Critical Friend
Critical Friend is one of our core services and provides you with a confidential external view and validation of your plans. In today’s HE landscape, learning technology services can mean significant investment and it is essential to maximise the benefit and reduce the risks. Acting as a critical friend we do not tell you how to do things, rather we enter into a conversation with you to help you determine the best way forward.
Service Review
Service Review is one of our core offerings, reviewing individual components of your learning technology services and making recommendations that suit not only the section being reviewed but also the other complementary services. With our experience in running learning technology services (including VLE, TEL, audio-visual, media services) we are able to have a properly informed discussion with your staff. This leads to recommendations that are not only industry standard but are practical for you to deploy.
Digital Learning Review
Our Digital Learning Review service follows on from the individual service review, and is where we provide a holistic overview of your services and make recommendations on opportunities and potential changes. Such a review would cover budgets, staffing, organisational structures and reporting and services to be offered. This can also cover professional services related to running fully online courses, an area that is often overlooked or perceived as not requiring any change. We would also use our knowledge of the global HE sector to create our recommendations and can also undertake bespoke research into provision elsewhere.
Digital Strategy
We are experienced in writing university strategy and policy and can support you to develop and finesse strategies for your digital learning development. This will generally take the form of providing oversight and input to your current or developing strategies (in a similar way to our critical friend services) but can also include a full service where we work with you to create your digital strategy framework.
Online & Distance Learning
Online & Distance Learning is a key strength. It is widely acknowledge that moving to online teaching isn’t simply a case of copying and pasting from an existing face-face course. With our experience we can help you navigate the differences and avoid the pitfalls of moving to online. Kerr has extensive experience of developing MOOCs, online Masters and online UG courses at the University of Glasgow and is well placed to bring that experience and expertise to support your own online development, and within the team we have curriculum experts, open education experts, and content experts. We can provide CPD sessions or a much more hands-on support to develop, so whether you are just embarking on developing online courses or whether you are about to expand, we can help you achieve your aims.
Presentations & Workshops
We offer a number of presentations and workshops which can be stand-alone or easily incorporated into institutional activities such as L&T away days.
Presentation – “The Digital Learning Landscape” – This talk will explore a new metaphor for thinking about the use of technologies within learning environments. We have moved on from the conception that digital learning technologies need to be added on to a learning experience, and really have to consider the digital landscape within which our new students will have grown up. Our learners are likely to have been immersed in a digital from a very early age and will increasingly consider technology as an integrated part of their life experience. In this presentation I argue that we need to reconsider our educational provision in light of these changing landscapes.There is an optional workshop for this presentation which provides an opportunity to reflect on the presentation and engage in a facilitated discussion with the presenter about the points raised.
Workshop 1: “The Post Covid Learning Landscape” – In the first part of this workshop, participants are asked to reflect on their use of online and face to face components in their teaching, and think about what, if any, aspects of online learning they will retain as the classroom becomes the norm again. Participants will then deconstruct a course or module of their choosing and recreate it for hybrid delivery in a post Covid landscape. In doing so participants be able to consider what, if any, changes they will make to the learning activities, to consider what online activities they will retain, and consider what barriers might remain if their institution reverts to mainly on-campus delivery. In doing so they will gain a better understanding of how they might use the tools available to achieve L&T outcomes, examine the differences and similarities of teaching online and face to face, and will also explore some of the processes that need to change.
Workshop 2: “Lose the VLE?” – Participants are asked to reflect on their use of the institutional VLE and in doing so reflect on their use of educational technology and the affordances it can bring. This is achieved by identifying the activities undertaken in the VLE and attempting to undertake them in other systems. By the end of the session participants will have a greater understanding of their VLE and be in a position to decide if it is the most appropriate tool to deliver their teaching activities.
