Digital Education Newsletter Vol 1 Issue 1


April 2021

Learn what staff development work CTIL has been working on and find out what animal Professor Iain Gillespie dressed up as for a garden party before he joined us as Principal & Vice-Chancellor. 


CTIL Updates

CTIL have been busy this year working to maintain business as usual and in projects to enhance digital learning services in the future.

We have been working to improve the existing template to ensure the best possible experience for students and staff, and to ensure consistency across modules so all users know where to locate items in their modules. We will be sharing this general template with schools shortly in order to create custom school-specific templates.

We’ll also be working on staff development to support staff to design an effective learning experience for their students.

The staff development will also include a significant redesign based on the Ultra 101 sessions that ran last summer. Our trainer has been developing an organisation in My Dundee that will consist of a comprehensive set of guides and links (and eventually videos), so that anyone who works on developing modules will have all of the skills they need.

CTIL has been working closely with schools through fortnightly meetings with Digital Champions and Administrator Champions. These meetings have helped us identify areas of improvement in our tools and services, as well as share innovation across disciplines.

The Doctoral Academy, working with CTIL, have launched their new website, Resilience in Research. Though aimed at Doctoral students, it’s useful for developing and managing your resilience and well-being across the whole university community.

ASC and CTIL have collaborated on a set of guides on time management. Make sure you and your students make time to read it!


Staff Spotlight

[Questions are from the television shows Inside the Actor’s Studio and the panel show Hypothetical.]


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Tool updates

Blackboard (My Dundee)

Gallery view in Collaborate: With the new view, moderators will be able to see up to 25 videos at a time in Gallery view. With the zoom controls, Tiled view, and Speaker view moderators have even greater control over how they want to see their students.

You can read about this feature in more depth on Collaborate’s release notes page.


Stat of the month

Infographic for My Dundee statistics from January 1, 2021 to April 1, 2021 that relates the following information: Average number of active students in My Dundee each week was 4,819. Total student active hours in My Dundee was 1,281,402. Daily average minutes per active student was 2,253. Total number of page views in My Dundee was 2,098,690.

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Fortnightly round-up

What we’re doing:

There are no upcoming workshops scheduled, but don’t forget about our weekly drop-ins! These are held every Tuesday and Thursday from 10:30-11:30 BST. You can access them by going to the eLearning Resources for Staff Organisation and joining the Collaborate organisation room.

What we’ve made:

We have created a comprehensive guide on the course roles and what each one can (and can’t) do. 

You may also find this guide on how to resolve start date errors for Turnitin useful.

CTIL Recommends:

The Manifesto for Teaching Online by Sian Bayne

Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead) edited by Susan D. Blum

Privacy Is Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data by Carissa Véliz


Need more help?

IT ISSUES: 6 places you can go to for help by Laura-Jane Logue
CTIL Drop-in gif

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