{"id":2978,"date":"2020-10-23T16:54:50","date_gmt":"2020-10-23T16:54:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/?page_id=2978"},"modified":"2023-12-01T10:42:04","modified_gmt":"2023-12-01T10:42:04","slug":"messages-to-my-staff","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/messages-to-my-staff\/","title":{"rendered":"Messages to my staff during lockdown 2020-21"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

Every Friday I write a message to my teams in LTW.\u00a0 Reassuringly, in the University we are getting a steady stream of high-level communications from HR and ‘the very top’.\u00a0 In my messages I try to focus on achievements and successes.<\/p>\n

I’ll keep them here to look back upon when we come out the other side. They already serve to be an impressive list of what the teams\u00a0 have been doing.<\/p>\n

Starting a new page for 2022<\/a><\/p>\n

Even more for 2023<\/a><\/p>\n

Friday 20th March 2020<\/h2>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Home office.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dear All,<\/p>\n

Well done all, for making it through what must be one of the craziest weeks at work, ever.<\/p>\n

Thank you for all your work in getting set up to work from home, for looking after each other, and for taking care to be safe and well.<\/p>\n

Thank you also for all the extraordinary measures you have taken to ensure that the University is successful in continuing learn, teach and web.<\/p>\n

Gavin has asked me to pass on his thanks for \u00a0‘The wonderful and immense response from LTW to the challenge of moving to remote teaching.\u00a0Please give my thanks to everyone involved\u2019<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I realise that we still have a lot to sort out about how we keep working, in our homes and with our families and pets who need us. This situation is unprecedented, but I trust that we will try hard and make it work.<\/p>\n

Best wishes, enjoy your weekend.<\/p>\n

-Melissa<\/p>\n

Director LTW<\/p>\n

Friday 27th March<\/h2>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Empty streets<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dear All,<\/p>\n

I hope you are all ok at home. I am so impressed by how well our teams and services are responding to this situation. We are seeing increased use of all our learning technology systems and receiving great, positive feedback on the support, training and expertise we are providing.<\/p>\n

Our academic colleagues are working hard to play their part in tackling the Corona Virus. \u00a0This is one of the very good things about working in a research university. We are providing services which support research and teaching and knowledge creation and dissemination.
\nhttps:\/\/www.ed.ac.uk\/news\/2020\/experts-play-key-role-in-bid-to-curb-covid-19<\/a><\/p>\n

In LTW, we are all part of this. We are currently:
\n\u2022 helping to open up content on MediaHopper to be used by NHS Lothian staff,
\n\u2022 helping MSc Critical Care to open up a Learn course to thousands of clinicians and creating a new MOOC.
\n\u2022 helping Usher Institute to create a web database of\u00a0evidence based\u00a0research\u00a0on COVID-19 that can be accessed by policy-makers and clinicians seeking up-to-date and reliable answers to key questions.
\n\u2022 adapting the graphic design in\u00a0chapters from the Adult Medical Emergencies Handbook to be put online.<\/p>\n

This is important work and the university\u00a0appreciates the contribution we are making.<\/p>\n

Well done for making it through another week. If you are unsure, or short of something to do, please let me know.<\/p>\n

Best wishes, enjoy your weekend.<\/p>\n

-Melissa<\/p>\n

Director LTW<\/p>\n

Friday 3rd April<\/h2>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Deserted castle.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dear All,<\/p>\n

Another week has passed and I hope you are all still doing ok at home. The pace of activity in LTW does not seem to have slowed at all, many of you must be exhausted. \u00a0The Principal has given us two days of leave in recognition of the fact that everybody needs a rest from work sometimes.<\/p>\n

I am very pleased to see how well you are managing to shift your teams, events, board meetings, steering groups and \u00a0community activities online. I know that there are online teaching and training sessions going on every day.<\/p>\n

Amongst our many achievements:
\n\u2022 The Web Team ran\u00a0our first ever Web Publishers’ Community online via Collaborate.
\n\u2022 Catherine Koppe was nominated for a Sustainability award for providing an electronic workbook service within the ISG training suites. The judges were impressed by the amount of paper this has saved, and direct cost savings as a result, they offered\u00a0heartfelt thanks and congratulations for the fantastic work she is doing.
\n\u2022 Amanda Scully has been elected by University of Edinburgh students as Students\u2019 Association VP for Community next year. Congratulations!
\n\u2022 You attended and spoke at virtual conferences to virtual audiences.
\n\u2022 You launched a new MOOC at short notice and high speed and shifted big courses from platform to platform as demand changes. \u00a0https:\/\/www.futurelearn.com\/courses\/covid-19-critical-care-education-resource\/1<\/a>\u00a0This\u00a0 resource will help frontline healthcare workers in this high-stress, high-risk environment.
\n\u2022 Stewart\u00a0Cromar and Jon Wilson are supporting ISG comms to make changes on the ISG website.
\n\u2022 You are progressing with recruitment\u00a0and\u00a0on-boarding\u00a0where\u00a0that makes sense.
\n\u2022 There is much blogging, podcasting and\u00a0sharing of pictures of pets.
\n\u2022 Ewan McAndrew launched our new publication about using Wikipedia in Education.\u00a0https:\/\/oer20.oerconf.org\/wikimedia-in-education-online-launch\/<\/a> It\u2019s a beautifully designed book of case studies about curriculum innovation, with many examples from Edinburgh. The event was supposed to be in London for 200 people, but it shifted to online for 1,000 people.<\/p>\n

