Education

Digital services are a key enabler to breaking down barriers to learning and widening access for people who could not otherwise access learning on campus at Edinburgh Napier. This includes local, national and international opportunities to engage with a wider student community, supporting life-long learning. We will leverage these services to create partnerships with other institutions and businesses in ways that would not have been possible without technology enablement.

The ENhance curriculum enhancement framework requires digital information literacy to be embedded in the design of our education programmes, including promoting data literacy and fostering the creative use of technology, which will inculcate skills required by students throughout their studies and for life. In fact, this strategy underpins all aspects of ENhance.

By consolidating our learning technologies into a well-curated modern ecosystem, we can provide the best blended, fully online and immersive experience for our students, aligned to the University’s Learning & Teaching Strategy and our inclusive learning practices. Augmented and virtual reality enables access to challenging spaces and provides a more authentic learning experience. The selection of technologies, and their application, will be collaborative, based on research and scholarship, including that conducted by our Centre for Higher Education Research.

The strategic Curriculum Management Environment provides a step change in our understanding of our portfolio of provision, becoming the official record of all provision during its life-cycle from inception to closure, bringing transparency to Quality Framework compliance and approval processes, and holding key information to learning outcomes, assessment methods, links to graduate attributes and resources for planning and operationalisation.

For more on the digital learning environment, watch Nazira Karodia (VP of Learning & Teaching) talk about her vision.

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The digital strategy is quite ambitious and it includes not only the innovations that we that it will unlock for learning and teaching, but also in terms of that wider student experience and supporting our students throughout their student journey with us. And that includes using learner analytics so that we can provide students with data to support them in their learning to enhance their engagement with the university. But it also provides staff with some very valuable information

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so that they can not only tailor their their approaches but also their services to best meet the needs of our students. I'm very keen that students have access to content that is in a format that they can, that they can access anywhere, anytime, but also is in you know as I said bite sized pieces but also longer more immersive type of content. So it's tailoring

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the content that we have to suit our different learning styles and our different approaches. The great educational resources that we have created at Edinburgh Napier, some of which have been Co created with our students. And what we want to do is ensure that that material is disseminated openly to others around the world where we can share our practise but we can also learn from others. And these resources will be available openly on our

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digital platforms for both our partners. We operate worldwide, so our partners anywhere can have access to them, but we can also learn from their practise. Digital transformation allows us to leverage these really exciting new technologies. Generative AI brings in great opportunities for our students and our staff. And So what we aim to do with our digital strategy is create a framework, a a scaffolding so that

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both our staff and students are using and exploiting, if I may use that term, generative AI to enhance assessments to for our students to be able to get skills that are needed when they go into employment. But they're able to do this in a very safe environment, in an ethical way. That is a huge concern for us at at Edinburgh Napier University, that we do experiment with our students in terms of how we use

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AI.

Learning Spaces

We design learning spaces based on our expertise in digital and blended education, reflecting advances in pedagogy as we develop our campus and virtual environments.
Key focus areas are refresh of the audio visual suites in classrooms and specialist teaching spaces, including assistive technologies, active learning spaces with supporting technology and modernising the structure, tools and content of our bespoke Virtual Learning Environment, Moodle.

Specialist Spaces

We provide specialist learning spaces, tailored to our provision, seeking the best of emerging technologies to simulate real world scenarios and create authentic learning experiences. On campus, this includes computer suites, digital-enhanced skills centres and cutting-edge immersive spaces. Virtual spaces, such as simulated science laboratories and the Virtual School of Computing, are able to keep pace with changes in need and build our teaching capacity and reach.

Learning Resources

We curate our learning resources as digital assets from creation to retirement, including captured content created in our learning spaces. We provide a suite of technologies and specialist learning content designers to ensure they are engaging, accessible and integrate with our VLE and MS Teams platforms. Our libraries offer digital access to learning resources aligned to our curriculum and heritage collections for teaching, research and outreach.

Feedback & Assessment

We use digital services to support assessment and feedback best practice, positively impacting retention, progression and satisfaction, while reducing staff and student workloads.
As we move away from traditional exams, we use the unique benefits of digital platforms to support inclusive, meaningful and authentic assessment, aware of the impact and opportunities of machine learning and generative AI.

Global Online

Our fully online education platform is underpinned by our VLE, so benefits from our approach to continuous improvements to user experience and inclusion. We are diversifying the programmes available so that learners in all geographies have access to our world-leading teaching. As we do so, we continue to modernise the way that the content is designed and delivered.

Learner Analytics

We will continue to build on our Student Analytics Platform and the rich information held about a student’s journey to ensure they have the tailored support they need to realise their full academic potential.
Colleagues can analyse data from the School level to individual student in order to determine specific interventions. We provide students with access to their own data to aid their academic journey.

University wide

As well enabling strategic objectives within our Learning& Teaching and Internationalisation Strategies and our developing Infrastructure & Estates Strategy, this theme directly links to the delivery to a range of strategic KPIs, including those focused on Building Careers, Growing Networks and Student Experience, and associated Transformational Actions:

Build Careers: Graduate Employability
Build Careers: Curriculum enhancement framework (ENhance) % of all programmes engaged to at least threshold level through the full framework
GrowNetworks: Income from TNE/ Glocal Online (£M)
Student Experience: Student Satisfaction: NSS
Student Experience: Student Satisfaction: PTES
Student Experience: Continuation following year of entry

Transformational Values

Our transformational actions explained.

Introduce & Embed the ENhance Curriculumn Framework

Deliver Accessible Upskilling & Work-Based Learning

Align Academic Excellence around Wellbeing & Sustainability

Technology Enablers

We balance innovation with industry best practice to exploit emerging technologies for the benefit of students and colleagues, while protecting the information we hold and services we provide.

Research Environment

Digital services provide the environment for ground-breaking research, data generation and analysis. They facilitate collaboration and accelerate knowledge sharing.