Digital Literacy

This #Take5 is brought to you from Sarah Knight at Jisc. We asked Sarah to write to us Learning Developers about the recent developments – and especially the current emphasis on digital transformation and how Jisc is working with universities to support them with the development of their digital strategies. Jisc is the UK digital, data and technology agency focused on tertiary education, research and innovation. Jisc is  a not-for-profit organisation and provides managed and brokered products and services, enhanced with expertise and intelligence to provide sector leadership and enable digital transformation. Jisc runs the Janet network, the UK’s national […]

This #Take5 is brought to you from Dr Katharine Jewitt, Researcher and Associate Lecturer at The Open University and ALDinHE’s  wonderful Administrator and Web Developer (AKA Technical Wizard). Artificial Intelligence, and ChatGPT, constitute a phenomenal technological advancement in transforming traditional systems of education, enabling us to radically rethink the way we teach and learn. ChatGPT is driving an education revolution. It’s here to stay but leads to some big questions. This post explains what ChatGPT is and how to use it; what we can do about it, current challenges and potential future applications. Read on to learn more about Chat […]

Authors Professor Debbie Holley and Dr David Biggins provide an overview of their research published in issue 27 of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. Their paper is titled: Designing for student wellbeing: challenging assumptions about where our students learn. Our work started with students reporting ‘technostress’ during the pandemic (and yes staff experienced this as well) and reporting that they turned to family and friends to seek support, with only 18% turning to the excellent online materials and signposting Universities offered in lockdown. Digital equity remains an issue across the board, and intersectionality of class, race and […]

This #Take5 has been brought to you from Tasha Cooper from UWE, Bristol and Anne-Marie Langford from the University of Northampton. In this post,  Anne-Marie describes the creation of a brand new ALDinHE community of practice (CoP) focused on Health and Social Care programmes. This CoP is particularly interesting in being online and asynchronous. In this post they focus particularly on the responses curated from a recent community activity that looked at Collaborative Reading Circles. LD Health CoP: Background The LD Health CoP started as a conversation at the ALDinHE conference in June 2022, where I, Anne-Marie, noticed that there were […]

This #Take5 is brought to you from our very own Lee Fallin. Lee has been exploring and playing with this AI technology for some time now – and we asked him to share his insights with the wider LD community. So – read on – and let us all join the conversation about what these revolutionary techs mean for our students and for us.  If it’s all about the ChatBots: What about Learning Development? This blog post will muse on the ‘rise of AI’ and what this means for Learning Development. I am not an expert, but I have spent much […]

This #Take5 is brought to you from Julia Reeve – and it is a beautifully detailed and thoughtful look at  LEGO® Serious Play®. Julia Reeve is a National Teaching Fellow based in Leicester who works in diverse educational settings including Further, Higher, prison and community education. Her practice focuses on building confidence, connection and creative thinking via imaginative, multisensory learning. If you’ve never attended a LEGO® Serious Play® session yourself – please, please read on.   Setting the scene My name is Julia Reeve, I’m an educational consultant and part-time lecturer in the Faculty of Business & Law at De Montfort University, Leicester. I’m […]

This month’s #Take5 is brought to you from Daisy Abbott an interdisciplinary researcher and research developer based in the School of Simulation and Visualisation at The Glasgow School of Art. Daisy experiments with game-based learning – and has created a novel approach to teaching research skills. Research: Mapping and Pathfinding My name is Daisy Abbott, I’m a researcher in game-based learning and teacher of postgraduates at the School of Simulation and Visualisation at The Glasgow School of Art. Join me on my quest to navigate the dangerous lands of teaching Research Skills… Keywords: Research skills, academic skills, higher order thinking skills, […]

Make like an ant? This #Take5 post is brought to you from Dr Katharine Jewitt from The Open University who shares what we can learn for our teaching and learning online from ants. Katharine is looking back at what we have adapted to this year – highlighting the lessons learned that we can take forward in our practice – especially for those of us who will continue with some (or all) online delivery next year.  For those of you who already feel a bit too ant like in the version of Technology Enhanced Learning that is emerging post-pivot – please […]

This #Take5 is brought to you from Debbie Holley – with guest bloggers Tom Burns and Sandra Sinfield from LondonMet’s Centre for Professional and Educational Development (CPED) (see also their student studyhub). Debbie is reflecting on her move to Bournemouth’s Department of Nursing where she is Professor of Digital Innovation. Whilst Debbie has always researched digitally enhanced teaching and learning – the challenge of the last year was adapting that to a Nursing focus – and in a time of pandemic. Don’t panic! ‘Mere jelly’ – Student image reproduced with permission from ‘Facilitating Student Learning’ Unit, London Metropolitan University In […]

This #Take5 post is brought to you from Dr Carina Buckley of Solent University – and is in dialogue with her #Take5 on students and camera use in online teaching and learning from a few weeks ago. The Evil DrB herself Should your students turn their cameras on? A rebuttal A few weeks ago, I argued in this blog that students should be free to choose whether or not to turn their cameras on during live online sessions, and that there were other ways for students to participate. While I still support this approach, particularly from a student-centred, theoretical point […]