Category: People, Place and Work

revisiting playful engagement

Lovely illustrations for our playful engagement website by the LTW Interactive Content Team

You may have seen a recent WonkHE article about playful leadership  The case for playful leadership | Wonkhe It announces a new research project called Re:PLAY * and I am pleased to say that ISG  University of Edinburgh is a partner in this research.

It was interesting to me that when the ISG directors had a team-building away day recently ( facilitated by Common Purpose), the advice from our visiting mentor was to embrace elements of playfulness in our leadership.

Playful Engagement at work refers to the attitude and behaviours of employees that involve approaching tasks, interactions, and challenges with a sense of enjoyment, creativity, and innovation. It involves injecting elements of fun, humour, and spontaneity into the work environment while still maintaining focus and productivity. At ISG this can encompass the ways we approach innovation, inclusion, creativity, workplace environment, workplace interactions, team building, community building, skill development, outreach, communication, work life balance, achievement and celebration.

The ISG Playful Engagement Strategy was created in 2019 to establish and cultivate a workplace environment and culture that integrates innovation, playful learning, and creative engagement into our practices. The strategy encompassed the implementation of services, tools, technologies, practices, communication, and community engagement throughout the group, extending beyond the University to address the new ways of working.

The original strategy meant to target the four focused areas which defines Playful Engagement for  ISG:

  1. Encourage the growth of innovative, playful, and creative minds.
  2. Advocate for the inventive and playful application of technologies and tools within ISG services.
  3. Leverage our top-tier libraries and collections in unique and captivating ways to enhance our services.
  4. Foster a healthy work-life balance and a positive, engaging work environment.

Over the past five years, ISG and its working strategies have evolved in the way we provide our services and the transition into digital habitation and hybrid modes of working. This project will give us an opportunity for an update of the ISG Playful Engagement strategy.

 

*not to be confused with the name of our lecture recording service

Re-Opening the Eleanor Ormerod Room

I was very pleased to add another space named for inspirational women in STEM to our collection.

Celebrating the re-opening of the Eleanor Ormerod Training room in the University of Edinburgh’s Main Library was fairly simple since Eleanor’s info board was already in this room,

The LST team have refitted the room and installed  lovely hexagonal tables so I hope it will become a hive of activity.

I took the chance to say a few things about Eleanor, and also Rachel Carson.

The reason we celebrate Eleanor at Edinburgh, is that she was the first woman to be awarded an honorary degree for the university… and hers was one of the very few women’s portraits on display in Old college- although her picture got taken down to make space for a modern inclusive display and never re-instated. Some irony in that, and something I am pleased we can address by re-instating her name now.

She is already honoured by ISG – in 2016 we named our cloud compute service Eleanor because it is a cloud and she was the first woman to be made a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society,

Eleanor Ormerod was born in 1828 – and died in 1901, which means she overlapped slightly with Mary Somerville  after whom we named our data centre, who died in 1872.   They both lived long lives ( MS 90, EO 70) and were recognised in their lifetimes as important scientists.

When we look for women who have done inspirational work in STEM , we should always be curious to ask the question about how they were able to fund this work and their living. They were both from privileged backgrounds Mary was a widow, and Eleanor inherited from her father. Eleanor’s work was not taken seriously by her family until after her father dies in her 30s.

She was the first woman to make a scientific study of insect pests of garden and farm in Britain. She is the author of A manual of Injurious Insects. Some advice in the Manual of Injurious Insects would now be considered dangerous or unlawful. For example, the use of Paris Green, which is highly poisonous and responsible for the destruction of harmless fauna and flora.

She was not a fainthearted lass, had a tendency to try out poisons on herself just to see the effects, her Wikipedia page includes a contemporary account of her taking a bite of a poisonous newt.

We chose World Bee Day to open the room and also to think about poisons, environmentalism and changing attitudes to insecticides and farming  because bees worldwide are under threat from neonicotinoids

It makes me think of Rachel Carson born in 1907 famous for her book ‘Silent Spring’.   her house is near my family in Maryland and I think we can draw a very clear line to link Rachel’s work to Eleanor’s. They both studied insects and crops and the environment. They are both involved in insecticides. Eleanor promoted, even invented pesticides. Rachael protested their use ( particularly DDT) because of the harm they cause to other living things through water sources. They both worked essentially in government jobs – Eleanor unpaid and Rachel not paid much.

The honorary degree of LLD of the University of Edinburgh in March 1900 not long before she died.

‘The pre-eminent position which Miss Ormerod holds in the world of science is the reward of patient study and unwearying observation. Her investigations have been chiefly directed towards the discovery of methods for the prevention of the ravages of those insects which are injurious to orchard, field and forest. Her labours have been crowned with such success that she is entitled to be hailed the protectress of agriculture and the fruits of the earth—a beneficent Demeter of the 19th century.[1][3]

nice weather for ducks

Liverbirds
Liverbirds
Pink echo
Pink echo

On some of the hottest days of the year this week,  I ventured southwards for two conferences, both featuring birds and both styled in hot pink.

