*SPECIAL PLEA*: I want to make a special, personal plea to everyone: PLEASE make sure you are receiving your student email. We had several instances this year where people missed crucial information from the University about their fee status, which can lead to drastic consequences. If you received an email from me today about course enrolment, you are probably fine. If you didn’t, PLEASE review the ‘student email’ section of the technologies handbook and make sure you have a system in place for checking your email regularly, or forwarding it. Please do it now! *SPECIAL PLEA*
Wrapping up:
Our board of examiners meeting was held last week – well done to everyone who successfully completed one or more courses in 2013/14! And a special congratulations to all those who were awarded an MSc, Postgraduate Diploma, or Postgraduate Certificate at the board – 22 students in total (with more to come, as a number of people are submitting their dissertations between now and August). We look forward to celebrating with them at graduation in November – virtually or face-to-face.
Apart from that, we’ve had a really eventful year, and I just want to mention a few of the highlights.
The dissertation festival – Clara and Marshall did a wonderful job of co-ordinating and hosting the festival earlier this month, and those who attended gave feedback that indicates they got a lot out of it. Many thanks to all who attended, presented and hosted events!
New personal tutor system – all students on the programme have a named personal tutor, and many of you have attended one-to-one and/or group meetings this year. Overall we are happy with how the system functioned, and welcome any feedback or comments you might have about this as we make plans for next year.
Our new Professor and Lecturer in Digital Education – for those who haven’t heard, Sian Bayne has been promoted to the post of Chair of Digital Education, and Jeremy Knox has been appointed as our newest Lecturer. We are absolutely thrilled for both of them, and delighted that Jeremy will be able to take an even more active role in the programme from September. We will have more new team members to welcome soon, and well let you know about that as soon as we can!
Teaching award nominations – we were very grateful for the support of programme participants, who nominated us for a total of 16 awards this year.
EDCMOOC – ran for a second time, and plans are afoot to do some pretty interesting things with the next run in November 2014! Stay tuned for more…
Digital Cultures and Education research group – lots of activity this year, including a well-attended seminar series and special visits from Bonnie Stewart and George Veletsianos. In addition, the Networked Learning conference brought digital education researchers from around the world to Edinburgh for a few days in April, and generated lots of new collaborations and connections. Our active research culture brings new insights and ideas to the programme content and design, and keeps pushing us to the ‘edges’ of digital education, which is where we most like to be!
Last but not least, a shout out to all those completing their dissertations over the next few months – well done, go for it, and keep up the good work!!!
Looking forward:
You may have noted on the course timetable and web site that some course names have changed – these are:
Course design for e-learning –> Course design for digital environments
E-learning and Digital Culture –> Education and Digital Culture
E-learning Strategy and Policy –> Digital Education: Strategy & Policy
E-learning Politics and Society –> Digital Education in Global Context
Online assessment –> Assessment, Learning and Digital Education
The course enrolment form for September courses is now available in Moodle: https://www.moodle.is.ed.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=131 . We’d appreciate you filling in the enrolment form even if you’re not taking a course in September, just to let us know your plans.
The following courses are running in September (in addition to ‘Introduction to Digital Environments for Learning – all new students will be automatically enrolled for that course):
Course design for digital environments
Introduction to digital game-based learning
The digital student experience – a new course, running for the first time in September
Research Methods
Information about all these courses, and the 2014/15 delivery timetable, is available at http://digital.education.ed.ac.uk/content/ .