You will have seen that Gavin is keen to advertise work opportunities for staff who are short of things to do. This will be very interesting for us in LTW as we may have colleagues from other directorates who join us to work in areas supporting Learn Foundations<\/a> and media subtitling.<\/a><\/p>\n

Well done for making it through another week. If you are unsure, or short of something to do, please let me (or your line manager) know.<\/p>\n

Best wishes, enjoy your weekend. Stay safe. Thank you.<\/p>\n

-Melissa<\/p>\n

Director LTW<\/p>\n

Friday 10th April<\/h2>\n

The University gave us along weekend Friday and Monday holiday<\/p>\n

Friday 17th April<\/h2>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Cherry blossoms.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dear All,
\nI hope you are all ok at home. It sounds like this lockdown will continue for a while, so please pace yourself for the long haul.
\nYou will have noticed that Gavin has got the hang of Media Hopper Create and is doing regular video messages.\u00a0 He is also very impressed with the success of the COVID MOOC and the future thinking from Learn Foundations<\/a>. \u00a0Similarly popular is our course\u00a0 \u2018An Edinburgh Model for Teaching Online<\/a>\u2019. We have 150 staff signed up and 100+ more on the waiting list. Its great to see so many colleagues eager to find out how to do it!
\nI am getting a very strong sense that we will need to provide a lot more learning technology support to the College and Schools in the coming months, and perhaps for longer, so can I ask you each perhaps to have a think about people you know around the university ( or IRL) who you think would be assets to our teams (and might be on precarious contracts now)?\u00a0 Staff or students. We will particularly need people who may have used our tech, built websites, taught or designed MOOCs, with good knowledge of accessibility and UX and a passion for teaching and learning.\u00a0\u00a0Let me know.
\nWell done for making it through another busy week.
\nBest wishes, enjoy your weekend.
\n-Melissa
\nDirector LTW<\/p>\n

Friday 24th April<\/h2>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Library looking lovely.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dear All,<\/p>\n

Well done for making it through another busy week.<\/p>\n

Stuart has attracted 400 academic staff to his training programme. Jon has 31,000 on his MOOC and Gavin now believes we can make MOOCs in a week. Lauren and Emma\u2019s marketing efforts have brought more than 900 sign ups for the online learning open day. Ewan got 14 editors, 18 new articles and 80 articles improved as a result of his Earthday Editathon.<\/p>\n

As a result of your creativity:<\/p>\n

Our free courses are listed on\u00a0https:\/\/www.edinburghlockdowneconomy.com\/<\/a>
\nThe CRC collections are now available in Animal Crossing\u00a0https:\/\/blogs.ed.ac.uk\/dlam\/2020\/04\/23\/animal-crossing\/<\/a>
\nWe now have a new \u201cHow To Make Video Content\u201d series: https:\/\/media.ed.ac.uk\/playlist\/dedicated\/102178591\/1_ss0sj2nw\/1_jwi6ubp1<\/a><\/p>\n

You will be aware that concrete plans for semester 1 are still elusive.\u00a0 Time constraints over the summer mean that it will not be possible to redesign all on-campus courses to be taught \u2018fully online\u2019, nor to develop a fully \u2018hybrid\u2019 model. I expect that we will use best efforts and the good thinking that has been already done in the\u00a0Learn Foundations project to repurposed\u00a0a scalable solution for moving all on-campus courses (particularly those for returning students in 2nd, 3rd\u00a0and 4th\u00a0years) into a state where simplified remote teaching can take place, continuing students can be held close and we can maintain community to sustain continuation of studies.<\/p>\n

Another thing we learned this week is that the email announcing you have a voucher reward looks a lot like spam, so be careful if you get one not to just bin it!<\/p>\n

