the stories of historic development of science, technology and medicine. We work closely with librarians, archivists and academic researchers to bring their hidden content into the most modern digital platforms and give it new relevance for the public today.

Edinburgh staff and students have created 476 new articles, in a variety of languages on a huge range of topics and significantly improved or translated 1950 more. These articles have been consumed by millions of readers. All editors are supported to understand the impact and reach of their work, to find the analytics and reports which show how their contribution is immediately useful to a wide range of audiences.

By working closely with HSTM scholars, digital librarians and archivists we ensure that our staff and students learn the best practice in using digital platforms for public engagement. We ensure that information is accessible and navigable and make best use of both the archives and the new technology.   Images released from our archive collections and added to Wikipedia as part of this project have now been viewed 28,755,106 times. 

As well as learning the skills of editing, referencing and science communication, we are ensuring that many more of our staff and students learn about how information is created, shared and contested online. We work specifically to address gaps in coverage and improve information where it is poor.

We address the gender gap amongst Wikipedia editors by training large numbers of female students and staff and empower them to edit on whatever topics they choose and thus engaging in the use of digital platforms for their own study and work.

The University of Edinburgh is the first UK university to engage a Wikimedian in Residence to focus entirely on developing student and staff skills.  The project fits with our missions for teaching, research and public engagement as well as the embedding of technology in our activities to engage in digital citizenship and crowd-sourced sharing.

The most innovative part of the project has been to work closely with academic colleagues to embed Wikimedia tasks in the curriculum so that students work on topics which have direct relevance to their studies. One example where we work with the students on the MSc Reproductive Biomedicine is now in its fourth year. The students are assessed and gain credit for the work they do in improving content of Wikipedia.

Five years on from our original work in changing the way the story of the Edinburgh Seven is told, the University gave posthumous degrees to the women who had struggled as pioneers in this area. The degree ceremony in 2019 marked 150 years since the Surgeons Hall riots and this new, updated history of women in science and medicine gained considerable media coverage and impact in Scotland and beyond.

We ensure the sustainability of this project by making it part of the ongoing digital skills and digital literacy training programme delivered to staff and students in the University of Edinburgh and we hold public engagement events alongside our partners in library, heritage and science organisations in the city.

The Wikipedia platform is maintained by the Wikimedia UK foundation and our contributions to improving the public facing content on that platform is part of ensuring that it is a sustainable, growing, open, relevant and useful resource for everyone. Working directly with the Wikipedia platform to add content ensures that we do not take on the long term costs of hosting such a platform for our selves, thus the work of training editors and contributing content can continue as long as the platform is an appropriate place to do it.

Last year this work won a Herald Higher Education Award for innovation in technology and we are expanding our skills training team in the coming year to ensure that we can meet the demand from academic colleagues and students to be trained as editors and as contributors to Wikidata and similar sister projects.

This project represents a clear statement by the University that we want to enable our staff and students to engage in becoming active citizens in the digital world.

Hindsight 2020

picture taken by me at Gartner conf. No rights reserved by me.

Get your time machine ready.  I’ll be presenting a panel session at the LILAC Conference in April.

We’ll be telling the stories of edtech past and futures.

Hindsight bias can be dangerous if it leads us to think we ‘knew it all along’ . We all suffer sometimes from memory distortion (“I said it would happen”), inevitability (“It had to happen”), and foreseeability (“I knew it would happen”). Our panel will join you in reflecting on, considering and explaining what has happened and how things that didn’t happen, could have happened. How would things be different if we knew then what we know now?

Each of our panel have more than 10 years as change agents in information and digital literacy and have led high profile initiatives to shift thinking and disrupt traditional ideas in (in)different institutions and sectors. Together they will bring unique perspectives on the topic of ‘2020 hindsight’. Come along to find out if their radical inclinations have been tempered by their time in institutions. The panel will include past LILAC keynoters and information literacy campaigners.

Burns

One of the bagpipes in our collection at St Cecilia’s. Picture taken by me in the room. No rights reserved by me. http://www.stcecilias.ed.ac.uk/

It’s that time of year again. I’m looking forward to an evening of poetry, haggis and song with good friends.

My favourite contemporary of Robert Burns is Mary Somerville.

Mary had a much loved uncle who was keen on punning.  Burns publicly made fun of Mary’s uncle’s punning and the uncle never punned again.

Burns, possibly a bit of an arse.

edtech haikus

We have some fun, creative programme managers around here. One has the crazy idea that we should get project boards and teams to reflect on the lessons learned from a project via the medium of reflective haikus.   This is what you get when you ask your Lecture Recording Programme Board to draft reflective haikus from their experiences of participating in the programme.

Students love it.
Powerful technology.
Accessible for all.

Scared at the start point.
Found our feet and so much more.
Brimming confidence.

