A service design approach to improving student experience

Slides from my UCD Gathering talk on Thursday 15 October 2020, about the work we’ve been doing at the University of Edinburgh to improve the experience of students and staff working with course materials digitally.

This is an update to a talk I’ve given a few times: Understanding what students really need from a virtual learning environment. This was the XXL deluxe 2020 edition, updated and expanded from 20 minutes to an hour.

New content includes:

• In-depth description of how we use usability testing and open-invite showcase sessions to bring stakeholders closer to our users, spread the word, and make change happen.
• Early indications of how this work may have helped the university adapt more easily to online delivery during the coronavirus outbreak.

I was a wee bit nervous before doing this talk. An hour is a long time, but it was still a big challenge to condense all of this work down and present it in an engaging way. In the end I was pleased with how it went. I got some really interesting questions and great feedback.

So thank you to the participants, and thank you to everyone involved in organising UCD Gathering, which was a fantastic conference. I’m still digesting all the content, but I will post my reflections in the coming weeks.