 share presentation we've got. Sure, it should be on the screen now for you. Oh, cool. Excellent. Is that there? Yes, yeah. Perfect. Okay, great. Thank you. So, yeah, thanks for joining us today. Just as a bit of an introduction, my name is Stuart Nickel. I'm the head of education with design and engagement at the University of Edinburgh, and I'm going to be running the session today with my two colleagues, Tracy Madden, who's a learning technology advisor, Edinburgh and Marcello Corolla, who's an instructional designer. And like we said on the session Blurb, I think this is a bit of an ambitious and exploratory one-hour session. And we're aiming to kind of get, I guess, invite your input into designing an opening primer course about being a learning technologist. So, we'll do a presentation for the first sort of 10, 15 minutes just to kind of give a bit of a background into an overview of what we're trying to achieve and a little bit about the primer course. And then we wanted to be quite inclusive and collaborative. So, we're planning to split into three groups to talk about three different aspects of what might be in the course, broadly aligned to the CMOT capabilities, technology, pedagogy, and then policy legislation. And I think, hopefully, that we've just tried that and that should work. We're going to try to automatically split into those areas. So, probably, but looking at the numbers of probably about three or four people in each group. So, it should be quite nice small groups for discussion. I just about the session, why we're running this just now. I don't, you probably have noticed the same thing, but over the last year, we've seen an increase in the number of new learning technologists. People joining, starting a career as learning technologists or shifting across or being redeployed. And as a result of the pandemic and so much teaching having been pushed online, we really did see an increase in the number. And we started to put together, Edinburgh anyway, an induction toolkit to get people started on being learning technologists. That was quite a static resource that we've put together. So, we really wanted to investigate whether we could potentially put together a short course, a support online course. That was a bit more about community building and about an introduction to what a learning technologist is. And it's not only just aimed at people who are aiming to become learning technologists, also as more people are more teachers are engaging with technology in their teaching and having been pushed into the online space. And it's also about what we think others should know about learning technologists. So, this isn't just aimed at people looking for a career in learning technology. It's also a primer so that people know about what we do. So, this is also the point of the session, I guess, you know, is an opportunity for us to reflect upon our profession, especially for those who are learning technologists, but if you don't identify as a learning technologist, then also it would be very interesting to get your input into that as well. So, an opportunity to reflect on our personal journeys, what we wish we knew before we'd become learning technologists, what we think others should know about us, and what we think those aspiring to be learning technologists should know. And I guess just put our cards on the table, but like what we'd like to achieve as a team at Edinburgh, we've started to build a collection of courses to do with different aspects of teaching with technology. A course that we launched in the past couple of months is How to Create an Online Course, which is a massive open online course that we've launched on FeatureLearn. And that was really had a similar kind of driver to it. We had teaching teams coming to work with our instructional designers, and we felt that we were always giving them this kind of quite static induction into what it is to design an online course. So, we built Marcello and his instructional design colleagues, anyway. Built a two-week online course, fairly short course about what it is to design an online course for those people to take. We had our internal audience in mind, but we felt that it was actually of interest to the wider community, so we developed it as an open course. And in the past few months since it launched, we've had over 2,000 people engage in that course. It seems to have been useful. We've had a really great feedback. We have other courses that we've been developing over the past couple of years as well. An Edinburgh model for online teaching is about teaching online. We've developed that with our colleagues in the Centre for Research and Digital Education. We haven't opened that up yet, but we have had over 700 teachers internally take that course over the past year. But it is something that we intend to open up over the coming year to the wider community. We've had MOOCs on Introduction to Social Research Methods, which is really aimed at researching what we do, so research and digital education. And that's been a useful course. And we've got plans for new courses. One of them is around creating media for online teaching, so a much more practical course. And then there's this course, I think, that fits into this kind of suite of courses that we're hoping to develop. I guess what we'd like you to achieve out of today's session, like I said, an opportunity to reflect on our profession after what I think has actually been quite a difficult year. We've been at the forefront of supporting that move to the use of learning technology online for so many. Have we learned anything new about what we do through the last year? Do we need to develop further about any different aspects? I think it's interesting that all are going to be launching their framework for learning technology ethics this week. I really think that is an important area that we do need to develop more. I think there's also questions around the impact of legislation on our work. It's kind of become an increase in burden over the last few years. And often leads us to do some contradictory things on the back of