Two recent talks I’ve attended have got me thinking about how Universities can provide a supportive environment for developing new learning technologies.
At JISC Connect More I saw a presentation about Noteable, a rather impressive repackaging of JupyterNotes as an LTI Tool developed at EDINA, a department in the University of Edinburgh’s Information Services that does specialist applied research and development. This link between R&D and central IT seems to me to be one of the components that is needed for effective learning technology development. Both the willingness to experiment and to accept occasional failure of a research department, and the IT department’s relatively flexible funding and ability to provide a robust stable service are needed. A few years ago I visited EDINA for a job interview, and I was really impressed at the quality of their space – another essential factor for efficient software development. (Unfortunately I didn’t get the job.)
A few weeks ago I also attended a talk from Simon Buckingham Shum, Director of the Connected Intelligence Centre at UTS. Simon’s talk covered a range of topics, but one thing that struck me was the organizational set-up of CIC, another place that does very impressive Learning Technology development.
with the final decision-maker, rather than having several layers of managers & committees between them.
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