Tag: Higher education
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12 years in higher education web and user experience management
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Today I have started a new job. But while I’m looking forward, I have also been reflecting, as this moment marks my first real move away from higher education. Despite the differing natures of the three organisations I worked for, there were many parallels across them.
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UX in universities — UX Soup
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I have been interviewed for the podcast UX Soup. The host Chris Schreiner was interested in the User Experience Service’s work at the University of Edinburgh. He spoke with me about: how the consultancy model works in a higher education context the history of our service the projects we get involved with the methodologies we […]
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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.
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User experience lessons from a university dumping Blackboard
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One university got so frustrated with Blackboard they finally ditched it. But this experience highlights a big problem with almost all enterprise software.
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Academia uneasy with lack of diversity on ‘dude walls’ of honour — Nell Greenfieldboyce — NPR
On the campaign to remove — or make less prominent — walls of portraits of old white men from academia’s past. “It just sends the message, every day when you walk by it, that science consists of old white men,” says [neuroscientist Leslie] Vosshall. “I think every institution needs to go out into the hallway […]
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UI vs UX — Xkcd
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Xkcd’s take on this perennial debate. I guess it had to happen sometime. 🙈 Nine years ago, soon after I started working on a university website, Xkcd published the classic comic called University Website.
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Why content should be published in HTML and not PDF
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Why Gov.uk content should be published in HTML and not PDF How to give up PDFs and improve your higher education website’s user experience The crusade against PDFs has been one of my constant hobby-horses over the years. It has also led to some of my toughest battles in my work. Users hate PDFs, because […]
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Understanding user behaviour for online learning recruitment
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Understanding user behaviour for online learning recruitment The University of Edinburgh Website and Communications team has recently been heavily involved in a pilot project to improve the journey of prospective online learning students, from investigation to offer. Read about our user research approach and how we ensured project outputs met the needs of users.
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Why I value working in user experience in higher education
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The University of Edinburgh is currently recruiting for four UX-related roles. I’m passing on the message because it’s an exciting time to be pushing forward with UX work at the university.
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Do academic disciplines engage society?
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Do academic disciplines engage society? An idea for how academia can make itself more relevant and accessible: [I]t has been my view that universities should present their ‘shop windows’ in a more thematic way, with less of an emphasis on traditional Faculty structures (law, economics, physics, engineering, and so forth), and more on issues of […]
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When alumni interviewers screw up, things get weird
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When alumni interviewers screw up, things get weird The perils of using alumni to reach out to prospective students. This article mainly pertains to examples found in the US. I am not sure how common this technique is in the UK. There is a tricky balance to be struck between two of universities’ main sources […]
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Reflections on IWMW16
My highlights from the the Institutional Web Management Workshop, the valuable annual conference for (mostly) higher education web managers.