I had a few things on my new year’s list to things to do, so I am happy to report some success in things on which I had been procrastinating.
I am now the happy holder of:
1) a UK Passport,
2) a Fellowship of the RSA,
3) a Principal Fellowship of the HEA
Still waiting for my new drivers license. It seems to be dependent on the info from the passport, but systems are slow.
I am assembling quite the portfolio of digital volunteering activities. In addition to my work as a Wikipedia editor, I also give unsuspecting organisations the benefit of my expertise on a range of topics. I sit on 2 charity boards, support 3 mentees, review CPD portfolios for ALT and sit on review panels for Athena Swan. I try to ensure that my espousing is not ultracrepidarian.
I have a couple of speaking engagements lined up for the first half of the year. Please do join me if you are interested in dicussing this kind of thing.
I’ll be part of the University of the Highlands and Islands’ celebration of International Women’s Day 2022 #BreakTheBias….in education and research! content. https://www.uhi.ac.uk/en/learning-and-teaching-academy/events/iwd/
I’ll be part of Open Education week 2022: Open to the World: Open course development at the University of Edinburgh https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/open-to-the-world-open-course-development-at-the-university-of-edinburgh-tickets-265040823237
I’ll be speaking at the Advance HE Equality Diversity and Inclusion Conference 2022: Inclusive Institutions in Action Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Conference 2022: Inclusive Institutions in Action | Advance HE (advance-he.ac.uk)
I’ll be keynote at UCISA’s spotlight. on Digital Capabilities: https://www.ucisa.ac.uk/Events/2022/April/Spotlight-on-digital-capabilities
I’ll be a keynote at CONUL 2022 https://conul.ie/event/conul-conference-2022/
One of the things which has happened as a result of events all being online is that there are now more talking head videos, interviews, webinars and panel sessions to watch and review.
Here are some of mine:
Developing Inclusive Educational Practices with Video-Based Learning Dec 8th, 2021 for ECHO360
Interview with SPARC for – Open Education Champions series Oct 6, 2021 for European Network of Open Education Librarians https://openscholarchampions.eu/openeducation/
Apereo Foundation Plenary: Open Education on a Post-Pandemic Planet, June 2021
youtu.be/D7hL9i-NdyM
I also seem to have a track record of being interviewed:
Open at Heart: An Interview with AACE Keynote Speaker Melissa Highton
https://www.aace.org/review/open-at-heart-an-interview-with-aace-keynote-speaker-melissa-highton/
Interview: Catching Up With Judge Melissa Highton From The University of Edinburgh
https://www.digitaleducationawards.com/post/interview-catching-up-with-judge-melissa-highton
Director’s Cut: An Interview with Melissa Highton
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/directors-cut-interview-melissa-highton-melissa-highton/
The EDEN interviews: Melissa Highton
http://www.steve-wheeler.co.uk/2016/12/the-eden-interviews-melissa-highton.html
In Conversation with Melissa Highton
Data Driven Innovation: Women in Data -Melissa Highton
https://ddi.ac.uk/women-in-data/melissa-highton/
Creating a Culture of Open: Melissa Highton
https://oerworldmap.org/resource/urn%3Auuid%3Ae8a88020-9882-4326-a9dc-813d4d3c1eb5
I’m much chuffed to have won the Open Global Individual Leadership award
It’s an award presented to an individual who has demonstrated significant leadership and longstanding involvement with Open Education. A person who has made significant and clear contributions to the furtherance of the Open Education movement, whose contributions to Open Education have spanned regions and/or had a global impact.
I have also successfully renewed my Senior CMALT to remain in good standing as a professional learning technologist. The assessor said it was
‘An impressive account of development activities and how they have influenced learning technology developments at Edinburgh.’ Which is very pleasing.
My CPD journey continues. I completed a microcredential Certificate in Decision Making from LSE before Christmas, and I’ve finally sent off my application for PFHEA.
I was very pleased to be able to deliver this conference workshop with Lilinaz as a pre-conference workshop for UCISA’s Women in Tech Group Conference in October.
It is another of the UCISA CPD sessions and builds on data we collected last year about demographic differences in lockdown
At the University of Edinburgh, we conducted University-wide surveys in 2020 and 2021 to understand people’s experiences of homeworking, taking into account their demographic differences. This gave us a rich data set from which to understand the experiences of women in IT during the pandemic. This presentation focuses on what we learned, and takes an intersectional approach to how different aspects of jobs were affected by off-campus working. The presentation takes an EDI perspective, discusses if and how different groups had different experiences, and how these differences can be taken into account when developing policies for hybrid working in the future. The session was a presentation of findings, and a discussion of how the findings are being used to develop policies. The content is interesting as it is evidence-based, using data over two years. In some instances, it was interesting to see the change of attitude from 2020 to 2021, while in some instances, settling into home working did not affect people’s opinions. The surveys took into account 19 demographic variables and it was interesting for the audience how these variables affected home working.
