Digital education and leadership: City scoops up awards at the Association for Learning Technology ceremony

City, University of London scooped up two awards at the annual Association for Learning Technology (ALT) award ceremony.

The ALT is the leading professional body for learning technology in the UK and its 17th awards ceremony celebrated excellent research and practice and outstanding achievement in learning technology.

The Digital Education Team was awarded the ‘Teams and Institutions Award’ for its work focused on Digital Education.

The second award went to Dr Julie Voce for her digital education leadership. Julie is the Head of the Digital Education Team and Deputy Director of the Learning Enhancement and Development (LEaD) team.

Jane Secker, Senior Lecturer in Educational Development from LEaD, received the Highly Commended award for the Leadership category for her work with Chris Morrison.

Teams and Institution award

The Digital Education Team worked above and beyond during the pandemic to enable a swift shift to hybrid teaching. This offering has continued to be developed and expanded within City, with many events now running both in person and online.

“We know from sector research that students want greater flexibility over how and when they learn,” says Julie. “Hybrid learning, using City’s ISLA functionality, allows City to bring a greater diversity of student body to a range of programmes.”

This team award category also commended City for developing its digital accessibility and digital literacies.

Digital accessibility means ensuring IT systems and websites can be used by all, for example, ensuring to include alt text on images allows for screen readers to vocalise what is on a webpage, thereby allowing people with visual impairments to fully access a page.

Digital literacies include having the skills and confidence to use different types of technology, as well as the ability to think critically about the information a person is accessing. For example, this would mean being able to tell whether you are reading a phishing email or knowing how to check the veracity of a news article.

City is continuing to work on learning design and learning analytics which will help lecturers inform how they teach students moving forward and provide improved learning experiences for students

Digital Leadership award

Dr Julie Voce is responsible for overseeing key institutional projects in learning spaces, lecture capture, digital accessibility and more.

In addition to her leadership role, Julie is a Senior Lecturer in Educational Development and delivers modules related to digital education, digital literacies and open practice.

“Like many learning technology professionals, I stumbled across the field and felt an affinity for the challenges of integrating technology and learning,” Julie says. “Having a PhD has helped me to take a more evidence-based approach to my work and that of my team.”

She has worked in technologies for 20 years, taking an active leader role in each of her jobs, working to ensure her leadership is inclusive and collaborative that promotes acting with integrity. Speaking on winning the award, she said:

Being a good leader starts with trusting and supporting your staff to achieve, and working in a collaborative way to ensure that staff feel heard and valued.

It’s also important to provide clarity of direction and purpose and ensure that the work you do has impact and is recognised.

I take an inclusive approach and work with my team and colleagues outside of City to help them achieve their best. I actively promote the profession and support others to progress to more senior roles.