Spotlight

Stuart is doing a part-time PhD with us and is Head of Digital Strategic Initiatives at the University of St Andrews, researching and leading strategic projects to enhance digital education and research. When he applied for the MSc, he was working in a very different role, finding himself trying to figure out how to make our online programmes more interactive and engaging for students. 

As part of the Strategy course, he pulled together everything he had learned over the previous three years into a plan for completely rebuilding the main programme he was working on at the time. 

He declares that the programme not only gave him the language and tools that he needed to have critical yet hopeful conversations about digital education but also changed the course of his career, transforming his sense of what was possible in digital education and giving him the confidence to come up with new ideas and lead changes. 

Eli has been working for 10+ years in goverment and private sector organisations, focusing on instructional design. When she applied for the MSc, she was finding communicating ideas to academic colleagues incredibly difficult, as if they were speaking "two different languages". 

The programme gave her academic confidence and allowed her to look at her field from a "completely new" perspective. She feels that it massively impacted the work she was doing and the success rate of her projects because she was able to formulate conversations that fitted her audience and reduce friction resulting from different ways of communicating ideas.

For the Design course, she developed a self-led, MOOC-style, online course on the art of photography, aimed at the evening class market rather than university level. Working on this project, she realised how much she had improved her understanding of how we learn, and what the barriers to learning can be. After taking the Assessment course, she revised her Photography MOOC design to incorporate what she had learned about assessment literacy, which she considers her first "jumping off point" when she has similar conversations with colleagues today.

Janet works at Trinity College Dublin in a research centre focusing on learning technology and the future of work. She declares that the MSc Digital Education opened many doors for her, including the chance to move into her current career path from her previous role in healthcare. She uses the knowledge and insights gained from the programme on an almost daily basis while helping organisations with their learning challenges, such as onboarding new employees into remote or hybrid working roles.

During the MSc, she designed a set of games for the Play course that addressed some of the challenges relating to onboarding or induction in large workplaces. Her project aimed to encourage collaboration between new employees and included a treasure hunt and a set of games to teach mandatory training such as gowning technique and manual handling. 

She was impressed by the quality of interactions and communications in the programme, which - despite being taught entirely online - allowed her to make friends around the world. 

 

Noreen is currrently working as an Associate Tutor on the MSc in Digital Education and Tutor on the Digital Games, Play and Psychology of Learning, Course design and Critical Issues in Education courses.

She says that "[on the programme] there was a real focus on digital culture, digital environments and game-based learning and much more scope for creativity rather than a utilitarian professional qualification (...) There was a real sense of community even though the cohort was scattered across the globe (...) Late in my life (I'm 64 now) I have achieved something I had always dreamed of but never thought possible - an academic career (...) and the opportunity to write and have a book published. I am incredibly grateful for these opportunities which began with the MSc programme back in 2012".

Cathy was a Learning Technologist when she applied for the MSc to better understand the work the was doing at the intersection of technology and education. After the MSc, she also completed a PhD in Digital Education with us.

She declares that the programme has had a profound impact on her understanding the presumptive link between technological advances and human progress and the social and political upheavals that are happening right now across global education and societies, including the growing phenomenon of datafication of education.

Matt is an academic teaching leadership at the University of Glasgow's Adam Smith Business School. He declares that, thanks to the Digital Education programme, he was able to move into a 'postdigital' way of thinking, combing both digital and face-to-face teaching. He still uses the "Dear Data" task that he learned in the Data course, which allowed him to engage his creative side while looking at data from a new perspective. 

The programme helped him to stand back from the purely technical aspects of digital education and start critically thinking about broader questions on how emerging technologies impact education, all this while having genuine fun engaging in the subject.

Marion works for Education Development Trust, an international NGO that delivers large scale education reform programmes in Africa, Middle East and UK, in a knowledge management and solution innovation role. She "has no doubt" that the MSc contributed to her being able to move into her current position from her previous role in education publishing, where she was engaging with transitions from print to digital in the classroom. 

For the Futures module, she developed Embracing Complexity in Education, an open education resource (OER) that she regularly draws from in her work: from adopting a complexity and systems thinking perspective when considering global educational challenges, to having a practical understanding of OERs and creative commons licensing.

Monica is a digital learning designer at Imperial College London. She says that the rigorous yet flexible and inclusive MSc programme offers students an ideal foundation for developing cutting-edge, research-led insights and undertaking imaginative explorations of digital education futures.

Building on the programme’s foundation of research-driven, critical, and imaginative thinking, for her dissertation Monica had the chance to thoughtfully and creatively apply a unique research vision and framework on a complex multimodal educational design project. 

She says that, by offering a unique choice of modules, multiple paths into study and assessment, as well as the chance to elevate critical insights and practice of digital education alongside a global community of peers and an outstanding team of educators and researchers, the MSc "opens doors to personal and professional transformation and multiple possible futures - if you're ready to grasp it with both hands".

Since starting the programme, Michael has worked in a range of different higher education roles in the UK and Netherlands, and now manages learning technologies at Royal Holloway, University of London.

He says that the programme has been invaluable at providing inspiration and theoretical insights relevant to his day-to-day work and he particularly appreciated the array of different themes and approaches covered through the diverse range of courses. The MSc courses allowed room for creativity and he was able to explore complex ideas and theories through a 'lifestream blog', which appealed to his interest in multimodality.