legislation, which is there for the good. So those are things I think we could do with developing our understanding of a bit better. But really interested to hear what you have to say about that. Also, it's an opportunity for you to help us define a curriculum for an open primer course on being a learning technologist. And feel free to tell us if you think that this isn't a good idea or won't work. We don't have any preconceptions and we're very open to your input to this. And also just lastly, hopefully opening up the possibility for opportunities for collaboration. If this is something that seems to be of interest and that you'd like to get involved in, we'd be very open to any thoughts about potential collaborations as colleagues from other institutions. So feel free to bring that up when we're in our discussion groups or also to get in touch with us after the session. And I just had a final slide and it was just thinking about what would be covered in a short two-week or three-week primer course about learning technology. But just to acknowledge that it's a really complex thing that we do, learning technology isn't really just one thing. You don't do an undergraduate course and become a learning technologist. We have a variety of job titles. We work at a variety of positions within organizations centrally or locally. We work in a range of educational sectors across secondary, FE, HE, commercial. And we come from a range of backgrounds. Your colleagues come from academic backgrounds, technology, teachers, educationalist, designers. And we convert into this role of the learning technologist supporting the use of technology and teaching. And when I was kind of reviewing or thinking about this session, I went back to David Hopkins' book about what it is to be a learning technologist from a few years ago. And I think it was kind of interesting. I was kind of reflecting on some of the people attributes that he was talking about that Sarah Horrigan had talked about. And it really did kind of resonate with me. I guess there is something about the people that I see working as learning technologists. There's a curiosity, playfulness. They need to build connections like we do at all. They need to be proactive, passionate, and we're always learning. Things are always changing, so we're always having to learn new things. So are there things that we need to tell people about those kind of people attributes that they kind of need to develop and build? And then there's the practical things. I went back to our learning technology toolkit and the sorts of things that we're asking people to get up to speed with. And there's things like learning design, how to purposefully design in the use of technology and teaching the practical skills around virtual learning environments and how to use them. And then the kind of teaching skills around using them effectively, media management systems like Kaltura, virtual classrooms like Teams, Collaborate, Zoom, and then all kind of issues and platforms and practices around assessment feedback. And there's all the rest, almost limitless list there. So this is quite a complex thing we're trying to squeeze into quite a short course. And I'm going to pass over to my colleague, Marcello. We're just going to talk quickly about what it is to make a good open course, because I think if we're going to do this, we need to be aware of what makes a good open course. Thank you very much, Stuart. Yeah, so just as Stuart was mentioned there in the earlier slides, myself and my colleagues and Stuart, we worked together last year on creating this, how to create an online course. We did this in collaboration with Futurelimb, we used the platform to deliver this. And one of the things we decided on when we were making this course, we're trying to establish what are the core features that we need to build an online course and obviously how can we deliver this in two weeks? And obviously with it being such a short short course, we can't deliver everything within two weeks. So we decided to pick out some sort of core topic areas. And the areas that we decided to cover in this were things ranging from like personas. So it's more to do with knowing who your potential audience is, who they are, the differences in the audience is how to reach out to those people. We covered the areas of diversity and inclusion, how you can integrate that as part of your courses, whether being fully online or part online in a sort of hybrid mode. We also looked at active learning, why that is important and how you can build that into your courses. And also sort of tips and features on how to keep learners engaged. So we didn't want to focus too much on technology here, but we wanted to focus more on what are the key things you need to keep learners engaged. And one of the things we tried to do within that was trying to not only just use our own expertise that we've developed over the years, but we've also got good insight from other people who worked at the university, who either come from say background and sort of marketing. So who know more about persona to people who work more in depth with technology and how all that integrate together. So we tried to package that into some sort of short online course over two weeks. The key thing here is it's not really aimed at new professionals, it's aimed at everybody who is whether you're experienced in this area or whether you're brand new to this, even for teaching staff. And I know as Stuart touched on, this has been a really challenging 18 months or so. We're having to shift to models that perhaps some of us have never, never done before. So we often feel that the things in this course that would be useful to everybody. And we wanted to try and create a gamut of learners that could come into this and try and get as much as they can out of this within a two week course and then obviously, you know, expand beyond that. So when we're looking at sort of good sort of open courses, it is quite an open question as to what makes a good open course. But some of the key features that we've found not only whilst developing