Author: Hamish Macleod

We would like to invite you to participate in Innovative Learning Week (ILW) this year. During the week of 15^th to 19^th February we are offering people the opportunity to have some small experience within the massively multiplayer online role-play game World of Warcraft (WoW).

Eligibility: The offer is extended to all students, alumni and staff. We are looking for participants with some (perhaps quite minimal) experience of the game, to give some time and to come online and mentor one or two newcomers.

Purpose: The idea, of course, is to introduce people to the possibilities of learning from, and through, game play, and to make them lightly aware of the scholarship around game-based learning. We will provide introductory notes to get people started – and a little bit of reading to round off the experience. We would like to have a list of experienced players who could give a couple of hours to meet with, and guide, one or two new arrivals in the Human starter zone at Northshire Abbey. As this is an ILW “event” that seeks to accommodate participation by online distance students and alumni we need to consider participants distributed across the time zones.

Register your interest: If you would like to be involved then please contact one of us (louise.connelly@ed.ac.uk or h.a.macleod@ed.ac.uk) and suggest a date & time that you would be available (morning, afternoon or evening UK time across the week from 15-19 Feb).

What’s involved as a helper? We will contact you and confirm the date & time of the session (s). You would then logon to WoW and Skype with one or two new players (we will provide details of the players). This may take place on campus or it may take place remotely (all participants connect from their own ‘home’ locations). You might like to work in buddy pairs with another experienced friend. Please do tell your friends, so that we can recruit a large group of mentors.

Information about the event is in the ILW “catalogue” at:
http://www.innovativelearning.ed.ac.uk/wow-learning-and-world-warcraft

We would really appreciate your help, and look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes

Louise Connelly
Hamish Macleod

This new awareness-raising campaign is something that we should all – as students and teachers – pay attention to.  The issues that the campaign raises are no more relevant to us in the area of digital education than they are to any other citizens who have some presence in online social media.  The tracks and traces that we all leave behind can be profoundly influential in determining the ways in which we are perceived by others.  Although we – on the Programme –  will clearly have a meta-level interest in this topic, extending beyond the purely pragmatic.

The campaign is being led by Dr Louise Connelly, the Head of Digital Education in the University’s Institute for Academic Development, in collaboration with colleagues from various other parts of the institution, such as the Careers Service, Information Services and the Edinburgh University Students’ Association.  The campaign website already has links to a number of resources that will be of interest and use, and more will be added over time.  We should keep watching this particular space.

The  Programme will again be joining with one of the University-wide postgraduate “Open Day” events on Wednesday 27^th August 2014.  There will be three informal meetings mediated by the University’s video conference system Collaborate.  My thanks to those students, alumni, and teaching colleagues who have agreed to join in the conversations on the day.

Interested onlookers to this blog from outside the Programme student community should regard this as our invitation to you to join in one of the meetings on the 27th, if you have questions about studying with us.  The meetings are spread across the day – 9am, 3pm, and 9pm BST – in hopes that everyone, from whatever time zone, will be able to find a convenient slot.

In addition, we would ask all of you – students, and our wider community of colleagues and supporters – to help us to publicise the events by Tweeting, or otherwise sharing the URL of the announcements page, along with suitably welcoming and enthusiastic messages.  🙂

Those interested in the area of games and learning may be interested in contributing (as authors or reviewers) to a new student journal called “Press Start”.  Take a look at the journal home page at :

http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start