Colleagues in the CRC are collecting your lockdown artefacts for their archive. I trust\u00a0you will send them your many creative pieces.\u00a0\u00a0https:\/\/www.ed.ac.uk\/news\/staff\/2020\/covid-19-experiences-to-be-documented<\/a><\/p>\n

Best wishes, hang in there, enjoy your weekend.<\/p>\n

-Melissa<\/p>\n

Director LTW<\/p>\n

Friday 1st May<\/h2>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Backstreets.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dear All,<\/p>\n

Well done for making it through another busy week.<\/p>\n

Students have been doing their first week of online and open book exams, and we\u2019ve been supporting them as best we can.<\/p>\n

We have been moving our classroom-based training programme online. We now have online delivery options for most of our classroom courses and Developing Your Data Skills Programme. These include webinars, videos, LinkedIn Learning courses, resources, guides. Digital Skills Programme<\/a> webinars have been delivered to another 250 staff and students.<\/p>\n

We are seeking to systematically improve our estate as is, starting with audits of content and accessibility. We are underway with a major programme to develop a new suite of common tools, services and technologies – including a modern, cloud-based publishing platform as a replacement for EdWeb – designed to offer our web community what they need to deliver a world-class experience for their users for years to come. We are also hoping that the university will sign up to the W3C \u2018contract for the web\u2019\u00a0https:\/\/contractfortheweb.org\/<\/a>\u00a0but it has to go through half a dozen committees first.<\/p>\n

You have also been supporting Usher Institute in developing their \u2018UNCOVER\u2019 site full of evidence based reviews of COVID 19\u00a0https:\/\/www.ed.ac.uk\/usher\/uncover\u00a0 and publishing new guidance for students on how to stay safe online.https:\/\/www.ed.ac.uk\/information-services\/help-consultancy\/is-skills\/digital-safety-and-citizenship<\/a>\u00a0It is important to remember that just as \u2018home\u2019 may not be a safe place for everyone, the internet is a toxic place for many too, and we need to take care of each other.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll have heard much talk about the dire impact the situation is having on the university. Your managers are working hard to try to ensure that contracts get renewed and jobs are secure. You will also hear much about furloughing, and economic recovery. This week Nicola Sturgeon launched a skills gateway online which links thorough to the MOOC platform where we have many of our online courses.\u00a0https:\/\/www.myworldofwork.co.uk\/learn-and-train\/find-free-online-courses<\/a><\/p>\n

Our ISG teams in UCreate Makerspace have been working hard to develop PPE for anyone who needs it. They have shared the design of the\u00a03D stackable visor model they have been developing at uCreateStudio<\/a>.\u00a0 The model has been uploaded by the OER\u00a0 team to\u00a0Sketchfab\u00a0so it can be downloaded under open licence. This makes the design available to anyone to make, re-use and adapt further as they wish.<\/p>\n

Best wishes, enjoy your weekend.<\/p>\n

-Melissa<\/p>\n

Director LTW<\/p>\n

Friday 8th May<\/h2>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Swanage.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dear All,<\/p>\n

Well done for making it through another busy week.<\/p>\n

Good to see so many of you blogging about life working from home
\nhttps:\/\/www.noexceptions.io\/embracing-remote-working\/<\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/blogs.ed.ac.uk\/dennyroberts\/2020\/05\/05\/hyperreal-marx-and-furry-pets\/<\/a><\/p>\n

This week we launched a new MOOC on blended learning.\u00a0 1700 people signed up for the online learning open day. We have welcomed new colleagues and we have colleagues joining us from other directorates to help with Learn Foundations and subtitling.\u00a0 We have also moved some LTW colleagues into furlough if it hasn\u2019t been possible for them to keep working. Colleagues on furlough are still able to undertake training, so there is no escape from updating your digital skills.<\/p>\n

We are working with Schools to provide support for two different types of exam alternatives \u2013 open book exams with a 2 day turnaround, and shorter closed book exams with a 2-3 hour turnaround (plus an hour for digital submission, many of these are hand-written). Exam period is the 27th\u00a0of April until the 29th\u00a0of May, so still a while to go.\u00a0 There are 483 exams in total, with 17K sittings. There are quite a few at the weekend and cover is being provided for any issues that occur on those days too.\u00a0 Assessment continuity support:\u00a0https:\/\/www.ed.ac.uk\/information-services\/learning-technology\/more\/assessment-continuity<\/a><\/p>\n

This week we also began planning for Welcome Week in September. Leaflets and handouts will be a no-no,\u00a0we will need to think creatively about our merchandising\u00a0 and inductions this time.<\/p>\n