Policy delays.
Sometimes arise the temperature.
All’s well that ends well.

Student employment.
Sound, but high administration.
Make it easier.

People have made it.
Together across the campus.
Very sound service.

The structure worked well.
Project team could make progress.
Good decisions made.

Colleagues are afraid.
What would be the best practice?
Get out to the schools.

Working it out together.
Breaking down barriers.
Business as usual.

Working together.
One big team.
Making a difference.

The retention period.
Navigating treacherous waters together.
To be revisited.

Knowhow captured.
Knowledge exchanged.
Change happens.

Emotion is motion.
Sharing the shifting.
Noticing the change.

We win over Hearts and Minds
Inclusion throughout our teaching
Must keep the ball rolling

Broken Moments of Learning
Resolved and repaired
Independence gained

Silent recording.
Disabled students can’t hear.
Wear the microphone.

A barrier or enabler.
The research reveals many facets.
The community comes together.

Pedagogy meets ethics.
Anxiety and confusion meet innovation.
All ending in positivity.

Give us every view.
We do intend to listen.
A project for all.

 

2020 futures

Photo taken by me at the zoo. No rights reserved by me.

Happy new year to you, Reader.

In the long dark days of the Scottish winter when its tempting to hibernate it’s always nice to have a few things lined up to look forward to in the ‘Spring’. Here are some of the dates I already have in my diary. These are events and conferences at which I’ll be giving presentations or keynotes about a range of topics.

Over the the last few years I have  cut down on my international travel for work, but still very much enjoyed the range of events at which I get invited to speak.

If any of these topics interest you, it would be great to see you there.

Strategic leadership of open and online learning

31st March-  Keynote: Online Learning Summit  ‘Growing your University online: Routes to student success’.
Thank you to Margaret for the invitation.
18th June- Keynote at University of South Wales Learning & Teaching conference. Thank you to Catherine for the invitation.

 

The future of libraries and learning technology

27-28th May- Keynote: CONUL Conference 2020   ‘Imagining the future and how we get there’. http://conference.conul.ie Thank you to Laura for the invitation.

Wikimedia in the curriculum

I’ll be presenting with Ewan about our work embedding wikimedia in the curriculum and LILAC and OER20 and we’ll be launching our book of case studies of wikimedia in UK HE reflecting 5 years of ongoing work. At OER20 Lorna and I will be reviewing 5 years of our Open Educational Resources (OER) service at University of Edinburgh.

Digital literacy and digital skills

6-8 April  at LILAC conference I’ll be hosting a panel with Josie and Jane called ‘Hindsight 2020: if we knew then what we know now’ https://www.lilacconference.com/lilac-2020

Equality and diversity/women in STEM

17-19 March- Equality Diversity and Inclusion Conference 2020: ‘Courageous conversations and adventurous approaches: creative thinking in tackling inequality’ I’ll be presenting with Dominique about the experiences of making changes in our organisation and joining a panel about the the ‘taboo’ subject of menopause.  https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/programmes-events/conferences/EDIConf20

 

I am also planning to complete and defend a massive piece of writing which is currently a bit of a monster, but i’m hoping that preparing these presentations will help me to hone my ideas.

 

 

Festive thank you

Our LTW festive card goes out to nearly 300 people on our Christmas card list.

That’s 300 people outside of LTW who we can thank for the time and effort that they contribute to our success. They don’t have to do this, they have other jobs, they may not think that coming to our user groups and planning meetings and programme boards is the most fun thing to do.  So when they do, we need to make sure we make it as painless as possible for them because we benefit from their advice and engagement.

Thank you for all your help this year in making our services and projects the best they can be. We appreciate all the time, insights and creativity that you give through your work in partnership with us. We couldn’t do it without you. Wishing you a relaxing festive break and a happy New Year.

Every 6 months I ask each of the LTW heads to send me lists of the top achievements in their teams and we celebrate these achievements at our LTW all-staff meeting. This is a tough task for them because there is so much which warrants attention and celebration. Some directorates in ISG only have their staff meetings once a year. In LTW we have our staff meetings every 6 months, partly because we always have so much new work to celebrate and partly because we often have new staff and new projects and it is really important that  we get to know the  people who work in other teams so that we can provide the best, joined up services to the University.

It’s been another busy year and special thanks go to the colleagues who work directly in roles which support our committees and projects, the comms teams, the project managers, the programme managers the project administrators who make sure we are all in the right place at the right time talking about the right thing.

We have been busy on campus: This year we created a learning and teaching spaces strategy to describe the vision and plans for maintaining, improving and expanding teaching space (in rooms and online).  We launched a remote support service so that the spaces team can reach you wherever you are  and we put in a bunch of phones in lecture theatres to enable you to call for help. We created new service dashboards and analytics to better understand how the rooms are used by staff and students and better kit including  recording writing surfaces in all large lecture theatres. The recording of writing surfaces as well as the recording of slides and lectures continues to be a project which attracts a lot of attention  from other universities who are keen to know how we have done it.