EchoExperience25 at the University of Nottingham https://info.echo360.com/attendee-hub-echoexperience-emea

and

UCISA Women in Technology in Liverpool WiT25 – UCISA

Pink WiT
Pink WiT

 

At WiT Katie and I spoke about what works in our efforts to establish career paths for women into some of the areas of technology where they are currently under-represented. We presented a number of case studies from the last 10 years of LTW internships and trailed the research work which will be going on this summer to track the career paths and destinations of so many intern alumni over time.  We were un-phased by the fact that the conference organisers had failed to upload our slides sent in advance and so we had to just wing it for while.

At Echo I enjoyed a very glamorous evening of castle, caves, culture and canards about sagittarians and luddites before proving that I would say boo to a goose.

Nottsgeese
Nottsgeese

A Field Guide to Working in Higher Education

A Field Guide to Working in Higher Education
A Field Guide to Working in Higher Education

I am pleased to get my hands of a copy of this new book A Field Guide to Working in Higher Education

The book is designed to support new lecturers who are joining HE from a background in a professional area or career rather than a career in academia. These new teachers draw on different background knowledge and I think it has been a gap in professional development in universities to recognise that they need specific help to get up to speed in our cultures and languages alongside the expertise they are bringing in their area of practice. Too often academic colleagues try to exclude professional people by using academic jargon or referencing arcane local processes.

My contributions to the guide are about the IT support, learning technology, VLEs etc which new colleagues can find for their teaching.  Please do buy a copy and ask your library to buy it for colleagues.

how does your garden grow online?

another lovely slide theme created for me by the LTW Graphic Design team.
another lovely slide theme created for me by the LTW Graphic Design team.

I was delighted to be invited as to National College of Ireland to speak as part  of their  ‘Assuring Quality in Fully Online Programme Delivery’ event last week.  A lovely excuse to visit Dublin again.

I chose a gardening theme which enabled me to talk about the time it takes to grow online learning and the investments we make in ensuring that there are good growing conditions and that native plants can thrive.

To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow
-Audrey Hepburn

International Women’s Day 2025

It was my pleasure to sit on a panel of women leaders talking about our careers in tech. We had a friendly audience and the event was very well organised by Ellen, Fiona and Katie.  One of the questions from the floor was about women who have inspired us, and we all chose women who we knew or had worked with, not necessarily in tech, but who embody the character and behaviors that we aspire to.

I mentioned a colleague from University of Leeds who was my mentor briefly, before she went on to bigger things, Miriam Zukas. Miriam was/is a professor of adult and lifelong learning, and she didn’t have a Wikipedia page. But now she does. Miriam Zukas – Wikipedia  . Wikipedia pages are not really the place to celebrate the way people do their work and the impact they have on people because it is hard to cite, but this oration from Birkbeck’s master sounds a lot like the woman I knew. Miriam Zukas — Birkbeck, University of London .

If pushed to think of an inspiring woman in tech, I might mention Martha Lane Fox. I liked when she said  ‘It’s not ok not to know how the internet works’.

And  I agree with her again today.‘Musk? He’s horrendous’: Martha Lane Fox on diversity, tech bros and International Women’s Day | Martha Lane Fox | The Guardian

Another question from the floor was about specific things we each do, every day, to optimise our resilience and success at work. I said blogging, obviously.

 

who learns where?

Using the right platform for your learning activity

We’ve created an infographic which we hope helps explain the collection of platforms available for University of Edinburgh colleagues to use, the strategy for each and which should be used for different learning/teaching activities.  The graphic talks through the benefits of using each platform. Each platform is designed with a particular use in mind, providing features to suit the specific use-case/audience.  We hope you find it helpful. If you have any questions, please contact us via the IS Helpline.

 

 

Saying goodbye to VLEs we have loved.

I have written before about the sad death of Aggie Booth and the end of Bodington VLE.

Now it is time to wave goodbye to University of Oxford’s  WebLearn. There is a celebratory event this week to remember our time working with WebLearn and all the support and innovations we shared in running and using the system.

The Leeds and Oxford teams met in Oxford in 2005 to discuss development of Bodington in collaboration with Sakai. When Leeds University opted in 2006 to select a proprietary system (Blackboard) for their next VLE, Oxford was left as the sole large-scale developer of Bodington and this situation was untenable. It was at this point that Oxford decided to seek an alternative platform (with a bigger and better community) and chose Sakai Learning Management System, deploying it as WebLearn in  2008.

WebLearn Sakai was first installed at University of Oxford in March 2007 and I joined from University of Leeds in 2008, when it was just a baby.

My memories of working with the WebLearn Team at Oxford are from 2008 to 2014 when I was Head of the Learning Technologies Group (LTG) and then Director of Academic IT (Learning and Teaching).