You may have seen discussion of a \u2018hybrid\u2019 model for teaching next year.\u00a0 It is still a bit hard to get ones head around how social distancing will work on campus with each person needing a certain amount of space around them, our lecture theatres and seminar rooms will be very different from how they were before.\u00a0 It its important to the University to advertise that this hybrid model is NOT an online-only model, and this is a strategic distinction for the University.\u00a0\u00a0We know that many international students remain extremely nervous about the recognition of online only programmes.\u00a0\u00a0So \u2018hybrid\u2019 delivery does not assume either a fundamentally on-campus or fundamentally online model but is designed for easy student transition between the two.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure it will become more clear, eventually.<\/p>\n

We are running more training sessions for remote working and teaching and we have updated our training and documentation including documentation to support making video and streaming from home.\u00a0 You may have spotted that the BBC have released images from their archives\u00a0 to be used as backgrounds in Zoom\u00a0https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/archive\/empty_sets_collection\/zfvy382<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0It sounds like ISG is about to buy a site-wide license for Zoom, so if you have suggestions of images from our archives which can be used as backgrounds I\u2019d be happy to see them.\u00a0 You too could work from under the eaves of McEwan Hall\u00a0https:\/\/images.is.ed.ac.uk\/luna\/servlet\/s\/pit557<\/a>\u00a0or dance at the 1949 Revel\u00a0https:\/\/images.is.ed.ac.uk\/luna\/servlet\/s\/fnjyew<\/a><\/p>\n

Best wishes, stay safe.<\/p>\n

-Melissa
\nDirector, LTW.<\/p>\n

Friday 15th May<\/h2>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Fountain.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dear All,<\/p>\n

Well done for making it through another week.\u00a0 Today is national #workFromHomeDay. 15th of May, in case you have lost track.<\/p>\n

The University has launched a stream of recovery, renewal and adaptation projects. There are several streams with different names and subgroups. If you are invited to join one please do, but also please let me know.<\/p>\n

I know you are all busy. A training programme for remote teaching is running every week, as is a whole raft of digital skills training for staff and students. Our copyright teams have added new guidance for copyright in remote teaching. Our graphic designers are discussing ways to make posters, stickers and signage for a socially distanced campus.<\/p>\n

We are recruiting Learning Technology Support Officers, if you know anyone who might be interested\u00a0https:\/\/www.jobs.ac.uk\/job\/CAB451\/learning-technology-support-officer<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Knowledge of the university, of LTW and of the technologies we use would be a bonus.<\/p>\n

We are continuing to get regular updates from Gavin and all-staff emails from the Principal. On 26th May I\u2019ve organised for VP Colm Harmon to meet with the university learning technology community to share his thinking about the way forward for semester 1. If you consider yourself to be a learning technologist and would like to join the meeting you are most welcome,\u00a0 Laura will be sending out a meeting invitation soon.<\/p>\n

You all know that there is online training in health and safety, bribery and corruption, bullying and harassment, equality and diversity for you to do. If you still haven\u2019t done your mandatory training and you have teenagers at home, why not get them to work through it with you and use it as a home-schooling teachable moment about what its like to work in a behemoth.<\/p>\n

Best wishes, stay safe.<\/p>\n

-Melissa
\nDirector, LTW.<\/p>\n

Friday 22nd May<\/h2>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Selected fish and chip shops re-open in Edinburgh.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dear All,<\/p>\n

Well done for surviving another week at home.\u00a0 Nice to see you keeping busy:<\/p>\n

Callum tells us about the work involved in UNCOVER:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/blogs.ed.ac.uk\/website-communications\/assisting-covid-19-research-with-uncover\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Duncan tells us about his art projects:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/duncanstephen.net\/lockdown-projects-month-2\/<\/a><\/p>\n

and the Tab tells us what is going on:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/thetab.com\/uk\/edinburgh\/2020\/05\/20\/breaking-uni-of-edinburgh-cancels-all-study-abroad-starting-in-september-65773<\/a><\/p>\n

Even in lockdown, LTW is still winning:\u00a0 <secret until it is announced><\/strong> on Friday, June 5, 2020, so don\u2019t tell anyone until then<\/em>.<\/p>\n

We told the students we were recruiting interns and more than 100 of them applied to work with Learn Foundations one the summer. This is an amazing response and an exiting opportunity to show how we can work with students to co-create this new hybrid offering of (h)ours.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

We told the world about our online programmes and applications to PG OL degrees are up 21% on same time last year.<\/p>\n

We told our academic colleagues about teaching online and another 400 of them are going to start to learn more in June.<\/p>\n

We told our academic colleagues about making video and they told us they need an additional six media production studios around the campus!<\/p>\n

We want to tell our new students everything we can about how to be successful as hybrid leaners so we are making courses to support them in 4 broad areas:<\/p>\n