The Staff Engagement Survey’s latest iteration was run in February-March 2025. I am pleased that Learning, Teaching and Web (LTW) had a survey response rate of 77%, higher than in 2023 (63%). This is also a much better response rate than the overall University (42%), andhigher than ISG as a whole (75%).
Overall, the staff satisfaction of colleagues in LTW is very high, with an overall increase seen since 2023 (and 2018), as well as higher scores on average than ISG and the University as a whole. Only 10 of the 48 items decreased, 3 of which concerned University leaders, and 2 related to University issues which we can’t do much about.
The majority of priorities actioned in the last survey have improved, with the exception being University leadership, although this was likely impacted by the change to the question.
The new priority following the 2025 survey is ‘career development’, with Satisfied with Career Development Opportunities decreasing by 6% since 2023.We will be exploring improving annual reviews, highlighting and monitoring training opportunities, celebrating internal moves and skills development, and ensuring colleagues are aware of the bigger picture of their work contributing to the organisation an.
I will give you more information about how we did in the priorities from 2023 at our All-staff meeting in July.
University of Edinburgh Digital Image Collections CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 ECA Photography Collection
University of Edinburgh is about to embark on a large scale media recording and management project, not unlike those going on at many of our peer universities. We aim to improve our media systems capability to support recording, storing, streaming and managing the increasing collection of audio and video assets used across the collegiate university for learning, teaching, research and public engagement. The existing infrastucture is outmoded and does not offer to the university the service and functionality users currently expect. Failing to refresh the existing systems represents a risk to the university, and to IS, in not being able to respond to business needs of the schools and colleges who wish to make more use of audio and video online for an improved student experience.
We will also explore approaches to the publishing of resources under intellectual property licenses ( eg Creative Commons) that permits use and repurposing ( re-use, revision, remixing, redistribution) by others where appropriate.
The early stages of such a project have the fun bits of finding out who in the University is doing what already in preparation for putting in place a multi-platform broadcast strategy. So far I have discovered You Tute, Research in a Nutshell, dozens of Youtube channels, Edinburgh University on ItunesU, Panopto, CaptureED and of course, our MOOC videos. We are also tracking down a list of all the video and audio recording studios around the place.
Edinburgh University subscribes to the excellent ‘Box of Broadcasts’ service. BoB enables all staff and students to choose and record any broadcast programme from 60+ TV and radio channels. The recorded programmes are then kept indefinitely (no expiry) and added to a growing media archive (currently at over 1 million programmes), with all content shared by users. Staff and students can record and catch-up on missed programmes on and off-campus, schedule recordings in advance, edit programmes into clips, create playlists, embed clips into Learn or Moodle, share what they are watching with others and search a growing archive of material. It will be fascinating to discover the ways in which this service is being used.
Edinburgh is also part of BUFVC which offers an amazing Moving Image gateway which includes 1,600 websites relating to moving image and sound materials in over 40 subject areas.
I am confident that Edinburgh must have a hefty collection of film in its own archives. It would be fun to do a project here like Oxford University IT Services have done this summer in Dreaming Spools. The project has engaged with alumni all over the world and discovered a wealth of film and video made by some of the most influential film makers, journalists, artists, writers, actors, activists and technicians during the periods when they were students.
The Staff Engagement Survey’s latest iteration was run in February-March 2025. I am pleased that Learning, Teaching and Web (LTW) had a survey response rate of 77%, higher than in 2023 (63%). This is also a much better response rate than the overall University (42%), and higher than ISG as a whole (75%). 