The session was well received and we experimented with new functionality in Teams, allowing participants to move through the slides at their own pace while we talked. This seems like a good way to allow participants to engage with quite a large set of data in the areas which interest them specifically. It’s nice to get nice feedback on the way we delivered the session as well as the content.
| What did you enjoy the most? |
| seeing results of real world research and being able to discuss this in the chat with others |
| The easy going, friendly nature of the event & the great use of technology for interaction |
| Better understanding the experience of other HE colleagues |
| The fact that they are willing to share the data with us and that everyone is in the same boat with hybrid working |
| all parts were interesting |
| the presentation style and learning from other colleagues |
| Hearing about others experiences |
| The interactive nature of the session. The way we could move to the slide we wanted to. |
| The insights and the way that they were presented. Very good, open, friendly presenters. Willing to expand on areas that people asked about. Very interactive and stimulating. |
| Clear and engaging content that was immediately relevant and thought-provoking. Presentation balanced context and “take-aways” very evenly. The session seemed to fly past, and I ended up with a lot of notes to go back over. |
| Everyone was participating in the conversation. |
| The way that the chat had equal value with the slides. I thought asking a question and then getting people to put responses in the chat worked really well. |
| Seeing old friends and learning how much data there is to support our real experience of working from home |
| The survey findings presented |
| I thought being able to look through the presentation at our own speed was amazing. Really useful. I thought the speakers were great, really clear and excellent insights from the data. Also loved how open this was – wouldn’t have thought this kind of event would go beyond the institution doing the research (I know that’s the point haha) but just a great event to be able to attend and ask questions. |
| The very active chat |
| Excellent presentation in a novel format |
| It was good to hear that other HEIs have had the same experiences. |
| This was a very valuable and interesting insight into responses to the recent situation, and a very comprehensive set of data presented. |
| Great work by the presenters and very interesting data. Wish we had more time to delve into the data detail |
| It was really informative – lots of information – but also a bit of fun too. Really good that the slides are available post session too so that we can look at our leisure. |
| The sharing of the data and invitation to join, share questions and share data really underlined the collaborative value of ucisa. Currently ucisa is my best value network, and the webinars are always worth attending. |
| This is definitely a “top ucisa sessions to attend” (I’ve attended lots!) and I will be recommending it, and the conference next week, to colleagues. |
| Time went really quickly (i.e. it didn’t drag). The atmosphere was very light and friendly. Felt very positive to be in a meeting led by all women (rare in my experience at UoM ITS). |
| a two hour session is quite good with time before to check in work and then get on with the day – thank you so much! |
| More events like this please! |
| Really engaging! |
A recording is available from UCISA if you are a member, or Lilinaz and I are available to deliver it again if you would like to invite us.
The LTW teams have been busy winning awards for excellence again this year.
We were finalists in Computing Magazine’s Digital Leadership Awards in 2 categories: ‘Best place to Work in Digital’ and ‘ best Project Team’. On the night we won ‘Project Team of the Year 2021‘ for our team of student interns who co-created online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We entered in a number of categories in the ‘Open Education Global Awards’, and we were winners of the ‘OE Global Open Policy Award’ for adoption creation and implementation of an open policy mandate with a clear impact of public investment in the development of open knowledge through the efficient use and reuse of resources for the public good the ‘Open Curation / Repository Award’ for work with local schools dedication to openness, access, high quality and innovation and vision, and two individual leadership categoroes.
We are shortlisted as finalists in the Smarter Working awards for ‘Small-Scale Project: Online Learning for Frontline Workers During COVID-19′.
We are finalists in the 2021 Global Advancing Academic Development Good Practice Awards and the Staff Development Forum Developing Excellent Practice Award .
Our Digital Skills Festival won the Staff Development Forum Developing Excellent Practice Award. This was our first award for this team, and it was great to have external recognition for our work alongside other award-winning LTW teams. http://sdf.ac.uk/9537/university-of-edinburgh-digital-skills-festival
We’ve got job ads out for more new colleagues to join us on stage. Other universities may be advertising jobs to help them get started with online learning. At Edinburgh we are taking it to the next level. We need someone to be Learning Technology Team Manager working with the MOOCs , micromasters and online courses teams
Learning Technology Team Manager – University of Edinburgh Jobs Careers (oraclecloud.com) (Grade 8) and we need a web developer Assistant Web Developer – University of Edinburgh Jobs Careers (oraclecloud.com) (Grade 6) to work with our development and interactive content design teams. It could be you.
I’ll be part of two universities’ festivals of learning and digital this week.
At Digital Week 13-17 Settembre 2021 at Università degli Studi di Padova. I’ll speak about policies and practices of Open Education at University of Edinburgh.