We have been busy in our community:  In September we hosted the national conference of learning technologists at Edinburgh which was a huge success, many of you were there, presenting or helping and we won several awards at the conference, including one for the lecture recording team and we celebrated several more of our staff gaining their CMALT certification.

When I meet with the other heads and directors at other universities, we are still one of very few universities who have a Wikimedian in Residence. Which just amazes me. I am not sure why other universities haven’t figured out that wikimedia is a key set of learning technology platforms for knowledge sharing, information literacy, data,  maps and images.  But in the meantime, before they all figure this out, it gives us at Edinburgh a unique edge and a chance to win national awards.

We are also one of only a few universities to be so strongly committed to open educational resources. Our activities in open education and open source are important to us. This is a big part of what we do, what we are commited to in the ways that we work and part of how we show that we understand not just about learning, teaching and web but also civic engagement. Our colleagues in the Library work on open access and open research, we work on open educational resources (OER), open data and open source tools.

OERs are created by students for the specific purpose of re-use.  We work closely with School of Geosciences to release free and open teaching and learning resources for school teachers created by students as part of the Geosciences Outreach and Engagement course. The resources are tagged for ease of use and shared on Times Education Supplement website which is where the school teachers look. To date we have made 43 OERs available to school teachers on TES Resources. They have been downloaded 12000 times.

Moocs are also a  big part of our open activities. We have, as you know, a huge stable of MOOCs. We launched 3 new MOOCs  in the last 6 months and saw 100,000 new enrolments across our portfolio of free short online courses.

We have not been snoozing  with our big systems either: We Launched the new MyEd to the University . We kicked off the procurement for the new Web Publishing Platform and EdWeb. Our Learn VLE  is used by tens of thousands of students everyday, at all times of day and night. Learn and MyEd are the most heavily used of any of the university IT systems, except for perhaps email. We moved Learn to the cloud and began our VLE foundations project  to ensure that it is being used consistently.  10 of our student interns migrated 700 courses into the new Learn Foundations template. They checked the accessibility of 13000 course items and classified 128000 content items against learning activity types. This is the most in-depth analysis of courses in the VLE ever undertaken at the University.

We are investing a lot of time in learning design: We  had 53 attendees at ELDeR workshops, each giving up 2 days of their time so that we can support them in the learning design of a range of academic programmes and courses. We worked with over 70 student reps (UG and PG) on developing student personae to increase inclusivity in learning design.

This year we hosted  75  student workers as interns, champions and helpers. This is important for them and for us. Important work experience for them. New ideas and input for us. As well as being a potential pipeline for new people to join our organisation, it also allows us to tackle some of the scale issues which challenge us. Individual students have done unique work  and groups of students  have ploughed through work which has transformed how we support learning and teaching, working as Subtitling Editors, Student Helpers in Lecture theatres and Digital skills trainers.  In LTW we do it well. So well in fact that we won an award in HR Network Scotland which is the national awards for HR.

In semester 1 this year we recorded 15,000 recordings lectures. We launched the UK’s first MicroMasters programme and a new model for teaching online. Lauren went to Africa to film video testimonials from online students and alumni and we published an interactive Power BI dashboard to enable colleagues to interrogate 5 year’s worth of demographics for applicants and intakes to PG online learning degrees.

We continue to celebrate equality and diversity: LTW is also the home to the University’s Ada Lovelace Day celebrations again this year in October. Ada Lovelace day is when we celebrate the first computer programmer and the contribution of women in STEM and tech. We partner with the schools to run events -This year with School of Engineering, another very successful event and a great turn out for our evening speaker, Ursula Martin. We named our new datacentre after Mary Somerville and appoined a Data and Equality officer.

We have ramped up our engagement with the wider University: we ran workshops and pop up events for over 100 members of staff to gather requirements for our future web services. We have attended 15 promotional events to raise awareness of digital skills. We also hosted the JISC digital capability event in Edinburgh.

We have approved £40k of expenditure in the last 6 months to support  LTW staff attending a large number of training events, conferences and other development activities.

We need to be developing our own skills, but we are also the people responsible for helping staff and student in the rest of the university develop theirs too. Counting bums on seats is all very well but we need to be sure we are reaching the parts of the University other services don’t reach. Since 1st July 2019 we have delivered 263 courses and trained 2088 people and we delivered 13 making the Most of IT sessions to 1,115 new students.

Thank you again to all who contributed this year in making our services and projects the best they can be. We couldn’t do it without you.

Wishing you a relaxing festive break and a happy New Year.