this, but also even over these sort of past year and a half or so is trying to think what is it that people are looking for when they're looking to create courses? What are the important features when trying to move things online? And one of the key features we found is planning. So we, many of you have probably heard of the ABC learning design workshop. We've found that planning for this and getting people involved in this at an early stage was crucial. Helping them understand their audience just because it's online. It doesn't necessarily mean that your audience is everybody. It might be a targeted audience. You might have a very specific goal in mind for that. Another thing to take into consideration with things like practical elements. So what about assessments? How do you use these? How will they be different? You know, people might be nervous about doing that online. You might get others that are quite comfortable doing this. And also digital tools. You've got to think a little bit about accessibility here in terms of, you know, what are the needs of your general audience? And also just thinking sort of widely how much of that technology you need to integrate into your course. It's one thing in delivering a course online and thinking, well, I have all these capabilities and futures, but it's whether you need to use them or whether you need to use them, maybe sporadically. And it's more important about getting a greater sense of engagement within the course. So just looking at that, we've taken a couple of snapshots of what our course looks like. So these are just some of the key features that we've taken from our course. So as I've mentioned, they're sort of talking about identifying target audiences. So we've got a whole section on that. We allow people to create their own personas. If you've never done a persona before and have no idea what it is, just explain it in more detail and give you a bit of a practical hands-on with it as well, which is quite a bit of fun. There's areas around sort of active learning. So we give learners an opportunity to go and find out a bit more about it, what it is, how they can apply that to their courses. And the last one there is, yeah, I've deliberately put a bit of cake in there because who doesn't love a bit of cake on a Monday morning. But this is talking a little bit about learning design principles and how to create a learning sequence. And these are very sort of simple, static example there. How to build a course if you're a brand new baker and want to learn about course design there. So we tried to incorporate a wide range. And there's other things in there which I've not touched on. But that sort of gives a sort of general overview and flavour of what we feel is necessary to make a good online course. I think my colleague Tracy will be talking next about looking at what support exists already. Thank you. So very quickly we're aware that there are already things in existence. So for instance, Octel, some of you might remember, I was somewhat involved in that as a volunteer. Octel was a MOOC organised by ALT as it's said to help those planning and delivering teaching to make the best use of technology. So the emphasis was very much on peer learning and support, though there were also support tutors such as myself being available to help encourage or answer questions of those taking part. And we know that the attendees appreciated the fact that they like the materials but they also liked the interaction with support tutors. So materials from Octel still exist if you look them up and they're openly licensed so you can still use them today. Obviously there's also CMLT as a framework. This is very useful for those of us who want to give other people an idea of well what is a learning technologist. It's quite difficult to describe. The CMLT framework answers that question quite well. So I'm using it at the moment. I'm using it with new learning technologies very new to the profession to mentor them to give them an idea of what they're aiming at and give them idea of the breadth and depth of the job. Obviously it's really meant for people looking back over their practice and it makes much more sense once you've been in post a little while but nevertheless it's still a good handy guide. So as Stuart said though what we're really looking at is as something who is something that's for the very early career learning technologist for the person who thinks of learning technology is perhaps something they want to go into or for those people who aren't learning technologists but work with learning technologists maybe you manage us maybe you want to collaborate with us. So something that give you idea about what the job is what the roles are what kind of knowledge and strengths we offer which will help you and us work together on things. Cool thanks Tracy and Marti. I hope that gives a bit of an overview sort of how we hope to try and kind of design this as an online course and then as Tracy was saying you know recognition that there is stuff out there and this isn't the first time this has been attempted and what we want to do now is to break out into some subgroups I think for 15 minutes we're going to kind of take one group each between Tracy and Marcello myself. I'm going to share the we've put together a Google doc a single Google doc that you can open the access one for each group and I will share that in the chat just now and you're very welcome to input to that directly rather than just having a scribe oh I've got a short link there to Tracy as well anyway those those links should both get you to that same Google doc and but if we come together in those groups we can have those discussions and we can start to to put some of our thoughts into that Google document and I think that'd be really useful we've got some we've got some initial prompts in there so we did try this earlier can we um can we try yeah yeah unless anybody's got any questions before we we jump into the groups um is everyone okay with that cool let's give it a try we'll we'll jump into the groups for 15 minutes and see what happens