At University of Durham Festival of Teaching and Learning 2021 13th-17th September. I’ll speak about ‘The Future of Learning and Teaching in HE in the Post Pandemic World’
In both cases I’ll re-use some of the content from my Apereo Foundation Plenary: Open Education on a Post-Pandemic Planet youtu.be/D7hL9i-NdyM
I have been thinking about what makes the landscape for digital education at Edinburgh so distinctive. We are going through a programme of curriculum review. There is a tendency from some to see learning technology as something that ISG does to the rest of the university or ‘digital’ as something that is done to us by outsiders (commercial suppliers). Neither are true and Edinburgh has key distinctive elements which offer differentiation, USP and value alignment.
Off the top of my head in no particular order:
-Edinburgh leads in open source software development. we take care to ensure that we are not entirely dependent on commerical solutions, we are committed to development of open source tools and to software development in house as part of open source communities. Our developers are contributing to and leading the development of tools e.g webPA. Software developers who will push frontiers and find new solutions. I want them working in my university. I want to attract them and I want them to stay. I need diversity of thinking in my creative teams. Values driven. Invest in areas which showcase and make clear the role we play in leading with these values.
-Edinburgh as a publisher and consumer of open educational learning materials- Faculty at Edinburgh publish thousands of items of OER which ensures we are one of the largest Creative Commons content producers in UK HE, publishers of learning materials and open educational resources. UNSDG . values. Open education is one of those access to quality education for all, education for all and the redistribution of wealth in education through open sharing of learning materials and knowledge. Our open courses play an important role in supporting the SDGs. Our approach to developing and delivering digital education opportunities champions the fourth goal, to ‘ensure inclusive and equitable education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’, as learners anywhere in the world, at any stage of life, can gain access to free, flexible, accessible materials on a broad range of subjects. We source, create and publish all course materials under open licence, making a critical contribution to achieving the aims
-Edinburgh as a world leader – 70+masters courses online and 80+MOOCs. We have always taken an outward looking view. We are steeped in a history of Scotland spreading enlightened views around the world ( even as we struggle with our independence and secession issues at home)
Commercial innovation
Edinburgh as a commercial supplier – ethical edtech products and services developed and used within Edinburgh and supplied commercially to other schools and universities – Digimap, Digimap for Schools, DataNation, Notable.
We partner with 3 big global education platforms to offer strategic choice and access to new markets. Channel for translational research. shorten the distance from bench to bedside ( or barnyard) – public engagement. COVID MOOC
We have a direct route to market for our learning technology MOOCs
We offer learning technology MOOCs
We have the only UK Micromasters on EDx
Student engagement/Student voice
We employ students in our organisation to ensure their input into the development of our services
Data informed practice- We carry out mass surveys of student user experience to ensure that our services meet student needs. We support faculty in changing their practice in response to this research.
Data informed practice- we gather and analyse data on service usage and adapt to changed in behaviour, trends or gaps.
Students as learners – we have a huge programme of skills development available. For all, for free.
Professional practice
We have a more professionally accredited learning technologists that any other institution in the UK
More than half of our educational design team have teaching qualifications.
We sponsor PTAS research projects to ensure that ‘edinburgh experience’ is reflected in scholarship of teaching.
Faculty as learners – we have a huge programme of skills development available for faculty to learn how to teach and data on who attends.
Learning technology teams regularly network with colleagues across and outwith the university, participating in scholarship, presenting at conferences and sharing knowledge.
We meet to discuss ethical and EDI issues in our ISG reading group.
We employ an equality and data officer to help us ensure that our services are inclusive.
There’s no gender pay gap in our learning technologies group.
All ISG staff have ADRs and CPD.
Our procurement is rigorous and we take care with DPIAs and EQIAs.
We have data stewards in place. we have control of our own data and the ability to shape the technology to the way we want to teach. We should try to avoid having to say no, you cant’ teach that way because the technology won’t let you.
We understand cookies and analytics.
We understand accessibility.
We understand ethics.
Things which are not common at other universities:
We have a learning design service to support colleagues in designing courses.
We have a UX service to ensure that we consider the user experience of services.
We have an OER service to help staff make positive choices for sharing
We have an edtech policy officer to ensure that our policies are robust.
We have a data and equality officer
We host media platform for all staff and students so that they don’t have to use Youtube with adverts.
We host a blogging platform for all staff and students who want to blog so that they don’t get spammed.
We have lecture recording fitted in 400 rooms.
We have a wikimedian in residence to integrate digital skills and knowledge activism into the curriculum
We have cool makerspaces staffed by students in the library.
We have in-house media production studios dedicated to educational media production.
We have in-house graphic design.
We have computational notebooks available to all staff and students.
We understand how subtitles and captioning robots work.