  • Working with really talented open source development teams. Adam, Mathew, Colin, Roger and Colin taught me most of what I learned about open source and the potential for using technologies in unusual ways. I attended several Sakai conferences with them over the years and there always seemed to be people who really cared about the systems they built and the community involved in developing the product.  The nice thing for me about WebLearn was that it was flexible enough to not be built on the same assumption as the large proprietary systems. Oxford at the time was not driven by a module catalogue which rolled over and refreshed every term. It was based around the teaching which was done by colleagues over many years and with different students groups. The starting place- that one goes to Oxford to ‘study with’ -puts the academic colleague at the centre of the teaching and builds the online spaces around them. Some colleagues at Oxford chose to have a place in the VLE for all their teaching, with resources for first years, third years, post graduates etc  grouped within that. I was pleased that we were able to build that for them. It was nice that we were not in a ‘technology says no’ conversation’.
  • The Sakai Community was for me, a place to meet some very interesting colleagues and researchers, some of whom I still count amongst my friends (looking at you Nynke, Michael and Alannah). It was also a place with some big personalities, Fun evenings with Michael, Ian, Nathan and Dr Chuck.
  • I was also pleased in LTG and OUCS to have talented researchers who worked closely with as the WebLearn team to think about what we could discover about how VLEs and OER could support student learning. Liz, Joanna and Jill really were ahead of their time in bringing a bit of academic rigour to what we were doing.
  • The WebLearn training and support teams made sure our VLE met users needs and Fawei continued to promote and celebrate each use in departments and colleges. Adam has been continuously blogging it since 2009 2009 September | WebLearn Blog and projects using WebLearn regularly featured in the OxTALENT awards.

In recent years, after I left in 2014 to join University of Edinburgh, Oxford changed VLE again and opted for Canvas.  People sometimes forget that when we move to a new VLE  the learning technology teams still have to run the old one for several years to enable course to be taught-out and keep access to any materials which staff and students might need for archives, assessment or appeals.

After several years of running in parallel with the University’s new virtual learning environment (Canvas),  WebLearn was finally closed in 2022 and decommissioned in mid-November 2024. At its peak WebLearn at Oxford had 47,000 users and hosted 101,000 separate sites.

I am sad to see it go.

 

 

 

technology is ‘what we can learn to do’

Digimap cake. Get your geospatial skills here.
Digimap cake. Get your geospatial skills here.

Ursula Le Guin once said ‘We all can learn. That’s the neat thing about technologies. They’re what we can learn to do‘.

Last year more than 5000 people at University of Edinburgh showed up to learn new digital skills. 5210 to be exact. We ran more workshop events than ever before: 604, and we reduced our ‘no show’ rate by nearly 15%.

‘No Shows’ at free training events are a challenge for all training providers I expect. We are using new techniques to structure our programmes and get them as close to ‘at need’ as possible.

Having just launched a programme of AI training which is ‘sold out’ for months ahead, I think we might do even better this year at meeting demand in our organisation.

Digital Skills Programme | Information Services

 

 

 

achievements using AI

As you know,  in December each year we do a round up of achievements over the last six months.  Here’s a summary of the LTW achievements and initiatives from winter 2024, condensed into ten ‘lively’ bullet points by ELM AI:

  1. Edtech Ecosystem Expansion: Launched a new short courses platform, successfully integrating it into our existing edtech ecosystem, attracting over 2500 learners across 200 courses, with a whopping 1 million page views!
  2. Web Migration Marvels: Smoothly transitioned 161 websites to a new platform, involving the migration of 80,000 pages, 90,000 images, and training 800 colleagues, despite the hair-raising complexities of the ISG website debacle.
  3. AI Adventures: Rolled out the SADIE project to explore ethical AI integration in educational technologies, sparking lively discussions and critical thinking across the board.
  4. Digital Skills Dynamo: Delivered 305 sessions in our Digital Skills Programme, elevating 2593 learners to digital prowess and cyber savvy status.
  5. Green Web Warriors: Launched a comprehensive initiative to promote sustainability in our digital estate, culminating in a report hefty enough to rival a master’s dissertation and recruiting three eco-conscious interns.
  6. Caption Craze: Wholeheartedly embraced our captioning service, making automatic captions the new normal for Media Hopper Create videos, ensuring accessibility isn’t just an afterthought.
  7. Migration Maestros: Completed a gargantuan migration from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10, a logistical feat involving years of planning and a cocktail of technical and copyright debt.
  8. Festival Frenzy and Windows Win: Navigated the summer festival season with flair while deploying Windows 11 across all teaching rooms—a double triumph in operational excellence and timing.
  9. Induction Innovation: Refined our induction and onboarding processes for staff based on fresh feedback, fostering a quicker sense of belonging and smoother integration into our LTW family.
  10. Community and Recognition Revelries: Celebrated the extraordinary efforts of LTW staff with numerous awards and recognitions, including Reward Vouchers and Staff Recognition Awards, proving every day is rewarding work in LTW!

LTW’s tapestry of teamwork weaved these achievements into an impressive display of collaboration and innovation, proving that when it comes to pushing the boundaries of educational technology and services, we definitely know how to put on quite the show!