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Dear Digital Education students,

We are busy making final preparations for the new semester and are looking forward to welcoming back those of you who will be studying option courses with us in Semester 1. The first week of teaching begins on Monday 16 September and key dates for your diary in 2019/20 are:

Semester 1 – September 2019
Monday 9 September – Orientation week – Week 0
Monday 16 September – Start of semester – Week 1
Monday 2 December – Final week of teaching begins – Week 12

Semester 2 – January 2020
Monday 6 January – Orientation week – Week 0
Monday 13 January – Start of semester – Week 1
Monday 30 March – Final week of teaching begins – Week 12

For other University calendar and semester dates, please see: http://www.ed.ac.uk/semester-dates

Updated programme and course handbooks will be appearing on the Digital Education Hub over the next few days: http://hub.digital.education.ed.ac.uk/handbooks/

We look forward to seeing you online again soon!

Very best wishes,

Phil and the Digital Education programme team.

A very happy New Year to all our Digital Education students!  We’re looking forward to a great 2019.  This month we welcome new students to ‘An Introduction to Digital Environments for Learning’ (IDEL), and continuing students will be joining us on ‘Course Design for Digital Environments’, ‘Digital Education in Global Context’, ‘Understanding Learning in a Digital Environment’ and ‘Introduction to Social Research Methods’.    As usual, we’re really looking forward to our discussions of all things digital 🙂

Here is a reminder of key dates for the coming semester:

Semester 2 – January 2019
Monday 7 January – Orientation week – Week 0
Monday 14 January – Start of semester – Week 1
Monday 1 April – Final week of teaching begins – Week 12

See you online!

All best wishes for a great semester,

– Phil Sheail (Programme Director) and the Digital Education teaching team

A very warm welcome to all new and continuing students on our Digital Education programme!

We’re excited to kick-start the academic year 2018/19 this week, with orientation activities for new students starting our ‘An Introduction to Digital Environments for Learning’ (IDEL) course.

For continuing students taking ‘Education and Digital Culture’, ‘Assessment, Learning and Digital Education’, and ‘Learning Analytics: Process and Theory’ courses, these all begin next week on Monday 17 September.

Key dates for your diaries this year are:

Semester 1 – September 2018
Monday 10 September – Orientation week – Week 0
Monday 17 September – Start of semester – Week 1
Monday 3 December – Final week of teaching begins – Week 12

Semester 2 – January 2019
Monday 7 January – Orientation week – Week 0
Monday 14 January – Start of semester – Week 1
Monday 1 April – Final week of teaching begins – Week 12

Dissertations students will also be continuing with us of course – and if you are due to start your dissertation this semester, we will also be in touch with you in the next few days.

You’ll be hearing from course organisers directly, but I just want to take this opportunity to wish you all the best for your upcoming studies this year.  We’re looking forward to it!

– Phil Sheail (Programme Director) and the Digital Education teaching team

28 May – 17 June 2018

A tutor-led project for Wider Themes in Digital Education.

The summer school is also open to any students on the Digital Education programme. If numbers are very high, priority will be given to Wider Themes in Digital Education students who will be aiming to add the work to their portfolios for credit.

The Summer school in academic writing will run from Monday 28 May to Sunday 17 June 2018. The course aims to help students to understand relationships between academic writing and their own assignments. Participants are encouraged to bring a theme from one of their assignments or a topic from one of their courses that they would like to write up as a paper for publication. Though largely practical, the course will briefly consider: the role of genre in academic writing; commercial influences and open access; academic practices; disciplinary differences; changes brought about by technology; values and standards in academic writing.  The course will run entirely online in Moodle, with visits to academic journal websites. Students will engage in a range of structured writing activities along with the tutor, who will also run weekly optional synchronous sessions in Collaborate or Skype.

There is no charge for the summer school.

For additional information, or to sign up for the summer school, please contact Christine at Christine.Sinclair@ed.ac.uk

Image: Pandora’s box opened.  Frederick Stuart Church [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Michael Gallagher and I wish to invite you to participate in an event we are delivering as part of the University’s Festival of Creative Learning. Across the course of an hour, we will bring together students, tutors, researchers and other colleagues to explore the nature and future of digital education. There is no fixed venue for this activity and we hope that our group will be made up of participants in a range of different geographical locations and settings (classroom, cafe, office, at home, in transit, and so on).

We will be using the (free) Telegram app for this activity, which will take place at 1pm (Edinburgh time) on Friday 23 February and will last for a maximum of one hour. Through the event we will be asking questions about how we should conceptualise ‘the campus’, whilst exploring the possibilities and challenges of synchronous mobile learning (topics that you are perfectly placed to comment on as a Digital Education student).

Further details about the activity, including how to register and download Telegram, can be found on Michael’s blog at: http://michaelseangallagher.org/the-mobile-campus-imagining-the-future-of-distributed-education-at-the-university-of-edinburgh/

As a side note, Michael and I are both graduates of the Digital Education programme and we’ve been having conversations about the nature of online education – as well as attempting to define ‘the campus’ – since 2009, so we’re really glad to have the opportunity to share this activity with you. We hope you can join us.

James Lamb, ESRC-funded Doctoral Researcher, Centre for Research in Digital Education